Smallest file size?

[Guest]

I've just upgraded to version 4 from 2 & have discovered the new publishing options. I'm making fairly simple presentations from Powerpoint slides--just visuals with an audio narration (no quizzes, clickable or other fancy stuff). I intend to post these presentations for students to access from within BlackBoard, and also on my personal website. What is the best format for these purposes--i.e., the smallest file size, the quickest download time, the most universal for students?  Thanks!

[Erik_Lord]

The first option, "Flash (SWF)" is surely the best (and only) applicable option for this delivery.

For Blackboard, or any other LMS, delivery you likely want to make use of the SCORM features to track the results.

If you don't care to have any tracking (as to whether students completed the lesson, can bookmark their progress, etc), then SCORM probably isn't something to worry about...as long as you can upload non-SCORM material to Blackboard (pretty sure you can).

If you do want tracking then need to explore and read-up on the SCORM options. Essentially, you need to have some sort of 'tracked interaction', whether it's a quiz slide or just a simple button the users click, so Captivate knows to include the various SCORM files (imsmanifest, etc) during publishing.

As to other option, you can set audio quality - the lesser the quality, the faster the download. Those and other related options are found when you click the Preferences button in the publishing dialog, then choose the Project > SWF Size and Quality option....as well as clicking the 'Audio Quality' specifics in that publishing dialog.

My projects are generally FM Quality, 22.050KHz for audio and Custom SWF settings at 24bit for BMP and 80% for JPEG.

Definitely ensure your lessons have a preloader as well to enable a delayed but smoother start.

HTH

Erik