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Creating an interactive project in A4 vertical format. Is it possible in Captivate?

Community Beginner ,
Nov 04, 2020 Nov 04, 2020

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Please excuse my ignorance, I am new to Captivate. I am one of those dinosaurs who previously worked only in Adobe Indesign converted to SWF or imported to Adobe Flash Pro. As we all know, SWF is on the way out and Adobe Animate doesn't really serve my purposes. I create educational interactive ebooks previously transferring them to my target market via a hard copy edition (exclusively built in InDesign coverted to PDF) and a computer standalone interactive version (exclusively built in InDesign converted to a SWF projector).

I've been learning Captivate for the last month, via Linkedin/Lynda.com, and it serves all my interactive needs, even better than InDesign! However I have one outstanding issue, it's the format of the slides in a Captivate project. Adobe Captivate seems to exclusively work in horizontal formatted slides and not vertical formatted slides. Is there anyway that I can change the slides to a vertical format, preferentially A4 measurements.

At present, although I have developed my project in Captivate, I have not exported it. Does anyone forsee any problems that I might encounter?

Thanks in advance for any advice offered. Regards Gary.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 04, 2020 Nov 04, 2020

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You can set the stage area to be taller than it is wide (within certain limitations).  But Captivate content is always measured in pixels, not A4, A5 or whatever.  This is because it's multimedia content, not print media. Except for mobile phones (which are often in Portrait mode) you will always see Captivate projects configured to be some variation of Landscape mode.

The ideal format for your Captivate project really depends most on what type of device your end users will view it.  So will your users be viewing on desktop PCs or mobile devices?

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 04, 2020 Nov 04, 2020

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Hi Rod, thanks again for the advice you offered on a 2012 thread, on button relationships/ slide pause problems.

I am solely responsible for the desktop interactive format, the front ending. Some other (s), more skilled than me, and unknown to me, deal with conversion issues to mobile devices. The reason that my interactive end product has to be in a vertical format is because it is an exact version of the hard copy, which accompanies the hard copy (a text book) on a CD rom, placed in the inner sleeve of the front cover of the text book. The text books have a classical PPP (presentation practice produce) approach to education, which is a vertical concept to learning. I have no say on methodology, converting the learning approach to a horizontal concept. I work for a traditional Japanese company, which has a rigid traditional approach to learning. 

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Community Expert ,
Nov 04, 2020 Nov 04, 2020

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OK.  I understand your issue better now.

As I mentioned, you can change the height and width settings for the Captivate stage, so you should be able to set it to something that resembles the Aspect Ratio of an A4 page (21:29.7 cm).

You would usually set this when you first create the project file, but you can also change the stage size afterward from the Modify menu > Rescale Project.  If you choose the latter route, be careful about the settings you choose if there are already lots of objects created because rescaling can change text sizes and positioning etc.

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 04, 2020 Nov 04, 2020

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Forgive my ignorance, where would I be able to set the aspect ratio? I assume you mean (1) Create new project. (2) Set 'New Blank Project'.

The ratios given in (2) are in pixels. How do I set them in cms and if not possible, what ratios of pixels conform to something that resemble an A4 format?

Thanks again.

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Community Expert ,
Nov 04, 2020 Nov 04, 2020

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Aspect ratio is simply the height divided by the width (regardless of the type of measurement) expressed as a ratio.  E.g. if the height is 3 and the width is 4 then the aspect ratio is 3:4.

As I said earlier, Captivate's output is digital multimedia and in that world the measurements are usually done in pixels, not millimeters or centimeters.  So there is no option in Captivate to use CMs as measurement.

Since an A4 page is 21 xm wide and 29.7 cm high the ratio is roughly 1:1.5.

I would suggest you try using something like 800 pixels wide by 1200 high.  That would be in the ball park.  I doubt that a few pixels difference won't be all that noticeable if this is truly being seen on a desktop computer because the screen size would be resizable.

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 04, 2020 Nov 04, 2020

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Thanks again Rod, I'll give it try.

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