Glitches in videos in published Captivate file

[tippareth]

I have created a Captivate file that has several videos timed across several slides (only one video per slide). I have followed Lilibiri's advice and run the videos through Media Encoder before inserting into the Captivate project. I've also put a first slide in with no video. 

Extremely annoyingly the published video file cuts off the very end of each video in the published file. It means you can't understand the last couple of seconds of what the person is saying so has to be sorted for me to be able to deliver the project.

Does anyone have any ideas why it's doing this and what I can do to fix it? The idea is the videos flow from one to the other so I don't want to create a pause in between each one. The whole project needs to be no more than 15 minutes long and at present it is 14 mins 59 secs so I only have 1 sec to play with!

Thanks very much

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

I know this can be an issue with video coming from Vimeo or YouTube but if you are encoding your own videos it should be fine. I'm not sure what advice the other person gave for video settings but check out this video I made some time ago about this topic: https://youtu.be/1j43vcFZNX0

Remember that network conditions will affect this so even with the "ideal" settings you may still run into issues.

[tippareth]

Hi Paul,

Thanks very much for your reply. Lilibiri suggested running the videos I was adding to Captivate through Media Encoder and to have a slide at the beginning with no video and audio. That helped with the previous problems I was having.

The project is pretty good, but I'm using video timing across slides and in one place part of the video is being repeated (a phrase) between the end of one slide and the beginning of another and in every instance where each section of video ends the last second or so disappears and is completely cut off on the final slide of that section, which is extremely annoying. 

I have tried extending the length of the final slide for each video section by a second but that makes no odds!

I have checked out your video which is very useful, so thank you for that. Not sure that it will make much odds though. I'm not viewing the video over the Internet so the problem is occurring on my computer, implying there isn't an issue of bandwidth.

If anyone else has a suggestion that would be good. Otherwise I'm going to have to get in touch with Adobe.

Thanks,

Susannah

[Lilybiri]

Video Demo was released with Captivate version 6, not 5 if my memory is correct but that is not relevant. It was meant both as a clone of Camtasia and to make it easier to integrate video capture in a Captivate file. There were some minor improvements, not much. Camtasia has moved on more and it remains an excellent choice if you only create passive video, better than Video Demo.

However I do use Video Demo more than Camtasia (which I have in my toolbox) because most of my projects require integration of those videos in an interactive cptx-file. I remember the cumbersome workflow of integrating Camtasia output in Captivate before Video Demo.  It is much easier to record a Video Demo slide, which will remain completely editable in a cptx project. I even replace all FMR slides in a software simulation by a short Video Demo slide because of its better quality.  For really long videos like mimicked webinars I will use Adobe Connect and edit with Premiere Pro. 

So, your goal will define whether you choose for Camtasia or for Video Demo. 

My personal dream for Video Demo is that to be able to use GPU instead of CPU to avoid the problems you have even with a capable laptop which has without any doubt a powerful Graphics Card. That is not possible at this moment and explains the issues you have.

As for your present issue: is it not possible to add a timed still image at the start and end of the video? It is always the same problem, similar to audio: the loading On Enter is not complete, while the timer is already starting to count.  The ideal solution for long videos is streaming, but that means setting up or paying for a stream server.

[tippareth]

Thanks Lilibiri,

I am creating a presentation that will be given at a symposium. The video is of me talking to the content of each slide and I recorded myself through Zoom which created an mp4 that on your excellent advice I took through MediaEncoder. So it should just be a straightforward mp4 video with no reason for it to have any problems, unless there is something that I'm not understanding? 

I'm viewing it on a MacBook Pro.

Your advice is relevant for software training that I do also produce from time to time in Captivate so thanks for that!

Thanks again for all your help!

Susannah

[Lilybiri]

The basic reason is that this video is very heavy.  Each separate video clip needs to be loaded On Enter for a slide. If you distribute a video over multiple slides, instead of having individual video clips per slide, the whole video needs to be loaded on the first slide of the sequence. Your video is embedded. For audio clips this can be rather easily be fixed by leaving a gap before and after the audio timeline (for slide video) or by inserting some dirty noise at the start and the end of the audio clips when played in another way.

For Video something similar should be done. That explains my suggestion to add a still image at the start/end of the slide or in the video. It would allow some more time for loading. It will indeed mean that your 'smooth' workflow seems to be disturbed, but you can be creative with those stills. Think about a short summary of what has been viewed, or some reflections, repeated images...

The reason I recommended not to have a video on the first slide, was that there is already so much to load for the whole project, avoid adding heavy audio or video clips to that workload.