Play/pause button not working on slide with multiple lightbox buttons.

Report · Dec 23, 2015

We have created a slide with four lightbox buttons that play audio and show text. The slide features a single play/pause button. What we want is the audio for each button to be controlled by the single play/pause button. Is this possible? Any help much appreciated for us new users of Captivate...

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Can you give more details? Do you use a shared action for the lightbox buttons? Which version do you use? How did you set up the Play/Pause button? Very important: how do you trigger the audio: object audio or with the command Play Audio? Maybe show a screenshot of the timeline, and of the actions.

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Hi Lilybiri and thank you for prompt reply.

We are using Captivate 9 and are fairly new to it. We will gather together some more information and answers to your questions and post shortly.

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Hi Lilybiri,

I've taken some screengrabs to make it easier to explain.

This is an example slide. When you click on a button a caption appears and audio is triggered - this is using a shared action.

Then I have a puse button I've used throughout the project and it works fine on audio that is attached to a slide but not if it is triggered by a button. This pause button is controlld with a conditional action.

Does that make sense to you? As we are new to captivate it would be helpful to have a simplified answer. Thanks so much.

Report · Dec 23, 2015

I suspect that the parameter for Hide is a group of images, and the one for Show is the image you want to show?

No need to Stop triggered audio, when you start another audio clip with 'Play audio', the one that may still be playing is stopped automatically.

Can I see the timeline, please? I have to test a few possibilities. I think you have the pausing point of the buttons at the same moment, but want to know if you have another pausing point later.

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Hi Lilybiri,

Thanks for your reply here is the timeline

The user clicks a button and audio is played. So what I need is the user to have the option of pausing the audio mid way through if they need to make notes etc... Then to restart it before clicking another button.

Is there a way I can have a pause/play button that does this?

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Oops! You are really very new to Captivate, right?

My reaction is due to the unnecessary long duration of that slide! Why? There are only two reasons to have such a long slide:

you need slide audio clip that is that long, which is not the case (and would be very boring)
you have a lot of staggered objects timed at different times, but even in that case I would recommend splitting up the slide; it is not the case here neither: you have only two entrance points: at the start (where the lightbox buttons also appear and the captions), and there is a last group which is a Next button I suppose? Why do you not put the text in the shape button instead of creating two different objects?

Can you explain the goal of this slide. This is what I already know:

The three shape buttons Date_1.... are used to open a caption and play an audio clip. They should have a pausing point, can be at 1.5secs.
The Play/Pause toggle button (no states? have a look at my article: 1 action = 5 Toggle Buttons - Captivate blog) doesn't really need a pausing point, timed for rest of slide is OK
This is my intuition: you want the Next button only to appear later, maybe after the three lightboxes have been clicked at least once?

If you confirm, I will propose you a scenario and you'll be able to reduce the slide time to maybe 4 secs; each second is 30 frames! I even wonder if you need a Play/Pause button at all? Are the audio clips that long? If they are not too long, wouldn't it be better to allow the user to open a lightbox several times?

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Hi,

Yes Captivate is very new.

The client I am working for has requested a play/pause button which is why I need to get it functining. They would like any audio to be paused at any stage.

Ideally I would like the next button to appear after the buttons have been clicked but I was unsure how to do this so made the slide longer so the next button would appear towards the end. If you could tell me a simple way to do that, taht would be great!

The goal of this slide is for the user to click each button and and read the caption and listen to the audio wityh the option to pause each audio clip.

Thanks

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Can you answer my questions please! This is a crazy situation, don't you think so? You don't know even the basics of Captivate, from the way you answer my questions. You took those advanced actions somewhere (I have several like that for free on my blog). Did you search on this forum? The setup with a Next button appearing after having clicked a number of interactive objects has been explained multiple times. Can you first read some blog posts, they are old but still valid. Learn about the timeline, and pausing:

Tiny Timeline Tidbits - Captivate blog

Learn about a button appearing after a number of objects have been clicked, this is a recent article:

Playing with Captivate 9 - Captivate blog

And about audio:

Audio Objects: Control them! - Captivate blog

For a Play/Pause button:

Custom Play/Pause button in Captivate - Captivate blog

For toggle buttons I already offered you a link.

It is not really the goal of this forum to create files for you, this is not a simple question to be answered, not a simple issue to be solved. It would take me a couple of hours to try to explain to you what you need to know about user variables, use of shape buttons, states, difference between ways of playing audio, meaning of system variables. I love to help users, spend time every day on these forums and in other groups on social media, but you cannot expect me to do this. I have to work as well.

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Hi,

Thank you for all help. I have been using your blog and found it useful however I felt like this was a very specific question which is why I put it out to the forum. Although I have only been using Captivate for a few weeks and am still new to it I have done training in it and produced a number of successful projects. However I just couldn't solve this last issue which on the face of it seems to be very simple problem but it appears I will need a more complex solution.

I will try alternative routes.

Many thanks

Report · Dec 23, 2015

Also, I just want to add that I was not expecting you to spend hours helping us, or provide intensive solutions. I feel you have taken a rather 'cross teacher' view with us, which we were not expecting or appreciate. We did not expect you to do anything for us - you chose to answer the question in a general forum, and your attitude of "you don't even know the basics of Captivate" is a unfair and rather brusque, especially as we have only been working with Captivate for a few weeks. We are not all experts and learning new software takes time and experience.

Report · Dec 23, 2015

I'm used to being insulted, go ahead. My reaction was that way because I didn't get answers to my questions, clearly due to the fact that some basic knowledge was missing. I'm sorry if you don't feel that way but it is true. Interactive objects and pausing, knowing the ins and outs of the Timeline is the core of Captivate. You need to take time to learn new software. It is more important to learn in a proper way, which means start with basics before you try manipulating advanced actions. Same with system variables: you can pause the playhead with cpCmndPause, but that will only have effect on audio that is indeed linked to that playhead, which gets us back to the understanding of the timeline. Slide audio is on the timeline, Play Audio command is not linked with audio on the timeline. That unnecessary long slide told me immediately that this basic understand for some reason was lacking. For me as a teacher it has no sense to offer you just a recipe to solve this use case, if you don't learn from it, if you cannot understand what I was doing.

I will not bother you again, be sure. But try to learn about the timeline importance, please.

Report · Dec 23, 2015

We were not insulting you, and sorry if you read it that way - we just felt that your tone and approach to someone who is geniunely keen to learn was not particularly convivial. But if that's your approach to teaching, that's fine. We needed a fairly quick solution and hoped the forum would provide it. We were not expecting you to wave a magic wand or spend vast amounts of time helping us, we never expected that.

We are learning all the time, and what you have pointed out will add to our knowledge. Thank you.