Corrupted File?

Report · Sep 08, 2006

A really big file that I've been working on (And that I've spent a week-ish on) refuses to open. Someone might want to help me out as to why it won't open? My boss says that the file might be corrupted.

Does anyone have any input? All feedback is appreciated.

~stargirl

Report · Sep 10, 2006

Hi stargirl,
Yes, it could be a corrupted object on one of the slides in your project. Or - because you said it is a " really big file" - it could be that you have done the impossible - created a stone so large that even you cannot lift it.

I'm not making light of your problem . . . in fact it is very possible that you have created a file too large for your current development machine to open. You might try opening it on a more macho PC if you have one with Captivate installed.

The most obvious suggestion is probably too late already: That is to use "Save As" on a regular basis when working with large files and keep multiple dated copies of your work available so that you never lose it all in the event of a crash - or a refusal to open . . .

Sorry for your problem . . .
.

Report · Sep 11, 2006

Hello stargirl62651,

When you try opening this, what sort of error do you receive? Also when attempting to close the Start page, are you prompted to save your project fie? If so, then this is normally a clear indication that the project as become corrupted.

One way that I have found to be very effective to test whether the file is indeed corrupted is to create a new blank Captivate file and then try importing the slide from original project, if Captivate cannot import the slides or crashes half way through then you know that there is a problem

However, you might also find that you can import some of the slides before and or after the slide that is causing you the problem.

HTH

Regards,
Mark

quote:

My boss says that the file might be corrupted.

.

Report · Nov 16, 2006

I have had this problem repeatedly - files corrupting in the middle of a project. Becoming slow to open a text caption box or taking to long to save is usually my first indicator that the file has gone corrupt - but then it's too late. Look at the file size compared to others that you know aren't corrupted. I've noticed the file size of my corrupted ones to be 4 times the size of a non corrupt file! - another indicator it's corrupt.

After many rewrites due to corrupt files, the only solution that saves me having to rewrite the whole thing is to save incrementally as Larry points out above. It doesn't fix the corrupt - just saves you time when you inevitably have to redo the whole thing.

And No, I don't save to a LAN - I save to the hard drive and then transfer over to the LAN. But I have had corrupt files both ways - saving to the hard drive and saving to the LAN directly. It gets corrupted either way.

I've tried opening the corrupt file and not knowing which slide is corrupt, I started eliminating 5 slides at a time and resaving. The file size was still huge with only 3 slides left in the file!

Report · Nov 16, 2006

Using Captivate 1 (we will be upgrading to Captivate 2 within the month), I have had a few corruption problems. Saving to my HD instead of directly to the LAN has solved the problem so far, although as creative99999 says, problems may pop up anyway.

I do know that with Captivate 1 it is best to keep your slide numbers to under 65. For larger movies, I have created what I call "mini movies", exporting to SWF, then inserting into a slide as an animation. So, in the end, I technically have over 125 slides, but it ends up just being under 65 with the mini movies.

Report · Nov 16, 2006

Thanks Mo for the info on the 65 limit. One of my 42 slide files recently corrupted and I was working from the hard drive. I tried Mark's solution's of starting a blank project and importing the slides 1 by 1 to find out which one was corrupted. I tried this three times before giving up! First time, I tried importing just slide 1 - long, long delay importing, I had to reboot to get out of the end task routine. Tried this with slide 2 and 3 - same thing. I am working from the Cap 2 trial - and will be installing the licensed version soon as well - hopefully this issue is fixed in the licensed version.

I know people come here hoping to find a fix for all that work they did - I know I did at first. I did learn not to save to LAN by coming to this forum - but since I'm still getting corrupt files from a save to the hard drive, it makes me wonder about this application.

I have not isolated what caused the corruption, but I have my eye on importing slides from other files as a possible problem...

Report · Nov 16, 2006

Hello creative99999,

I am really sorry to hear that you are still having problems. I'm not sure if you can get technical support for corrupted files with a trial version, however if you have a licensed version then you could report this as a bug using the Adobe Feature Request and Bug Submission form.

Maybe somebody from technical support could help you out with this issue.

Regards,
Mark

Report · Nov 16, 2006

Thanks Mark for the assistance flag - very generous.
Here's a little more info that may help others try to solve the problem.
The corrupt file (File8) had slides imported from File7 (not corrupt as we speak). File7 size is 7540KB with 37 slides. File8 (the corrupted file) was 26,624KB with 42 slides. Way out of proportion.

I tried your suggestion - Start a blank File9.
Import slides from File8 - no good, this is when the import window got stuck and I had to reboot 3 times. So I deleted File8 and File9. Start over.

Open a new blank - name it File9.
I import this time from File7 which has some of the slides I want (mind you File7 is not corrupt and is a reasonable file size).
This time, captivate2 imports the 1 slide I want - no hanging up while importing. I save and check the file size of my new File9 - 6793 KB! for one slide! This slide only has one graphic, 2 highlight boxes and a text caption box. It runs 12 seconds. It is not a huge slide.

