Known Participant

Question

Publishing with a trial version

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
August 6, 2012
5 replies
20478 views

I was using the trial version of Captivate 6 for a while, and I'm now seeing published files that won't display - just a black bar in the middle of the screen with a Captivate logo.

Is this because I was publishing from the trial version? I've republished some of the files in the licensed version of V6 that I now have, and they seem to be fine.

Does anybody know what's going on?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Tammy_Moore

Inspiring

I realize that the tact being taken here by Adobe Captivate is merely a publishing of the statement that the "published items coming out of the trial version expires in 30 days" as if it is common knowledge and everyone shoudl have already known this.

I am sorry, but I really believe that this issue needs to be responded to in a different way. The expiration is not a common knowledge issue even by peopple who have used Captivate for many releases. People using the trial had no idea this was in place and people should not feel 'shamed' if they used the trial to create real world use projects whil ethey trialed the software. If you are going to test out software you want to test it out in the real use case not just some fun little sandbox outside of a real workflow. We are too busy to have time to play in the sandbox here. Change this crazy idea to cripple the output and not tell your customers. If you are going to cripple it is your responsibility to inform those that are trying the product.

I realize that text cannot convey emotions and I am not hopping up and down mad - I am too exhausted for that, lol. I am camly stating the obvious that I think everyone here that is being impacted by this sees clearly and Adobe seems to be brushing off. Yes, we realize we are stuck with the hunting down of files, republishing, and re-uploading, and contacting of students or clients and eating the crow of shame that we are in this position, but come on Captivate and 'man up' to do your part and acknowledge this was mishandled. The 30-day cripppling of output should have been stated in the trial version and made clear to users. I think it would help those of us out here that are having to do unexpected emergency clean up and having to face the 'manning up' to the embarrassment with our staff, students, and clients.

A truly commited fan of Captivate that is hoping to see response in kind of loyalty from Adobe staff

S_Ayyappan

Participating Frequently

Hi Tammy,

I’ve followed your participation in the past on our various forums, and value your feedback, and your continued support. I agree, we could have communicated this change in policy better. And I’m sorry this has resulted in so much confusion and rework.

This is being rectified, and our trials download page will now clearly call out that content will expire in 30 days.

If anyone on this thread would like our assistance in extending the validity of your published content for a few more weeks post the trial expiry, please write to Sankaram ( or wish-captivate@macromedia.com<mailto:wish-captivate@macromedia.com>)

That said, this is an important change for us to curb misuse of trial policies and product piracy. Also, as per our EULA, content created using trial products should not be used for commercial purposes.

Regards,

Shameer

Shameer Ayyappan

Sr. Product Manager - Captivate | eLearning Suite | Presenter

http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate

http://facebook.com/adobecaptivate

Adobe Captivate Forum<http://captivate.adobe.com/

Tammy_Moore

Inspiring

I have been thinking about the trials limitations on use in a real world test with students while you are trying out Captivate or the eLEarning Suite. I really think it is important when you are trialing a product to be able to use it in applied settings with real students. Now that I understand the EULA forbids that (admist to not noticing the limitation before - blush), I have a recommendation for others that either don't have the time to make projects that cannot be really used right away, who won't have time to republish once they get the licensed version, or want to test the output with real students: Get a monthly subscription version of the suite. Yes, it will cost about $60 for you to test it out, but you can really use the output and be sure that it is what you want and you can find out how the students (or clients if you are commercial) like it. That is the way I am going to go. I only have a two week window in the near future to try the eLearning Suite and I really don't have time to not be able to use what I make or republish because that window is so tight up against the time for classes to start and i need the output. Otherwise I have to wait until next summer break, 9 months from now when I have plenty of time to explore without requiring a fast turn around of use for what is built. If you are like me, the monthly subscription seems a great way to go while you are checking out the suite features.

