Timeline Sync and Timing Issues

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
April 5, 2022
2 replies
1260 views

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.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Paul Wilson CTDP

Community Expert

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.

Paul Wilson, CTDP

B

B_P_HAuthor

Known Participant

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

Wanderer10

Participating Frequently

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.

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.

Lilybiri

Legend

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?

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