So then, I delete File9 again. I start a new File9 and I import a different slide from File7 (remember File 7 is not corrupt - it was File8 that was corrupt and its been deleted) and the same thing happens - 1 slide imported - hugh file size.

So now, I begin to wonder what's in File7 that corrupted my File8 and anything new I build by importing from it. It's not just one slide - but possibly all of them or some arrangement of them, or something about that file.

I don't have time to wait - the project has to be completed by tomorrow so I'm just going to redo it. So why am I spending time writing here? I hope this will lead to some resolution about why Cap files corrupt. I know what it feels like to have to redo tons of work - it's not pretty and a waste of everyone's time. I'd like to find the answer.

Report · Nov 16, 2006

The emphasis in the later contributions to this thread (good thread, BTW) has been on "corrupt files" or "corrupt slides" but I would point out once again, as I stated earlier, the chances of a corrupt file or slide are really not that great in my experience.

It is much more likely that the corruption is in a single object in that file. Why is that an important distinction? Because it is more likely that a single object might be brought into a new project from an existing project, than that entire slides and/or entire projects might be imported (IMHO). And yes, I suppose it is possible that the very act of copying and pasting (Windows clipboard actions) might be the culprit.

Which leads to my second observation. If you suspect that the copy - paste operation might be contributing to the problem, check what device you are using for those operations. Lots of people swear by Clip-Mate and similar improvements on the old Windows clipboard. If you are using Windows clipboard, it might be a worthwhile idea to try switching to one of the 3rd party utilities instead - or vice versa.

In those (very few) cases where I have been able to isolate the cause of corruption (or think I had), it has more often been an "object" than the slide itself - said object-related damage makes the file just as "lost", but perhaps more easily traceable ... especially if you are copying items from a "library", and especially if you are working with Captivate verson 1.

Have a good one! And "creative-buncha 9s", I pulling for you. I fight deadlines myself and it can be a hair pulling experience.
.

Report · Nov 20, 2006

Larry,
It could be as you say, an object in the corrupt file is what's causing the whole file to be corrupt. I just don't know. The problem as I stated above was I could not detect which slide has the corrupt object. Or possibly there was more than one corrupt object in the file. I tried bringing over one slide at a time - after three tries and no success, I was not about to go through each of the other 39 slides to attempt to locate the corrupt object. So if you have a better suggestion on how to "locate" the corrupt object in the corrupt file, please post how to sleuth this out. I'm sure if we could see the code put together by captivate to produce the file, we may be able to sleuth it out better. Can that be looked at in a txt editor?
I will keep a watch out for copy/paste as a possible culprit as well.
Thanks.
Lynne

Report · Nov 22, 2006

Just had the same issue come up with one of the guys working on our traning modules.

He had been saving to his desktop while working today, and when he finished up this afternoon, he did a Save As to the network folder on the LAN. When he hit save, a message came up telling him he did not have write permissions to the folder (which he does) so he exited out of the error. At this point, he noticed that the file had apparently saved to the LAN folder anyway.

I went in to check it, and it gave me the following error:

"Adobe Captivate could not open the file because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged."

So I had him reboot the computer, and we tried accessing it again, same error. At this point, he went to go back to the most recent save he had on the desktop . . . and it was gone. The file that had been on his desktop prior to doing a Save As to the LAN folder was simply gone. Not in the recycle bin, not in his documents. . . it showed up in his Recent Documents, but when we tried to open it from there, it could not find it.

So now his previous file has gone AWOL, the new one is corrupted and locked up, and we lost a days worth of work. *sigh*

Report · Nov 22, 2006

Hi emjohnson

One thing you might try is to dig through the Windows Recycle Bin and see if the file is inside.

I'm sure this was learned the very hard way here, but I still feel I should point out that the thing everyone needs to avoid is using Captivate on the local PC and doing anything "network related" with the Captivate source file. And as you have seen, clicking File > Save As uses Captivate to save the file on the LAN. Not good. The more appropriate way is to close Captivate so it's not even touching the file. THEN open Windows Explorer and COPY that file to the LAN for backup purposes.

Hope you are able to find it in the recycle bin. I really do. I'm guessing that you probably still have a decent and working .SWF or .EXE file, right? If so, wouldn't it be nice if you were able to take that Captivate created .SWF or .EXE and ohhh, I dunno, maybe feed it into some sort of a decompiler that would give you back an editable .CP file? If you (and anyone else reading this) feels this would be a useful tool to have, I would strongly encourage you to tell the developers about it by clicking here and filling out the WishForm. Once they hear from enough folks, maybe we will finally see something like that.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Nov 27, 2006

Dear EM:
Sorry for your loss.

