Timeline Sync and Timing Issues

[B_P_H]

Hello,

Captivate 2019, Build 11.5.5.553.

I have been fighting this issue for hours - literally. I have a slide with 81 seconds of audio and two pauses (Click to continue). As you move along the timeline, the synchronization between the audio and the slide objects gets further and further out of sync. I've seen this before but not to this extent.

I had to add a 2.5 second gap to prevent the audio from continuing at the second pause and then after that, I had to shift objects to the left to ensure they appear at the right time in sync with the audio. I had to make these adjustments after publishing because it is even worse on the LMS, so I'm basically guessing where to drag the start of each object. 

As you can see in the two images, after the first pause, I was able to align my timeline objects with the gaps in the audio. Starting with and after the second pause the gap in synchronization increases.

First pause

Second pause

Is this common and are their any solutions? I did get it working and it's published for the next training campaign - it's frustrating that you cannot trust the timeline picture.

[Lilybiri]

Pausing points of interactive objects do not pause slide audio by default. Can you check the Properties panel of those buttons and check the Options tab. Did you check the option to pause slide audio when paused?

More in this blog:

Pausing Timeline and Audio clips - eLearning (adobe.com)

[B_P_H]

Yes the pause points are set to stop slide audio - the pauses work fine.

[Lilybiri]

The loss of synchronisation happens a lot in Captivate. Audio files tend to be very large, and for HTML output they need to be generated on each slide. You already coped with that by leaving a gap at the start. however after each pausing point there can be a delay, especially in such a very long slide. Did you try to keep the audio file size as low as possible with acceptable quality? 

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

Just a suggestion — Why not divide this into three slides and then you wouldn't have to worry about pausing the slide partway through? Create your first slide with just the audio necessary for that slide. Duplicate that slide and add the second clip of audio and the objects you want to appear. Finally, on the third slide, you have the remaining objects and audio. Slides are cheap. I sometimes use many slides in place of what appears like a single slide to the learner. It can also be helpful if you are concerned about 508 compliance as well.

[B_P_H]

Paul,

I thought about that after spendind far too much time on this issue. I need to practice what I preach - I often provide that exact feedback to my IDs to split up slides. That said - is this a common problem with Captivate?

Thank you as always for your guidance.

Ben

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

Judging by the screenshots of your timeline there is a lot going on on this slide. I don't know if it's a problem with Captivate per se but I know that my strategy of keeping slides relatively simple or distributing content across many slides rather than just one seems to help me avoid some of these types of issues. Best of luck.

[B_P_H]

I marked this as the correct answer. I've seen this issue before and do think it's a Captivate issue; nevertheless, the best solution is to keep slides short as possible.

[Wanderer10]

I ran into this same issue and I think I found a fix. In trying to troubleshoot where the issue was occurring I added a text caption to the slide, set it to display for the entire slide, and added text in the text caption for it to show the current frame number by inserting $$cpInfoCurrentFrame$$. After doing that, the audio stopping falling out of sync. I think by Captivate having to change the display at every frame it kept the audio and slide frames in sync. Since I didn't want the frame number to appear onscreen for learners I moved the text field behind another element on the sldie so that it wasn't visible and the audio and slide content still remained in sync. I hope this "fix" works for others. I'm using Adobe Captivate 11.8.0.710 on a Mac.