import transparent video in Captivate

[virginied22769323]

Hello everyone,

I know this question has often been asked, but is it possible to matter in a transparent video in Captivate? I found tutorials showing that, but it was on the old version of Captivate and especially with a .flv file, but now it is no longer possible to export this way on After Effect, therefore I am forced to use a "Quicktime" file.

There is any alternative ?

Thank you

[Lilybiri]

Why do you not use an OAM? It can have a transparent background, why would you use a video for an animation?

[estherau]

well i made the file in crazytalk animator. you get a little cartoon character and it is prettty easy to make him walk around and talk and he lip syncs automatically with your voice. then I want him to have a transparent background in captivate but it is hard to make the file keep the transparency. 

How would i make an OAM out of say an apple hi res pro  4444 file?

Kind regards,

riesa

[estherau]

I can output my file as a png sequence?  but what about the audio speech that has to be timed with the animation?

[Lilybiri]

I am not a Mac user, maybe you can google for that conversion? OAM is vector based, I am using either Edge Animate or Animate CC to create an OAM.

[estherau]

Hi, i find it quick and easy to make the animation in crazytalk.  that is a mac and pc program. if I export using their apple format i get to retain transparency. it also allows export of a transparent gif but when i try and import that into captivate I get an error message.   There are other export options from crazytalk but OAM isn't one of them. I have creative cloud though so I could take a look.

Thanks for the tip.

Kind regards,

Riesa

[estherau]

At first I couldn't see anything wrong with using FLV as it looked great in my browser when i previewed it in captivate - that is until i tried the flv file in a responsive project.  Suddenly captivate wants to convert it to MP4 using adobe media encoder.  It worked fine in a sample project that was not responsive.  this is weird.

[Lilybiri]

FLV is Flash-based, not even present in the latest Adobe Media Encoder . It supported transparency, contrary to MP4 (unless something has changed). Since Responsive projects only support HTML output, you cannot use anything Flash-based.

[estherau]

aha, so what codec would be good for supporting transparency besides gif nowadays that will work with html 5?

[arashmaz]

So my understanding is if you're publishing a video i.e an output from something like Adobe After Effects or Premier Pro you can't have a transparent background that you can just drop into Captivate. E.g. a person talking against see through background.

You can publish a video with transparency and drop it into another video editor and layer it on top of something. E.g if I keyed out the background with a person in front of it talking in AE, exported it with transparency and dropped on top of a video I had in Premier Pro.. that would work and that's my understanding of the way video formats with transparency work.

But it doesn't work like that in Captivate. UNLESS... you can some how output to FLV format... but it seems more and more difficult as more and more software seems to be dropping that format as an output option. Also as you mentioned, it won't play in responsive projects or on Apple devices.

The alternative is to just do your animation in Animate CC and published it as a .OAM file. As Lilybiri pointed out this will work. Alternatively... you might have to re think your design so your background in your video fits into the background/works with background on your Captivate slide.

Not sure there's any other way.

[estherau]

That is a good summary of my issues.  Sadly my animation can't be changed to OAM I don't think.  I think it is possible to output an html 5 video with transparency but the method is a bit complicated and involves overlying two videos, one that is the transparent channel.

I thought this might be an alternative but couldn't do it:-

Exporting a video with a transparent background.

[arashmaz]

That link you posted will export a video with a transparent background. But it's only transparent if you load it into something like Premier Pro.

I just followed the steps in After Effects creating a simple black sq rotating against a transparent background. This is when it looks like in Captivate... (it converted it to flv btw when I imported it). That black square is the size of my video 500 x 500. It should be transparent with a small black square in the middle rotating.

[estherau]

I think it is a pity really because people making elearning often want to have virtual presenters overlaying their other objects on their slides and talking.  Transparency in video is important.  I hope this situation improves for us one day soon.  In the meantime I might go back to non-responsive elearning projects.

Riesa

[sebrame]

Interesting to note that it is possible in Camtasia, but not possible in Captivate. Even more interesting considering that Captivate is a much more capable program than Camtasia.