Report · Nov 27, 2006

Nope, nothing. It's like the file just dissappeared off his C: drive. The only thing I can think is that when he did the Save As onto the LAN drive, it glitched somehow and actually tried to move the file from his C: drive to the LAN drive, and in the process corrupted the file.

Oh well, chalk it up to a learning experience 🙂

Report · Dec 07, 2006

Have a repeated related issue - saving new projects.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=67&catid=464&threadid=1221132&e...

Although new to Captivate2, in my opinon, 67 slides isn't a large number and neither is 7 or 26MB.. If this product is to be considered ready for serious usage then I'd expect it to be able to actually have resilient save and load functionality!

What I'm attempting todo is to provide product demonstrations from our product BUs to our global sales force so that we don't need to maintain a demonstration hardware platform and all the chaos in coordinating demonstration slots to the regional customers.

Therefore it's not a "learning experience" - it's actually a fundamental product flaw.

Although the product has received considerable interest from people, I can't recommend it in it's current state.

Report · Dec 08, 2006

Hi Nick,
I have to agree with you - I see it as a great limitation to what Cap2 can be and it will definitely influence my next product for development. I absolutely love Adobe Photoshop, but Cap1 and Cap2 have left me wanting a product with the same devotion PS gets at Adobe. I posted on your linked forum additional comments. Can't wait to hear what you find out.
Lynne

Report · Dec 08, 2006

Hi Nick

I'm confused. (Seems to be my normal state) Are you saying Captivate has a serious "Product flaw" because it doesn't work well with editing the project while it is in a network location? Are you saying we are wrong for suggesting that folks work off their local PC?

Your statement: What I'm attempting todo is to provide product demonstrations from our product BUs to our global sales force so that we don't need to maintain a demonstration hardware platform and all the chaos in coordinating demonstration slots to the regional customers. seems to imply that you think we are also saying the output files you produce using Captivate shouldn't be on a network as well. But that doesn't apply there. You may place the output files anywhere you like.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Dec 08, 2006

Captiv8r - my opinon is that the flaw is that the product can't store, retrieve and edit properly.

In order to do a demonstration I have to schedule engineering (server resources, engineering support), fit in for marketing reviews and then deliver to the sales force in time for meetings scheduled with customers (some that fly for example). Now apply that to the entire sales force (EMEA, MENA, AsiaPac, SA, NA) and I hope it's apparent why if the product corrupts a recording; why it's a serious issue.

No network is being used for recording or playback. Recording is on the local laptop hard disc, published executable is stored on the laptop doing the presentation. We can't guarantee anything other than the salesperson's laptop and a perhaps a projector/screen, hence it has to be super simple and completely standalone.

Report · Dec 27, 2006

I've also tried creating large files and it ended up crashing a few times after working on the file for a couple of hours. I learned my lesson after that and started saving after every new slide. This seemed to help. Now, when I try to edit my 128M, 403 slide project, the editing is extremely slow because everytime I click on something, it takes 30sec to do it and it hogs the cpu at 100% making the whole system unresponsive. Adobe needs to make this product more robust and fix it so it can handle larger files.

Report · Jan 17, 2007

I would concur with some of the above comment regarding the reliability and stability of the Captivate 2 product in comparison with most of the other Adobe and old Macromedia product range. I have been using Captivate and its predecessor Robodemo for many years now and have been successfully developing eLearning. I also use Authorware, flash, dreamweaver, fireworks, photoshop, premiere etc. Captivate fits nicely with the rest of the product range, but I have not seen any of the others exibit so many fundamental and worrying problems.

I am currently experiencing this corrupt file problem. I am running a big project, basic interactive eLearning with audio about 180 slides. Captivate hangs regularily, grows in file size which it cannot seem to reduce itself (C1 did this also) I cannot successfully paste into a blank empty file as I receive an error message saying I do not have permissions to save - and no it is not on my network drive, the fact that it cannot work from a network drive implies home use rather than corporate use and unlike any other Adobe product, import into a blank and captivate hangs, I have notes being replaced when duplicating slides, try to work around by splitting the files but when the jump to another captivate file cannot be to a specific slide, so if you want the functionality in big projects you cant split the file, and then you run into bugs working with big files, while I have been typing this my captivate window has hung again.

I had many expectations of C2 with resolving some of the flakeyness of C1. C2 has some great new features and I have recommended the upgrade no questions and love the product. I do however find it amazing how the product is still not up to the quality of the others in the Adove product range. Maybe C3!

A note to Larry, I read a lot of what you say (and the other Experts) and you have been very useful to myself and others on this forum. Most of what I have issues with, there has been a good thred with an answer or a workaround. This forum is invaluable to the captivate developer. I didn't expect an answer here or fixes, just looking for a bit more focus on the quality of the s/w released next time and hoping it achieves a place alongside its companions.

Report · Oct 24, 2007

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