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Importing OAM file into Captivate, strange behaviour!

Explorer ,
Jun 17, 2020 Jun 17, 2020

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I have an Adobe Animate(2020) HTML5 project that I am exporting to an OAM file, and importing it into Captivate (2019) in order to utilise the SCORM publishing within Captivate.

The processing I and following is:

  • Start with a blank Captivate project, at the correct size
  • Load the "HTML5 Animation" dropping in the OAM file that fills the screen
  • Then set the Publish settings for SCORM 1.2 output and Publish.

The problem is when I change the Animate project, re-publish the OAM with the update, then replace the old OAM with the new version (of the same name), publishing the Captivate project seems to use the old versions of the files contained in the OAM rather than the new version, as though they are cached somewhere an not being refreshed with new data files.

I've tried clearing the cache, but that doesn't make any difference.

The only way round the problem seems to be start a new blank project and start again with the updated OAM, this is just rediculous, and wouldn't be workable if I needed to actually utilise Captivates slide functionality.

What am I doing wrong?

 

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Editing , Getting started , Import export

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Community Expert ,
Jun 17, 2020 Jun 17, 2020

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There is no real roundtripping with OAMs like Captivate has with Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition and used to have with SWF files.  Animations in OAM format are very independent from the UI of Captivate (like event videos).  But they are never scored. What do you need the SCORM publishing for? If you have other slides in Captivate, delete the first OAM slide, import the new one on a new slide. No need to restart from scratch. Look in the Library, is the old OAM still there? Personally I rarely import directly to a slide, just to the Library. 

Totally agree that the integration between Captivate and Animate needs to be improved. Do not understand me wrongly. I also want improvement between CP and AI as well...But when I edit a SVG from within the Library in AI it is updated in Captivate. Never tried it with an OAM. 

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Advisor ,
Jun 17, 2020 Jun 17, 2020

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My HTML5 animations are all zip files so I do not know if this is the same with  OAMs or not.

 

When I update my HTML5 animations - I have to use the following process...

  1. Delete animation from stage
  2. Delete animation from library
  3. Re-import new animation

 

My animations never use the new one until I delete the animation from the library first.

Just doing an update doesn't help. Gotta delete first - then bring in updated one.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 17, 2020 Jun 17, 2020

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That is exactly what I wrote as well... 

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Advisor ,
Jun 17, 2020 Jun 17, 2020

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It appeared different to me - perhaps with your usage of the word "slide".

I do not delete any slides, just the animation itself that is placed on the slide. I also don't need to import to a new slide I drop it right in the same place on the same slide every time.

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Explorer ,
Jun 17, 2020 Jun 17, 2020

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That's exactly what I was doing, but publishing didn't seem to use the reloaded project OAM!

I can tell by looking in the generated zip file, there we old versions of the Animate html and some of the atlas images.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 17, 2020 Jun 17, 2020

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Did you delete the old OAM in the Library??? 

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Community Expert ,
Jun 17, 2020 Jun 17, 2020

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I have a slightly different workflow when updating OAMs.  Like the original poster of this thread, I had noticed that updating and reimporting the same OAM did not change anything.  The Captivate CPTX seems to cache the original OAM file and use it.  

 

However, many years of using Captivate had shown me similar behavior with other areas of the application.  And when that happened, the fix was always to change the name of something.  

 

So with OAMs in Captivate what I do is to simply change the output publish name of the OAM in Animate when I update anything.  I name my OAM files with a reversed date suffix at the end and add a letter to indicate the series of the update.  So, an OAM for this morning would be named MyOAM_20200618a, and the next update would be MyOAM_20200618b, etc.  (Each day I work on the same OAM would have a different date, and if I find one of them doesn't work at all, I still have all the previous ones to roll back to.)

 

Then all you have to do is go into the Library where the OAM is shown, and import your new OAM to overwrite and replace it.  Since the filenames are slightly different, Captivate will replace the older OAM with the newly updated one. 

