Text To Speech (TTS) crashes captivate 5

[pcapademic]

Using Captivate 5 on Windows 7, launched in Administrator Mode, all of that.

Yesterday (Dec 2), everything was fine. Today, when I try to use Text-To-Speech with the Simon voice, captivate crashes.

I'm going to try to uninstall and then reinstall the voices. Anyone else have and then solve this problem?

[pcapademic]

Uninstalling and reinstalling voices didn't help.

I will try to revert back to a system restore point from when the system was working properly. The only change was that Definition Update for Windows Defender - KB915597 (Definition 1.95.1100.0) was installed this morning.

[vishhere]

Hello There,

Can you delete the preferences and check? You can find the preferences at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\Captivate 5

Thanks,

Vish

[pcapademic]

Which file is the preferences file?

[pcapademic]

Over the weekend, I uninstalled Captivate 5 and Captivate 4. Then I reinstalled Captivate 5. Things seem to be working again.

If I am unfortunately enough to have a next time, I will try removing the preferences, first.

[pcapademic]

Well, the problem is back. I called customer support, and after about an hour or so, the tech escalated the problem. Waiting to hear back.

Some things we tried that did not work:

Removing the directories:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Adobe\Captivate 5

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Adobe\HeadlessCaptivate 5

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Captivate

[pcapademic]

Great. Now the Kate voice (NeoSpeech) is crashing Captivate. @#$%&*

[RodWard]

Have you tried updating your audio card drivers and installing the latest version of Java?

Some other Cp5 issues have been solved by updating drivers and Java.

Worth a try.

[pcapademic]

Good advice in general. I'm at the latest Java, and I keep Windows Update with the drivers checkbox going, so I hope I have the latest drivers. Digging through the Dell site for drivers can be a pain, but it I had some confidence it would solve the problem, I would do it. Of course, I'm not really using the sound card when I generate the speech audio, am I?

[RodWard]

Even if you weren't using it to generate the TTS speech, you're certainly using it to play it back.

The other possibility is that this is related to CODECs. Maybe you should also be addressing the issue to the TTS software supplier.  They may have already seen the issue and found a fix.

[pcapademic]

Thank you again for your reply.

I have several concerns with your advice, although I welcome addition information that would help me resolve the problem.

The problem occurs at time of generation rather than playback. If the problem were at playback, I would have already looked into the rabbit hole of audio drivers. Up until this point, the system has been stable, and I fret a bit about updating system software, because it has a tendency to destablize things.

CODECs are a much tricker issue, and I am not sure how one would go about addressing a CODEC issue. I haven't installed any additional CODECs on this system, and I would hope that Adobe would be testing with the stock Windows 7 / Captivate 5 set of installed CODECs.  If Adobe Support or a forum member could say, "I solved this problem by installing this CODEC from this well known URL," I would be quite happy to give it a try.

Likewise, with the TTS software supplier, I have no business relationship with them. The only TTS software installed are the customized TTS software versions installed with Captivate 5. Who would I call?  If someone from Adobe Support said, "We've seen this issue, and we are awaiting a hotfix from our vendor," I would muddle on as best as I could until the hotfix was released.

Like I said, I am willing to try pretty much any solution. Do you have any experience with the the crash I am having that was solved by installing a new CODEC? Likewise, are you aware of reports similar to mine that were solved with a TTS software patch from Adobe? The Customer Support person I dealt with did hint at a TTS patch, but he could not give me any URL where I could obtain the fix.

[Guest]

Here i kind of suspect the audio drivers. I can see you mention that the audio drivers are upto date but you may please recheck that once.

If the audio drivers are upto date and you still see the problem then can you try uninstalling captivate. After uninstalling go to the installed folder and if a folder "Adobe Captivate 5" exists delete it. Then go to the preferences folder and delete the contents.

Now install captivate and then install the speech agents. This way its a fresh install and things should become fine.

Sorry for suggesting you to uninstall and re-install.

Please try it out and let me know.

Thanks,

Ashwin Bharghav B

Adobe Captivate Team

[pcapademic]

Thank you for the suggestion about updating drivers and reinstalling Captivate 5.

Actually, uninstalling and reinstalling Captivate 5 was my second effort (after trying to reinstall the TTS software from the Adobe Captivate 5 install CD). It took about a day (8 hours) to remove Captivate 5 and Captivate 4 (which had been left installed by the Captivate 5 installer) and then install Captivate 5 again. This worked for about a day, but it seems to have hosed my Adobe Acrobat Professional and Adobe AIR installations. So now, after an uninstall and reinstall, I am actually worse off than when I first had the TTS problem.

With regards to audio drivers, if someone knows how the drivers are being used in the TTS audio creation (rather than just playback or straight up microphone recording), I would be willing to try it. I am a bit concerned about breaking other things by installing new system software, especially when a simple uninstall/reinstall broke several other Adobe products.

[Guest]

Have a look at this thread. http://forums.adobe.com/message/3079000#3079000

Since it was working for you and then suddenly stopped working i suspected the install of the latest system update the reason for this issue. Not sure though.

-Ashwin Bharghav B

Adobe Captivate Team

[pcapademic]

Thanks for the link to the other discussion thread. The problem seems to be very similar. I did not, however, see a resolution to the problem listed in the other thread.

I, too, suspect a system update introduced incompatibility. I am hoping that Adobe has some kind of patch to address the problem, even if they get the patch from their TTS vendor.

I would just reinstall the voices again, but the last time I tried that, I lost all of the voices. Very problematic.

[vishhere]

Hello There,

Can we do a connect session to understand the problem and investigate further? Please mail me at viswanat@adobe.com

Thanks,

Vish

[pcapademic]

Hello Vish,

After my initial attempts at troubleshooting and at using the Forum didn't work, I did open a support case. Thank you for your offer.

[vishhere]

Hello There,

If the issue doesn't get resolved, then please mail me and will investigate it further.

Thanks,

Vish

[pcapademic]

I solved an Adobe AIR update problem (at the suggestion of a helpful forum member) by deleting a bunch of registry entries. I am wondering if this problem might be similarly solved.

I tried searching for Loquendo related registry entries, but I didn't find any. Any ideas what I might be able to clean out?

[pcapademic]

The recent patch to 5.0.1.624:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/881/cpsid_88142.html

Seems to have fixed the problem.