Stop Start Multiple/Any Audio Clip.

[Reflektions]

Ive had a look in the forums and can't see any discussions around this on Captivate 9 (I'm using a latest model top spec iMac on which Captivate happens to be extremely buggy).

I have a project with slides that are doing a click and reveal of multiple text captions (e.g. show caption 1, hide caption 2). Captions have audio attached to them.

On the same screen is an introduction caption that stays in place.

I can drop audio onto each caption, with no issues playing it.

I need a mute button that will stop ANY audio currently playing on the slide, then on second click continue to play the same audio from the same place the audio stopped.

I used Stop Triggered Audio to do this in a conditional action IF statement, and Continue in the ELSE statement. This works except when you get to the end of the slide, if you click the button it will continue to the next slide (obviously because Im playing with the timeline functionality here).

A second issue Im having is that Captivate is not finding any variable names when I put the Change State Of action into the conditional action. Hence why I have to groups (one is called MuteBtn1 and the other MuteBtn2 - these aren't really buttons but simulate the states of the button which is invisible and sitting on top). I dont think this is related though as to me this only seems to be for appearances - not functionality - correct me if I'm wrong).

The only way around this I can see is to create a new button and action thats hides/unhides them for every audio on the slide - however this would be tedious.

What I need to be able to do is to continue playing whatever audio is currently playing without moving the timeline passed the pause point and beyond to the next slide.

Can anybody help?

[Lilybiri]

For a weird reason this question is not appearing in the Jive forums (where I have moderator rights) and I have some issues in this portal forum (cannot add media).

This is an interesting question, have some ideas, but find it difficult without posting screenshots. You have a redundant command: you don't need to use Stop Triggered Audio because you already muted all audio.

You could read my article about Pausing the timeline, which is available in this portal. At the end you'll see which type of audio can be stopped by a pausing point:  Pausing Captivate's timeline 

As for the toggle to mute/unmute have to point to my personal blog: One shared action for 5 toggle buttons

Sorry not to offer a complete answer, am too crippled here. Just one more tip: the Advanced Actions dialog box has a Preview button  for conditional actions. Look in the top control panel for the first button (looks like a play button). It makes reading conditional actions much easier, especially if they have multiple decisions.

[TLCMediaDesign]

I do have scripts that do this. I would need to modify it somewhat to have it do exactly what you need.

Standby and I'll re-write and test them.

Is this an HTML5 project? My scripts will NOT work for swf.

The script can also control the button you are talking about.

[Reflektions]

That sounds great TLC. Unfortunately this is not HTML 5. I didnt realise JS would not work with SWF.

[Lilybiri]

OK, finally it got into the Audio/Video forum, which is new. Up till now all questions appeared in the general forum here.

Did you have time to look at the articles?

[Reflektions]

Not yet. I glanced at the timeline article and it looks really informative.  I will read it tonight (I'm in Australia). I have looked at your other article however as I already have actions built to show and hide different elements (which contain audio) I suspect there will be too much advanced action work involved (considering I use different types of actions for different interactions). 

I think a solution which is not very elegant may be to:

1. Use PAUSE and CONTINUE on the IF and ELSE statements.

2.   Pull the timeline out and put (many) multiple pauses after the core interactions.

3. Set the NEXT button to go to the NEXT SLIDE

In this way the timeline (and audio) will pause    after first click, and continu e after second click. The pause points (placed on invisible buttons with no actions) will act as fail-safes should the stop audio be clicked (enacting the continue function) so that it will only continue to the next pause point. The pause points should hopefully outnumber the number of times the user clicks the audio button.

[Lilybiri]

Not a good idea to use multiple pauses, why.?

I listed up what can be paused by the Pause command, and what can be paused by an interactive object like a shape button. Adding multiple pauses doesn't help anything .Try to understand the timeline, maybe you'll have to change the type of audio: audio objects are not affected the same way as audio clips started by 'Play Audio' command.  I tried hard to explain the timeline, but would love to present a webinar about it, or at least host a Q&A session. However, neither users, nor Adobe seems to find that a good idea, which is a pity. Oh well, I will have to focus on bigger applications than Captivate.

[Reflektions]

I think you miss my point? The multiple pauses are there for 1 reason only - to stop the timeline continuing as I am putting continue in the Else statement - this worked for me when I tested it. I have no difficulty stopping the audio, the only issue I have is restarting the audio at the same place it stopped without the timeline continuing. The multiple pause objects solve this issue, albeit not elegantly.

[Lilybiri]

I don't think I miss your point but that you don't understand what I wrote in the many articles about pausing and audio.

Slide audio can be paused at the pausing point of any interactive object by checking the appropriate option:

You can do it with multiple Continue buttons but it is just a lot more work. If you prefer your work flow, go ahead.

Mute will not pause any audio, just mute all audio.

Stop Triggered Audio only stops (not pauses) audio clips that are triggered by the command 'Play Audio', it has no effect on background audio, slide audio, object audio.

With multistates in Captivate 9 I prefer using states instead of switching between two buttons. Moreover, depending on the output, just Show/Hide is not always foolproof. To be safe you should also add Enable/disable.

OK, will not bother you anymore

[Reflektions]

My audio is on text captions. I added a pause to the If statement, and Continue to the Else statement.

I added multiple buttons with curser off, sound off, and no action, with pauses one after the other. In this way the the audio mutes, then continues from the same point it mutes. Unless the learner fanatically switches the audio on and off, the pause buttons will outnumber the amount of times the slide continues.

I know this isn't ideal, but it is working, and will serve the purposes of this module considering it has already been built.

[Lilybiri]

That is object audio, not slide audio. OK, giving up.

[Reflektions]

I did mention I was dropping audio on the captions in my first post. I might have unintentionally expanded on this in the following line however. Despite this I just added audio to the slide and removed it from the caption and it still works the way intended using the method above.