 

No deleting of any slides or rebuilding necessary.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 18, 2020 Jun 18, 2020

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Very interesting workflow, Rod. Can you overwrite an existing OAM in the Library by another one with another name, even though it is only some characters? You have a lot more experience with OAMs,  really would like to know.

The crucial point in all answers seems to be the Library.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 18, 2020 Jun 18, 2020

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It's actually really quite easy.  All you have to do is double-click the OAM in the Library and this will spawn a Web Properties dialog showing details of the OAM filename etc.

OAM_ImportNew.png

Then click the Import... button to import the new OAM and this will overwrite any instance of the previous OAM in the project.  So if the OAM is only used on a single slide, it will just replace it there.  But if your OAM is used on multiple slides, then all of those slides will be affected.

 

Here's a bit of exciting news:

When using Animate OAMs in Captivate, you normally need different OAMs on different slides, all created by different Adobe Animate Canvas FLA files.  However, with the new Infosemantics widget we've been working on there is now a way to have just ONE single OAM in a Captivate CPTX project file, and that OAM can be placed on any number of slides, to show any number of different animations from within the OAM. 

 

So, instead of having to update all of the OAMs and animations separately, you just update that one single OAM.  How cool is that!

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Community Expert ,
Jun 18, 2020 Jun 18, 2020

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Great! It is a bit similar to replacing an image, but you have to know the workflow. Hope this will help many users, wished I could push this answer to a prominent location...

I knew about the new widget and looking forward to it. Thanks Rod and Tristan!

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Community Expert ,
Jun 18, 2020 Jun 18, 2020

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I put together a quick page on my website to show how to use this workflow:

https://infosemantics.com.au/how-to-update-objects-in-adobe-captivate-projects/

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Explorer ,
Jun 22, 2020 Jun 22, 2020

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I've tried that, but it doesn't seem to work for me! I'm still getting the old "cached" version of the .oam file.

The only guarenteed way to get the new version is to reopen a saved empty template file, and import the new file.

It's so frustrating and unacceptable for such a high profile product at how poor the usability of this application is.

I've been a software engineer for 30 years and used many applications (including Adobe) for along time, it just seems the Captivate seems to have been upgraded to the nth degree on an initially flawed product!

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Community Expert ,
Jun 22, 2020 Jun 22, 2020

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That's very odd.  I and my son have been creating HTML5 responsive courses for the past 18 months using OAMs and we are always able to make edits to the Animate FLA, export a new OAM with a different filename, and import it to overwrite the previous one inside the CPTX.

 

There must be some other variable in operation here that we are not aware of. The 'template' you're talking about here is just a CPTX file and not a CPTL file isn't it?   Are you on Windows 10 or a Mac?

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Explorer ,
Jun 22, 2020 Jun 22, 2020

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You can see from your screen shot the OAM file properties showing the size and date, whether that's all it uses, I don't know, but really it should show the time stamp as well, then you can tell if the time/date properties of the file is correct, just another poor implementation!

My OAM file is over 62Mb, I already save completion stages, which is often daily, but having to save under a new name every time I make a minor change seem silly, just to get over the poor implementation, which on any normal application would work fine!

When I say Template, I just mean an blank project, saved with the correct publish settings, skin settings, slide size etc. so I don't have to go through all the settings every time, then just saved as a CPTX (on Windows 10).

Load the project then drop in the OAM file, and publish.

The output .zip file I'm now trying to upload to SCORM Cloud for testing, and for some reason I'm now not getting any audio! The .OAM contains the sounds library, which I can also see in the Captivate published .zip file, down in the "wor/wo_xxxx/sounds/<sound tree of mp3s>" folder, but running the course from SCORM Cloud I don't get any sound!

It works fine in Animate, and Captivate Preview.

It just seems to be one problem after another!

If only Animate could output SCORM compliant output files.

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New Here ,
Aug 21, 2021 Aug 21, 2021

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Hi Stagprime,

It worked for me after I deleted from library.

Thank you.

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