Highlight boxes showing/not showing in preview

Report · Feb 16, 2018

I just started working on Adobe CP 9 and have added some highlight boxes to one of my slides. The highlighted boxes show up when I do a play side preview but when I do a project preview the highlight boxes do not show. I tried looking up an answer but could not find any suggestions, I even recreated the boxes thing that maybe the first boxes where not done correct. After doing all this, over and over again. I started playing around with the controls hitting stop, pause, fast forward and then I noticed that the highlighted boxes showed up but the sound stopped. When I tried to replay the slide again, it went back to now showing the highlight boxes. So after this happened, I thought that maybe when CP 9 creates a preview, it's not doing it correctly. Has anyone experienced that problem, if so, how did you correct it. Thanks.

Report · Feb 16, 2018

Can you show a screenshot of the Timeline? I suspect you have a pausing point that prevents objects from appearing.

Report · Feb 16, 2018

Report · Feb 17, 2018

Lilybiri's intuition was right on the money. You have three buttons pausing the timeline just a couple of seconds after it starts. If those buttons are not intended to stop the timeline, then you need to turn off their pausing behaviour in the Timing panel.

Report · Feb 17, 2018

Of course, 9 out of 10 similar questions are due to having pausing points in the timeline, mostly at the default time of 1,5 secs. Lack of understanding of the Timeline, and the way it can be paused and which items are paused is the PRIMARY stumbling block for all starting Captivate users. You are probably misled by two situations:

Play slide is not a Preview method, only meant to synchronize, but will not show how the slide will behave after publishing. Too bad that this option is under the Preview button.
Slide audio is not paused by the pausing point of an interactive object by default, unless you check that option in its Properties.

If you need to pause the slide, move the pausing point to be after the last item has entered the slide. In this case that will be about 25secs. Be careful: the end of a lot of timelines is glued to the the end of the slide timeline (look at the red triangles). That is rarely a wanted situation. Want to learn basics of the Timeline? I will be presenting twice about the Timeline at the Learning Summit in DC (25 of Aptril): one for Newbies, and one for Advanced users. More can be found in a lot of articles I wrote about the Tiemline. You can find all links and several examples referenced in this interactive HTML5 published project:

Captivate's Timeline

Report · Feb 20, 2018

Rob,

Thank you for the information. Since all this is all new to me, I did not even notice that the pause was set on those buttons. Also, thank you Lilybiri for the additional information. I am just happy that I can now continue with my project after resolving this issue. Thanks again to you both.

Report · Feb 21, 2018

Rob,

I have another question. Now that I removed the pause from the slide and see the highlight boxes during preview, I noticed that the slide no longer stops and waits for the next button but goes right into the next slide. What can I do to have the highlight boxes show during preview and have the slide stop until the next button is used. Thanks.

Report · Feb 21, 2018

You need to keep at least one pausing point, as I explainedµ. But I'll leave you to Rod, since you asked him explicitly and igore my explanations. Apparently the link to the interactive movie that explains the pausing points is not clarifying enough.

Report · Feb 21, 2018

Just set one of those buttons to pause the slide timeline.

If the timeline is 30 seconds long, select the button and in the Timing tab set its pause point to 29 seconds. That would mean it pauses the timeline 1 second before the end.

Report · Feb 22, 2018

As a novice using CP I am not familiar with many of the terms and functions associated with this application. The tutorials I found have been very helpful but sometimes they do not address my specific problem and that maybe because when searching I am not asking the question correctly. Thanks again to you both and I know more this week than I did last week, which is sweet. Thanks again.

Report · Mar 01, 2018

Rod,

You have been real helpful to me in the project I am doing but another part of my project is to do a software simulation or video demo on an application at work. When I look at the choices to choose from the drop-down box, the application I want to use is not listed. So my questions is how do I add applications to this listing. Thanks.

Report · Mar 01, 2018

In that situation you have to use the Screen Area option and make sure your Capture Area size exactly matches the dimensions of the project you are working on.

You also need to be VERY careful to position the capture area rectangle consistently in the same position each time you perform captures so that you can marry them up together. Otherwise the captures will appear to 'jump around' on the slide.

I use a little app called Sizer that allows me to very accurately set the size of an application or browser.s window. That way I can do lots of different captures over time but still make them all look like they came from the same session,