(Possible Bug) Captivate "Video Widget"

[Nicholette_Liguori-El8998]

I'm encountering an issue with the Captivate Video Widget that is causing crashes in Chrome and Edge but seems to work fine in Firefox. Here's a step-by-step breakdown of our process and the issue:

1. Process Overview:

   • Our Instructional Systems Designers (ISDs) use Captivate to build lessons.
   • Once the lesson is built, the ISD publishes the lesson.
   • The published files are then merged with custom CSS/JS ("Kit files") that modify the lesson based on customer requirements. These modifications include additional functionality and visual changes to meet the customer’s style guide.
   • We refer to our custom css/js as “The Kit”.

2. Video Widget Integration:

   • For example, let’s say we have a video on Slide 5 of the lesson. The ISD uses the built-in Video Widget and updates the source of the video as needed.
   • When previewing Slide 5 directly in Captivate, the video plays automatically, but the Video Widget does not offer standard options that you’d find in an HTML5 <video> element, such as controls, autoplay, fullscreen, etc.
   • Our customer requires these options, so our Kit listens to Captivate’s “Slide Enter” event. When a video is detected, we modify the HTML5 <video> element using JavaScript to enable features like controls and fullscreen.

3. Issue Details:

   • This is where things start to break down. In Chrome and Edge, enabling the scrubber in the <video> element doesn’t work at all. The scrubber is unresponsive, and attempting to scrub through the video causes the browser to crash.
   • Interestingly, this issue does not appear in Firefox, where the scrubber works as expected, and no crashes occur.

4. Testing and Findings:

   • To ensure this wasn’t a problem with our Kit or video sources, I created a basic index.html file on my desktop. I added a simple HTML5 <video> element with the same video files used in the Captivate lesson.
   • This basic file works without issue in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox — no crashes and the scrubber functions correctly.
   • The only thing our Kit’s JavaScript does is add the "controls" attribute to the <video> element — there are no other changes, and there are no problems with this simple test.

5. Speculation and Conclusion:

   • The fact that the Captivate Video Widget doesn’t allow control customization by default, and that the video autoplays without controls when previewed directly in Captivate, makes me think that Captivate might already be aware of this issue and could be working on updates to the video player.
   • However, if this isn’t the case, I’d like to submit this as an in-depth bug report for further investigation.

Has anyone else encountered similar issues with the Captivate Video Widget in Chrome or Edge? Any suggestions on how to resolve this? Or perhaps confirmation that this is a known bug within Captivate?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Nicholette_Liguori-El8998]

I can't seem to edit my post, but we tested this in Captivate versions 12.3 and 12.4