[TLCMediaDesign]

Captivate cannot do it because the browser/codecs can't do it.

[sebrame]

I'm not talking about the end product - I'm talking about the authoring stage. Camtasia can import video with an alpha channel in pretty much any codec that supports it. I typically export my videos to a MOV wrapped Cineform codec, and Camtasia uses it with ease.

[StevePixel]

Hi Virginied,

True,  but Camtasia has a dedicated video editor, with a a full-on rendering engine and multiple video/audio track capabilities, That is why you can composite over top the video track. Captivate is a totally different animal.

Cheers

Steve 

[sebrame]

My main occupation being a video editor with Adobe Premiere, this makes my point exactly! Captivate is a product of a company that makes one of the world's most foremost video editing platforms, and is a MUCH more capable program than Camtasia, yet it lacks this functionality.

I understand WHY Camtasia has the functionality, I just think it's interesting that Adobe hasn't built it into Captivate. It seems that Adobe is holding onto Flash web technology until it sighs it's last dying breath. This is also interesting, seeing that the training program I'm currently recreating with Captivate was originally authored in Flash, and cannot be used any longer due to the company's ban of Flash on all computers.

Unfortunately, I'm charged with explaining to the client that not all of the functionality available in the previous Flash version of the training program will be possible in the new HTML5 version.

[TLCMediaDesign]

Color me confused, but Captivate is a tool, whose output is used 95% for the web, to be viewed in a browser. Even if Captivate could display a transparent video in the IDE, what good what it do if the browser cannot render the transparent video?

I'm sure that when the browsers can all do it, and they stop preferring a certain video type, then Captivate will also make it available.

I also think that if only a very small percentage of the user have a need for transparent video, and almost no browser supports it, then why would Adobe invest the time to make it work?

[RodWard]

I can add another perspective to this.

Some years ago when Adobe was designing one of the Captivate versions, they interviewed a number of us that were very experienced users of the app to see if we were interested in having video editing added as functionality to Captivate.

We all said NO, because any video editing capability Adobe would have added to Captivate would just have been about the same level as the audio editing functionality they've had since the year dot.  It would NEVER have been anywhere near as good as what people expect even from Adobe Premier Elements, the Premier Pro's poorer cousin.

Any of us that were serious about developing e-learning that made use of video were already going to be subscribing to the Creative Cloud as well and would already have Premier Pro.  So why would we use Captivate to edit our video?

We all recommended they ditch the video editing idea and instead burn the same development budget in adding functionality that was DIRECTLY applicable to the kind of web-based e-learning we wanted to create.

Looking back I have no regrets about that decision.  I'd still rather use Premier Pro to edit videos than something like Captivate.  Just as I prefer to do audio editing in Adobe Audition than use the very basic tools provided in Captivate.

[sebrame]

I can certainly appreciate that! However, I'm hardly talking about 'video editing', per se. I'm merely interested in Captvate being able to import video with an alpha channel in a codec other than FLV/F4V.

[sebrame]

The same can be said for Camtasia, yet it has the capability. I do realize that Camtasia transcodes all video elements into a single video file, be it MP4 or whatever, so the browser doesn't have to support the alpha channel.

[StevePixel]

Hi Sebrame,

I think the codec issues is one of file size, the only codec that supported alpha channels with small file size was FLV, since Apple killed Flash all that is left is .MOV and .AVI, both produce huge file size so neither are ideal for e-learning.

Cheers

Steve 

[estherau]

I solved my particular problem.  In crazytalk animator I output the video as apple prores 4444 and import it into adobe encoder where I change it to flv with keep transparency checked. now i have a cartoon with a transparent background that can talk and explain things to the course participants, right in my captivate which is what i wanted.  so my particular problem is fixed

[StevePixel]

Hi estherau,

Thats awesome. I'm glad you resolved your issue. It unfortunately won't play on on any apple OS driven device (IPhones, IPads or Apple OS computers) because of the FLV codec,  but as long as that is not a requirement you should be golden!

Cheers

Steve

[estherau]

but i created it on my apple computer, and it is playing in preview.