Questions about: audio + animated video + closed captions + interactive TOC

[Tim27898261hm38]

I am in over my head. I have a client who wants animated videos that are closed captioned and that have an interactive TOC. This is what I have done so far:

1. Created the audio files from transcripts in Adobe > Audition.

2. Created the animated MP4 files with Adobe > Character Animator (with imported audio files).

3. Created the captions (I guess they have to be "open" captions) with Adobe > Premiere Pro.

4. Last step (not done yet): Interactive TOC. Adobe > Captivate?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is the process in Captivate:

1. Create an empty project, with as many empty slides as there are MP4 segments/topics.

2. Import one MP4 file into each slide. (Captivate converts the MP4 to an FLV file.)

3. Create the interactive TOC in Captivate.

Is that accurate so far?

Can Captivate export the final, complete project back to MP4?

If not, does Adobe have a way for me to do what I need to do?

The final deliverable has to be one single file that can be launched/run from something like a SharePoint site.

Thank you!

[Lilybiri]

FLV is based on SWF technology, there is no reason why Captivate would convert MP4 to FLV. That was only the case many years ago before publishing to HTML5. You can synchronize Closed Captioning with inserted videos, provided you insert them as slide video, not as event video. But Captivate is not a tool to combine videos, you would better use Premiere Pro for that reason. A slide video, unless you use streaming, will need to be loaded on Enter for each slide, which can lead to lot of waiting time.

Interactivity is totally impossible in Passive video (which is MP4), so your request to publish to MP4 will eleminate all interactivity. Closed captioning is part of the playbar, and you'll lose that as well, same as with interactive TOC (which is easy to add in Captivate, but only if you will publish to HTML5).

Sorry if this is not the answer you expected, you seem not to want Captivate to create eLearning courses, which are by definition interactive in my mind. When Flash player was not banned from browsers, it was possible to publish to a single EXE file, but that was in the good old SWF times.

[Tim27898261hm38]

Thanks for the response! Sorry for being outdated (about FLV), I guess I have been watching old Captivate videos and reading old forum comments. 

To recap, is this what I should do?

1. Create audio files in Audition, import them to Character Animator, create animation, and output to MP4.

2. Import individual MP4 files, add the closed captions in Premiere Pro, and export to MP4 H.264.

3. Open Captivate, create a video skeleton with empty slides for containers.

4. Import each separate MP4 H.264 file with CC from PP into each empty slide in Captivate.

5. When all slides in Captivate are populated, create the interactive TOC at that point.

Then what? HTML5 is not a video format. How to I get the published output to my client so it will run like a video from their website?

Thanks again!

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

If you want any interactivity you need to publish to HTML5, and it is like a website. They can upload it to their server, the user only needs to start from the index.html file.

If you publish to HTML5, you can synchronize the CC in Captivate. Don't forget my warning about importing the MP4 as slide video, not as event video. The warning about loading times when entering a slide is still valid. If you activate the TOC, it is interactive if you think about 'interactive' as being able to launch any slide from the TOC. You can even have bookmarking by TOC, which means that when someone leaves the project before the end, she/he will get a question to continue from where they left or not.

Each video imported as slide video can become an interactive video as well. This link will start such an interactive video:

http://www.lilybiri.com/published/PlayPause_Scal/index.html

[Tim27898261hm38]

Thank you so much! I am going to copy and paste your responses locally so I can keep track of the info better.