HELP! Captivate 9 Turning Pictures RED!

[carlye77434508]

The output of my project is turning many of my pictures red in large scale. As of right now, my product is not functional and I've put months of work into this. Please, if someone could help save my project I would be very grateful. It is a large project, and there is no way around that...help!

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

In my own experience the turning red is a symptom of exhausting all the memory while playing the project.

Sounds to me as if your project is too large. How many slides and what are the pixel dimensions? And i'm guessing you are producing in Flash SWF format?

Cheers... Rick

[carlye77434508]

Hi there – thanks for your quick response. It is a very large project and unfortunately I wasn’t aware of any restrictions before I began this project. I also don’t know how I can cut it down, it’s very detailed. I’ve got 420 slides now and need to have about 600 before all said and done. And yes Flash/SWF.

Thanks again!

Carly

Moderator: I took out your personal credentials, be more careful, this is a public forum.

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

I suspect that the only solution I'm afraid is to optimize your images in Photoshop or some other image-editing software.

Perhaps you can give more detail as to why your images cannot be optimized, what are the dimensions of you images in question, and what are the dimensions of your project.

[carlye77434508]

I’m sure I can optimize them, I’m just not sure how. And there are so many. This is a huge project. Thanks for your quick response.

Carly

​Moderator: PLEASE! Do not post your personal credentials on this public forum

[carlye77434508]

Is there a way for me to see which slides/pictures are too large?

Carly

​Moderator: PLEASE! Do not post your personal credentials on this public forum

[Lilybiri]

Can you turn off all compression in Preferences, Project, Size and Quality?

Best practice is to prepare images in the exact size (pixels) needed in Captivate, and not resize them. Since you are on Captivate 9, SVG's are accepted. Try converting as many bitmap images to SVG which will decrease the size considerably. However not only the images contribute to file size: audio and (embedded) video are taking up a lot more file size than images.

[carlye77434508]

Do you mean unclick the “Advanced Project Compression” box? Thanks for responding so quickly.

Carly

​Moderator: PLEASE! Do not post your personal credentials on this public forum

[Lilybiri]

Yes, try that.

To reduce file size not only images are important, audio and video take up a lot more size.

As for images: find them in the Library! Best practice is to never rescale images in Captivate, but import them in exactly the needed size. Moreover, since you do use CP9, try converting the bitmap images to SVG whenever possible. The file size reduction can be amazing!

[StevePixel]

Hi Carly,

Another thing you might consider is breaking the slides up into two projects and linking them. That will cut the project size in half and dramatically improve load speed and playback.

Cheers

Steve 

[carlye77434508]

Silly question (and as a note the entire project is images, no video or audio at all…it’s just huge!) how do I import a picture exactly the size I need? All of them are the same size but you’re right, I’ve been resizing them in captivate.

Also, what does try converting the bitmap images to SVG whenever possible mean? In Captivate? I am new to elearning and Captivate if you didn’t notice…

Carly Eade

[Moderator's note: please do not include all the personal data on these public forums]

[Captiv8r]

Convert bitmap images to SVG. Where do I find that option in Captivate?

[Lilybiri]

You can convert them in Photoshop if you have the last version. Not only a file size decrease but lot crisper especially for responsive projects. There are other applications around to convert bitmap to SVG but I'm using Photoshop.

As for changing the size/resolution of a bitmap image, consider roundtripping from the Library to Photoshop or another graphical application to resize the images in that graphical application. Resizing images in Captivate often leads even to bigger file size than the original image, you can check that in the Library as well.

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

I've been using Illustrator to convert to SVG. Where do I go to save a file as an SVG in Photoshop? I don't see it in the save as options.

[Captiv8r]

LOL, you have to love it when folks just make assumptions that because you know how to use one of Adobe's 100+ tools, that you just immediately know how to use all the 100+ others!

[Captiv8r]

Referring here to Captivate as being the "known" tool.

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

Yeah, I use Photoshop to do exactly 17 things to prepare my images for Captivate or create the thumbnails for my YouTube videos. Once every 7 years or so I Google how to do something new.

[Lilybiri]

How will you resize images to the exact size needed if you don't use a graphical applcation? Resizing them in Captivate is the ideal way to bloat up the file size. If you can get hold of a SVG, that is not a problem. So, if you want a small file size but don't want to use a graphical application, buy SVG's.

Photoshop CC 2017 has SVG under File, Export as.

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

Thank you.

[RodWard]

The way I personally work is that each time I begin a project I work out three specific sizes that I want images to be.  I'll have one that fills the screen (perhaps underneath the header of the slide), another that takes up most of one side with room for text beside it, and another that will serve as a thumbnail or that can be used on quiz question slides (because you have so many other elements on thos slides to work around). 

Once I have worked out exactly how big these images would be I create three Photoshop PSD files at those sizes and tag their names with some code to indicate which course and module of the project they belong to.  Then I import any images I intend to use and put them on layers in this PSD file so that I can export them out as JPG or PNG files at exactly the right size to be inserted in the Captivate file. 

Most of my images tend to be photographs due to the subject matter, but I do agree that using SVGs will be the better way to go in HTML5 or Responsive output for any images that I would normally have used Flash SWF to create. 

[akaskens]

I just had this problem as well. I resaved my images as PNGs (they were JPEGs originally) and that solved it.

[michelleg24517838]

Yes! Making the images smaller pixels and saving as PNGs is the answer!

[briana15126323]

I was having the same problem in CP2019.  Here is the fastest fix.

Click on the Slide Itself Not the Image

Click on Properties

Style

Quality

From the Drop Down ( The default is Optimized) 

Select JPEG  (This worked best for me, I did not play with the other two options of LOW and HIGH)

You will get a message or warning telling you that this selection change will ( Increase the size of the project, use this option only if the slide contains a photo) 

Click OK

Resave, Re-compile this should solve your issues. 

Not sure how this would work for huge slide decks?  The presentation I was working on was only 28 slides.

Hope this helps.

[ACotty]

Thank you!  Exactly what I needed to fix the issue I was having!