Can't hear the slide audio on Captivate Assets interaction slide from Quick Start Project

[BTKaren]

(Cp 2019/Win 64 bit) My current project uses some of the built-in Captivate assets templates - horizontal and vertical accordian and the slide show templates. I recorded audio to the slides within Captivate. Audio plays fine in the Cp timeline but not in Preview mode or browser preview. CC does not display on screen either. Also the slide audio on the title slide does not play (which is a problem I've had before). I see this issue has been posted in the past, but I really didn't see an answer that I could try. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you!

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

It helps when you mention the full version number. From the description of the problems I see that you are using one of the versions of 11.5, but not which one. If you are on Windows the most recent version is 11.5.5.553. OS is also important, because Mac users have another most recent version.

Captivate never packaged templates, which are cptl files. You can still find the option File, New Project, Project from Template. But those templates have issues since a couple of versions, would never use them.

You cannot see CC because it is synchronized with the Audio. Since you don't hear any audio, you don't see CC.

From another sentence '... vertical accordion...' I am guessing that you want to use some Ready-to-go slides which you find in the Assets Library in the Quick Start Projects. Sorry for all the terminology but it may help you in the future to search and to get answers. Those slides and projects come without any documentation which I personally regret a lot. None of them has examples of integrated audio, and for that reason there are some flaws in those slides/projects which I have logged multiple times. One of the first blogs I wrote after exploring the projects in order to find answers to questions like yours was this one:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/tips-adding-audio-to-qsp-slides-ready-to-go-slides

I think you will find your answer there. If you want a direct answer, I need to know exactly which slides you used from which Quick Start Project. Probably it is from a project where the On Enter action of the slides is set to Pause. Very bad practice, almost as bad as using that same command On Exit. I will not explain the technical background here, just want to offer a first tip. If this is not clear, please tell me the name of the Quick Start Project, and the number(s) of the slides needing to play Slide Audio.

Last tip: Play Slide is NOT a Preview method at all although (confusing) it is under the Preview button. To see a real Preview a temporary output needs to be created. If your project is responsive, any other Preview method will show HTML5 output. You'll see that it opens in a web browser. However for a non-responsive project (labeled Blank, dumb word, in the Welcome screen), the only Preview method which you need to use is F11, Preview HTML in Browser. The other Preview methods use a temporary SWF output which can be very different and will soon disappear since Flash Player is no longer supported in desktop browsers.

BTW: I have edited the title of the thread as moderator

[BTKaren]

I appreciate your thorough answer! Yes, the problem slide layouts are from the Assets Library's ready-to-go "Diverse" project: Start Course, Vertical Accordion, Horizontal Accordion, Slideshow with Arrows, & Video Layout. All are not playing the audio. In addition there were some problems on other slide layouts with the timing of individual items not functioning as expected after audio was added. I'll review your blog post right now. 

[Lilybiri]

One of the worst QSPs to debug when adding audio unless you have at least some experience.

QSP Diverse only exists in non-responsive type of project. 

Start Course: has 'pause' command for On Enter event (slide Properties, Actions tab). Change that to 'No action'. But you need to pause the slide now manually. It has a start button, I suppose (may be me who has edited this slide), if yes go to the Timing Properties and turn on the 'Pause after' functionality. That will insert a pausing point at 1.5secs. No problem for slide audio however. I have another blog which explains how pausing points interact with audio. 

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

The other slides you mention have all an Advanced Action for the On Enter event. That will be more complicated. 

Video Slide with Arrows: the Advanced action has a Pause command which needs to disappear. But you have to pause the slide in a similar way as for the first slide, look at one of the shapes used as button, and reset its pausing point in Timing Properties.

Same for the accordion slides. I feel frustrated... have reported many times that Pause On enter should never be used. 

Problem is the Video slide: there is no interactive object which could pause the slide. I don't know which type of video you use: probably slide video, at least if you want CC synchronised with the video?

Beware: do not replace by Pause On Exit, because that can lead to other problems. It is used on other QSPs, also ignoring the possible issues.

Wished I could edit all the flaws in those projects.. but I am not paid by Adobe to do so.  Feeling ashamed.

[BTKaren]

The default on the Horizontal Accordion is 'Execute Advanced Actions'. Will changing that to ‘No action’ cause a problem?

[Lilybiri]

You missed my second reply which I just posted.

If you replace the Advanced action you will lose all functionality of that slide... sorry. That action is necessary to reset or set the initial states, sometimes more. It is not only on the Horizontal Accordion., also on other slides.

I have been using the design of several QSPs to explore them. When using them for example projects, I just use design elements, but delete all the interactions' setup. 

[BTKaren]

Sorry - I had not refreshed my screen. Yes, I found that when I changed accordian to no action the slide auto-advanced as soon as audio finished. So in the interest of deadlines, I'm avoiding the whole issue by putting my narration on screen as text. Diverse has the issue you mentioned with slide elements set to "3 seconds" rather than "show to end of slide". Which I discovered part way into audio recording and it was a tedious problem to fix! Thank you so much for your help.

[Lilybiri]

Incomprehensible. When I coach a basic Captivate training, I always set the default time for objectts to 'Rest of Slide' in Preferences, because that is much more used than the default fixed time of 3 seconds. 

You should have asked, because there is an easier way to propagate that timing setting using the Hamburger menu and apply to...

It is sad that you need to avoid audio, because audio is much more important for the majority of learners than written text. I don't understand why none of the QSP has placeholder audio because that would have avoided all the issues I described in that first blog.

If you have more issues with those asset slides, here are two blogs with workflows I wrote out more recently:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/editing-ready-to-go-slides-quick-start-projects-part-1-text-and-images

http://blog.lilybiri.com/editing-ready-to-go-slides-quick-start-projects-part-2-interactions

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[BTKaren]

At least I have audio on all slides other than these 5 problem ones. One thought I considered was visually duplicating the interaction slide and adding the audio to that, then auto-advancing to the real interaction slide so the learner might not realize they had gone from one slide to another.

[Lilybiri]

I have explained what you have to do exactly for those 5 problem slides, and it is really not that much work. But apparently you didn't try at all. Only the Video slide could be a problem, reason why I asked which type of video you used (event or slide) and if the audio was synchronized in the video. 

It is up to you...

[BTKaren]

No, I have not tried anything yet other than to fix the Start Course slide. I am waiting until I receive all of the reviewer edits tody, and will work on it tomorrow.