Pause "Play Audio" Command...HELP!

[KG-TMI]

I was an auditor for a company that had a need for training.  I took on the roll without any LMS experience.  I have learned Captivate with the help of the online community, mostly Paul Wilson (Your YouTube channel saved me a lot of frustration).  Fast forward a year and now I have complex interactions with audio and music.  I have one issue that I cannot resolve...and it drives me crazy.

I need a way to pause the course regardless of the audio type.  My learners need to be able to pause since they are taking these courses during work.  These are desktop only courses and learner engagement is important to us, so I do not want to get rid of my interactions.  The audio is "Play Audio" in Advanced Actions.  I need the audio to pause with the course and resume when unpaused.  I am willing to build buttons or use java script; however, I would need someone to give me the script as I have no idea how to write script just used it here and there by copying someone else's script.  Stop Triggered Audio will not work as it will not resume or pause the entire course as well.  Please help.  I feel like Adobe should have the built in play bar pause the entire course, regardless of the audio type.   

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

Using slide audio would solve this easily. Can you tell me why you are not using slide audio in favour of triggered audio?

[KG-TMI]

Narration audio is tied to carousels, click to reveal and play once conditions.

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[Lilybiri]

Can you please check out this blog post?

Pausing Timeline and Audio clips - eLearning (adobe.com)

You'll see that you have chosen the type of audio which cannot be paused and resumed in Captivate. Slide audio can easily be done, Object audio is already more tricky but could be the solution in this case. There is no 'Pause Triggered Audio' in Captivate, those audio clips triggered with 'Play Audio' are out of controll except for stopping them. Stop occurse not only with 'Stop triggered audio' but also when starting another Audio clip with 'Play audio' when a first one is still playing.

[KG-TMI]

Thank you for your response.  I did come across this article before.  I was hoping that someone figured out a work around. 

Let me get a little more specific.  For example... There is a main menu slide.  There are five icons on a left menu bar.  The main menu slide has audio instructions that play the first visit.  If you click the first icon (jump to slide 5), I have a carousel created by advanced actions.  It is not just arrowing, but three interactions controlled by three dot buttons at the bottom. 

The first is an animated and narrated timeline (as in a list of dates, not referring to CP timeline).  My Advanced Action changes the state of the click button, hides most of the other objects on the slide, plays audio, applies effect on the date/event points, delays next action, repeats for each point and is timed to the audio.  When the learner uses the pause button on the play-bar.  It pauses the background music and not the animation or audio.

My next attempt was to create a clear square not visible on output, attached audio and replaced "play audio" with "show shape".  It played the audio at the correct time, but when paused the audio stopped, but not the animations, so when un-paused the sound is not synced with the animations. 

Currently, I removed the controls on the play bar, taking away the ability to pause.  I really do not like this solution.  This course takes you back to the main menu after each section so if you missed something you could retake the section.  I wanted to check with people that know the software to make sure I wasn’t missing something.  

I understand there is not a way to pause “play audio”.   I am not really the type of person that accepts no that easily.  Wondering if anyone has had any success getting through to Adobe on any other developer requests, especially those of you active in the community???  Anyone fluent in Java Script with ideas how to work around this issue??? 

I have a fun, engaging and informative course that I spent weeks on, and I hate to see it rejected because of a pause button issue.

[Lilybiri]

You are bumping not only on the pausing audio problem, but also on other Timeline issues (animations are typical as well). 

I have logged many, many feature requests, and the inconsistent way Audio clips are handled at this moment, I have been talking a lot about them with the team. Sorry, no solution yet.

It is possible that I could find a solution, but it will not be by replacing the audio type. I completely understand your frustration, my blog shows enough workarounds I have found and even explained. Your Audio object (what you call the invisible shape with audio attached) could be part of the solution, but the biggest problem is the 'animation'.  That term is used also for multiple types, which type of animation are you pointing at? Is it an OAM, an animated GIF? Did you create them? Was it not possible to attach the audio to the animation, and capture it as a mp4?

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

I think what I would do is in my Pause action I would stop any triggered audio and leave it at that. If learners what to hear the audio associated with the click to reveal or the carousel they can simply click on the click or carousel buttons.