Does anyone see any caveats to this plan? I do worry a little about if the suite's Captivate will overwrite my current Captivate (stand alone, licenced monthly subscription) since I have created themes and have plug ins in place in the apllication folder. Does anyone know if those will go away with the suite install or is the suite's Captivate actually a seperate Captivate? Does anyone forsee compllications when one is chosen over the other at the end of the month?

This year is a unique one for me. In past years, the suite purchase was a no brainer. I have to admit to this year feeling a bit more on the fence because of having the Cloud option mixed in. The Cloud has Illustrator (I use this one as much as I use Captivate), Muse, and Edge. plus all of the eLearning Suite goodies I know well. Presenter and the multi-sco packager are the unknown in the suite that I need to learn enough about so that I can be making an informed decision about what best fits my needs. I am hoping to actually get a solid decision made so I am not in limbo between the two options. Captivate and Illustrator are my two must haves. They are my two work horses that are the foundation of most of my projects.

Sankaram

Adobe Employee

Hi,

In Captivate 6 Trail version, published projects will expire in 30 days from the date of Captivate project creation. If you re-publish the same project in licensed version, the expiry will be removed.

If you need anymore clarification you can send me a mail at sankaram@adobe.com

Thanks,

Sankaram.

Lilybiri

Legend

Hi,

This is really an embarassing situation, because it occurred without any warning. Just an example: the 5th of July I did a webinar for Adobe about advanced conditional actions and offered published SWF's, created with the trial version, got a license number only after that webinar. All participants, if they will now look again at the published files, will see the Expired message....

Lieve

J

JudyWiessnerAuthor

Known Participant

Lilybiri, yes, it's embarassing. For those of us who provided content to clients without knowing it would expire, it could cost us our reputation and possible future work. Not to mention the time involved in republishing and redelivering the courseware. In our case, we were only using the trial version because Adobe messed up the purchase of our multiple copies.

No warning. That's the important thing.

Tammy_Moore

Inspiring

We started out testing Captivate in our project this summer with our small staff and we are hitting the same wall. We bought license all the way around for everyone, but with assuming the trial was a full working version and no warning that we would need to republish we are scrambling to back track to figure out what ones need to be republished. One is further ahead in the process than the rest of us and even projects that she has made since getting the full version are showing up as expired. Arggg.

I have had 2 weeks of dawn to midnight, 7 day work week hours to work in enrollments for the upcoming school year, so I haven't even had time to start looking at mine until this evening. I had a massive build intensive during the time of the trial because that was when I would hev the best chunk of time to work on my new materials for this year's classes. I have done a hard drive search and found I have 136 Captivate files. Now I am going to try to figure out what dates I was using the trial version so I can narrrow that number down. I am tired and frustrated that instead of getting a much needed rest this weekend I will be republishing and re-uploading files to the LMS.

I don't have a problem with crippling the output, but with that there needs to be a warning so you will know to track your projects to make it easy to find the ones that need to be republished and you will know not to distribute them. I shared my projects that I built widely including at the Adobe Educator's Forum so I don't even know who downloaded those that may be counting on them working in their classes.

About a week ago, just before all this came to light, I had downloaded the eLEarning Suite with the intention to trail the features in it to see if I may want the full suite license. I hadn't had time yet to install it, but I was hoping to have time after the enrollments butbefore classes started up. I think I will wait because I don't want to risk the trail version from that messing up the output from my fully licensed Captivate 6 copy that isn't a part of the suite. If I activate the suite, wouldn't I end up not having trully working output again because of the expiration setup? I cannot risk making SCORMs for my students that will expire with half of the class having test results and the other half still needing to take it. If I have to republish and reupload, I will lose student data from students that have already taken it. To my mind, crippled output causes more frustration than what Adobe Captivate meant to have in this expiration date design for their trail.

Looks like I will try out the eLearning Suite when school is out next summer instead of the fun I was anticipating in trying it out in the week or two before classes begin.

