How to adjust the speed of a single video demo clip

[CDubs]

This seems like a very basic function of a video that I can't seem to figure out in Captivate 8:

For an individual video demo inside of a project, how does one go about turning up the speed of that clip?

To be clear, I am not referring to simply viewing the end product and speeding that up.

[Captiv8r · Accepted solution]

Hi there

Unfortunately there is no "speed adjustment" aside from carefully cutting bits and pieces of the recording out.

I realize that this may seem to you to be a very basic function, but Captivate was never designed to work with "video", per se.

Cheers... Rick

[CDubs]

Is there another Adobe product where the video demo can be recorded, fully edited, and imported in Captivate?

[Captiv8r]

Well, you could record a Video Demo using Captivate. Then publish that out as an MP4. Then you could edit the MP4 using Premiere Pro or Premiere Elements. Then you could render it back out and use it as a video in Captivate.

Perhaps others have other approaches.

You might also want to take a look at TechSmith Camtasia. I believe it has an editing capability to speed up a clip. Or just a portion of a clip if you choose to split it up.

Cheers... Rick

[CDubs]

Those are great ideas. Funny, Camtasia was the other program I have used, which works very well for the clip speed purposes. Camtasia would likely be the easier method to create the MP4 file out of and import into Captivate.

Thanks for the help!

[laura_cruse]

I thought one of the main purposes of Captivate was to record your screen? This would essentially be a video would it not? I also can confirm that it was possible in Captivate 3 to speed up either certain sections or whole parts of your video. I too was struggling to find this feature in the latest version (having upgraded straight from 3). I can't believe (and really hoping they haven't) taken something like this out ?

[Lilybiri]

Hmmm, although Captivate is indeed a great application to create software simulations, contrary to other tools like Camtasia its real power is not in creating passive video, but interactive simulations. And that has been the case since CP1 (even before when it was called RoboDemo), why do you seem to suppose something else? Since CP6 there is a companion application that allows to create pure video as well (output MP4), but the classic work flow is to create static slides, with occasionally some FMR-slides to show scrolling or dragging. The default speed is set to 30FPS, and having used CP since many years, that will be the speed of the total project. You can change that in: Preferences, Project, Publish settings.

[laura_cruse]

I appreciate this but having been a heavy user of captivate 3. It created the slides based on your screen recordings. It would then allow you to increase or decrease sections of what was going on to give the appearance of a sped up section of video. Captivate 8 records screens in a very different way and as such you can no longer speed up the videos.

As for the real power with captivate being interactive presentations, that is probably the case but if you watch any of the tutorials on the Adobe site for captivate they're all using captivate to record video demos! Which would suggest that it should have the capabilities that it used to have?

[Lilybiri]

For classic capturing, AFAIK nothing has changed since CP3 which I used as well? But don't do a video demo recording because that is new since CP6.

None of the tutorials on the Adobe site are made with Captivate AFAIK, but with the Video Xpress recorder that ships with Presenter, or with Camtasia. Sorry to disappoint you there.

[gillkyle]

Actually there is a way to do this. I spent a while looking for an option that did this and ended up realizing you could use some simple Javascript.

If you use this code on a button you can select video objects on a page and change their playbackRate property that is a part of all audio and video objects thanks to HTML5.

var myVid = $('video');

myVid[0].playbackRate = 0.5;

The first line selects the video objects on the screen and stores them in the variable myVid, the next line takes the first element of that variable (which if you only have one video will appear in the first location) and adjusts it's playback rate. 0.5 would be half speed, 2 would be double speed, 1 is normal speed.

I put a little screencast of me demonstrating it on YouTube if that's more helpful: Adobe Captivate Tutorial - Speed Up/Slow Down Video Playback (Easy Javascript) - YouTube

[tarak61653256]

I cannot get this to work!! Any suggestions/feedback?