MP4 videos don't play when SWF copied to network

[a05lrey]

Hello,

I have created a self-paced course that needs to be published as a SWF file so it can be moved to a network drive, have its path copy/pasted into PowerPoint, wrapped in Articulate and then uploaded to PeopleSoft. I didn't design this process, just following instructions from our LMS coordinator.

The course has some MP4 videos and those have all been added and configured appropriately. I'm publishing as SWF, accessibility disabled in preferences. When I launch the html file from my C drive to proof it, works great! Along with the slides that have right-click configurations.

Problem is when I move the published files to the network drive. When I launch html from there, the videos don't display and the right-click configurations are lost. One of the help files I found here online says it needs to be copied to a "trusted path." I'm trying to understand what is considered trusted, where I can identify what is a trusted path and get this thing that I've spent all of last year on to work.

We want the videos to play (obviously) and I'd prefer to keep the right-click in there as true right-click and not tell the user "in the real world you would right-click but because of something goofy here you have to left-click."

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

Leslie

[Justenuf2bdangerous]

Best, simplest explanation I've seen  is Setting up Flash Global Security for Captivate

Rod Ward at Infosemantics is one of the good ones on these sites.

 

[StevePixel]

"published as a SWF file so it can be moved to a network drive, have its path copy/pasted into PowerPoint, wrapped in Articulate and then uploaded to PeopleSoft."

Wow..there are so many opportunities for pointing errors here.  Hopefully the "Flash Global Security" Preference will help. I would ask your LMS administrator if this process has worked with embedded Captivate videos in the past?

Cheers

Steve

[a05lrey]

Hi Steve -

HA! Yeah, no. When people in my organization refer to "self-paced" they think PowerPoint slide with a button to click to advance after reading a ton of text. Or they just watch as the mouse moves and advances the curriculum for them. This is the first course that we're aware of asking the user to interact.

Our organization is health care and has north of 30K employees. 98% of the courses in our LMS are for in-person training, meetings or seminars. So little development has gone into true eLearning.

I'm reading through the Flash article - very interesting and so on point!

Thanks,

Leslie

[StevePixel]

Wow... Good for you on "pushing the envelope" for training in your organization

Something you might want to consider is even if you can get the videos to play, by republishing in Powerpoint, it will in all likelihood really degrade the video and audio output as it will all be re compressed, after being compressed initially  by Captivate,

You may be better off having a conversation with your LMS Coordinator and find out exactly, technically why you can't directly publish in Captivate.  I will bet the only reason is "We always publish in Articulate"  and once you assure him/her that it will look and play better in Captivate and won't break the LMS they may go for it. 

Cheers 
Steve 

[Justenuf2bdangerous]

Good point here by Steve - it sounds like "the powers that be" may not understand that Captivate can publish as a standalone SCO. The most common reason to "wrap" something up in another program is to make it compliant with the publishing demands of the system. (try getting an Articulate SCO to run in an Adobe Connect environment without re-wrapping the final published project)

Find out what the SCORM standard is for your LMS and ask the LMS admin if you can upload a small test file packaged directly from Captivate that is set to meet those specs. See if it behaves - you may save hours of needless repackaging and re-wrapping.. You can turn out a page turner in Captivate that looks just like a PowerPoint (excuse me while I shudder at that last statement) and can publish directly on the LMS in almost all cases.

[a05lrey]

All very good comments here - I think the current process was established before we implemented PeopleSoft. We had something called iThinq. I have a feeling no one has looked at whether or not efficiencies could be found and instead tested the current, saw it still worked and stopped.

I've engaged an engineer to help look at everything before we take to our VP. I'm in the client hardware side of IT, so it would be my VP (who also oversees infrastructure) talking to the LMS VP and figuring out a plan to get some attention on this and resources allocated. And who knows...maybe a job change for me to assist!

Either way - thank you all for your help and suggestions. I'll send an update as we progress.

[StevePixel]

Thats awesome.

I didn't want to say it before, but I can't imagine why any organization would create a course in Captivate and then embed it into a PowerPoint and then render it out in Articulate.

That is like buying a Porshe, loading it in a big van and then towing it behind a city bus to get where you want to go.

Best of luck on the new gig

Cheers

Steve 

[a05lrey]

That's an awesome analogy, Steve! Thanks for the chuckle!

[RodWard]

Flash Global Security isn't an issue if your published files are being served from a WEB server, but it will always be an issue if the files are being served from a LAN server or local hard drive, USB, CD-ROM, etc.

[a05lrey]

Thanks so much for this! I'm reading through it now and trying to figure out who in my organization can assist from the IT side to make the changes. Our devices are imaged and pretty locked down. I will likely need to engage an engineer and go through some sort of change control process.

[sigh]

[Justenuf2bdangerous]

Leslie:

We've all been there, done that with these issues, and folks like Rod (and a host of others) in the Captivate Forum and here in the new community are reliable and can at least point you in the right direction. Completely understand the imaged and locked down computers - been working with the federal side of the house for a few years - use your inside voice and ask nicely (it even worked with government IT!)

[Lilybiri]

I'm not sure it is Flash security, maybe I misunderstand your question. Once a SWF file is deployed from a server, Flash security is no longer an issue, that is only the case when you play locally.  Is it not the videos in the SWF (mp4) that are not playing? If that is the case: how did you insert them: event or multi-synchronized video, embedded or streaming?

[a05lrey]

Hi Lilybiri - locally is fine, it is when on the network that it doesn't work right. The videos do not play when the file is launched from the network, I noticed the right-click functions also do not work when launched from the network. The videos were inserted as Events, are in the library and located in the same folder as the Captivate file.