Tammy_Moore

Inspiring

I am finding that some of my projects that were not created or modified in the trial period but were made after are showing up as expired too. Some of them are based on templates/themes I built during the trial, but the settings are showing that they don't have an expiration date in the project settings. Has anyone figured out what the problem is? I am going through all 136 of my projects to check on them. Someone said they were going to turn their clocks forward in time to test to see if the republish solved the problem. Any news on if that test confirmed that the republish worked? I am hoping to get a confirmation that therepublished ones can be trusted.

R

RobinDR

Participating Frequently

Tammy, some of my courses were created after I had a licensed version and those expired too. It's almost as if Captivate didn't recognize that I'd converted from the trial version to a licensed version. The republish worked fine - those courses now display properly. However, my concern is "for how long?". When I changed my system date and retested, that newly published course still worked.

I sent a sample of my course to an Adobe team member. As soon as I hear back, I will post the reply.

A

airazabal

Participant

Do I understand correctly that if you use the TRIAL version of AC6 - the TRIAL time is timestamped in the published files - so they'll expire?

R

RobinDR

Participating Frequently

I just got off the phone with Adobe Captivate technical support. They are unsure of why this is happening and are going to take a look at my .cp file and see if they can figure out the problem.

When I republish, those courses look fine - but for how long?

J

JudyWiessnerAuthor

Known Participant

RobinDR, are you using a template? I'm wondering if a template created in the trial version, and not re-saved in the licensed version, is carried with the file and it's the template that times out. I've noticed that slides that are part of a template are carried with the file, though not visible - library graphics, for example, will say they are used in a slide that only exists in the template, and has been removed from the presentation.

J

jeanrouge

Inspiring

The Trial version of Captivate 6 has a forced expiration date for publishing that can't be changed (usually a month) so you might want to go back in these captivate projects and chech Preferences -> Start and End and you will probably see an expiration date that has already occurred. You can change the date on your computer and the file will still run but if you delivered it to the public that might not be an option.

I had the same issue and found out the hard way.

I am sorry to say but so far CP6 has been a huge dissapointment. I have purchased a license because I am developing iPad apps for my programs and thus far CP6 has completely crashed on my Mac, (it wont publish at all anymore). The user interaction (insert interaction) widgets take for ever to load and then once loaded fail instantly. (found this out after 12 hours of work on my pc yesterday).

The only reason I purchased CP6 is because Adobe killed the SWF to HTML5 converter they had put online for developers to force people to buy CP6.

It is in my opinion that it is highly unprofessional for a company like Adobe to deliver a software that has more bugs than good things. I will now not be able to meet my customers dead-line and will probably have to restart from the beginning using a different software to develop my apps.

I am the owner of a small company, but I still like to deliver programs and apps that actually do what I say they are supposed to but maybe that is just me.

Good luck to you I hope you don't face the same issues I am facing.

J

JudyWiessnerAuthor

Known Participant

This is infuriating. We have files we've provided to clients that may be timing out, and because of the time that's gone by, we can't be sure which ones. We were only using the trial verson in the first place because Adobe messed up our multiple-license purchase.

A little warning when publishing would have been nice. How hard would it be, when you publish, to flash up a warning that the published files have an expiry date on them?

I have some that I don't seem to be able to fix. I'm wondering if the underlying template has an expiry date on it that you can't see.

Ugh!

Edit: I just went to check the Downloads page, and it seems that Adobe is no longer providing Captivate 6 as a trial download - just Captivate 5.5. Unless it's actually v. 6 and they just haven't updated the page.

R

RobinDR

Participating Frequently

I am having this exact same issue today. I have several Adobe licenses and Adobe Captivate 6.0 is the newest. I have delivered several courses to a client and those courses no longer work as of today! I had the trial of Adobe Captivate 6.0 but purchased the subscription version while in development and published with that version. Apparently, the course did not change that expiry to "None."

I am now on hold with Adobe.

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