Publishing Issues from Webserver

[tome10125604]

Hi,

I produce CBT content (a mixture or Captivate v9.0 recordings and imported PowerPoint) and send that to a third party to publish via a web server.

We successfully published a lot of content but have recently had issues publishing the latest content and we cannot diagnose why.

It is the PowerPoint element that does not publish correctly. We are using PowerPoint 2013.

Attached are screenshots of the publication error and below is an explanation from the third party as to the platform the files are published to.

Thanks in advance for your support.

Tom

Our platform receives the full .zip
file HTML5-based export from Captivate and extracts it to a folder location
that is tied to a specific training item in the portal. When a user requests
that training item, we serve up an iFrame that points to the “index.html” file
within the extracted folder, and from there the full experience (play/pause,
controls, content) is handled by the Captivate export itself.

This is all deployed onto Windows
Server 2012, configured for .NET application deployments. We have tried Adobe
Flash exports in the past, but browser inconsistencies meant that the HTML5
export was the preferred mechanism. We have also previously researched the
SCORM requirements as the third possible export option, but licencing
requirements on the server again left HTML5 as the preference.

The training portal is also capable
of serving video files alongside the training files themselves, which has been
used to compliment the training content but could in some circumstances replace
the Captivate export entirely if needed.

The portal itself is hosted within
Umbraco CMS, but this isn’t a factor in the Captivate side of things – it is
there to make the editing/uploading of content easy for editors and to manage
the membership aspects of the portal.

[RodWard]

Your screenshots indicate that you are still publishing to both SWF as well as HTML5.  In that instance the SCORM manifest file will first point to the multiscreen.html file which is a 'sniffer' file intended to detect which of the two outputs should be delivered to the end user.  Although you may be wanting HTML5 to be that output, for desktop systems the sniffer will think they should get SWF.

So I suggest that you STOP publishing to dual output and just select HTML5 only as the output.  Then your SCORM manifest will point to the index.html file for the HTML5 output only.

The next issue you may run into is that your HTML5 content contains JSON files and some servers are not set up by default to allow that filetype. So you may need to get your web server or LMS reconfigured for that.

[Erik_Lord]

You're not relying on the LMS to make the launch but is your custom system using the imsmanifest file at all?

If so, then Rod's reply above could be spot-on on the Flash aspect.

I'm still unsure how the JSON capabilities of the server affect a CP project, but it sure can't hurt to ensure your Windows server has JSON support enabled.

Otherwise, if your system is definitely launching the index.html file, then it should HTML.

So next question is, how are you embedding the PPTs into CP? A direct import...? And the project plays as expected when previewed?

Or are you loading them as, perhaps, a webObject?

[RodWard]

Eric is correct. My bad.  There is no SCORM imsmanifest.xml file involved in this particular case.  However, what I said above about the multiscreen.html file probably redirecting to the wrong output is still likely, unless you are launching the output directly from the index.html file, which then does launch the HTML5 output, not SWF.

All Captivate versions since late Cp 9 now use JSON files in the HTML5 output to deliver PNG or GIF images.  So if your web server is not set up to allow JSON files, that can prevent the output from playing and cause the endless loading issue.  (The loading GIF itself is not delivered by JSON.)

Your setup is somewhat unusual, involving multiple systems.  So, to first work out whether or not the root cause of this issue is external to the course module, I would suggest you find another web server where you can upload your content and test from there to see if it still misbehaves the same way (with enlarged PPT images etc).  That web server would also need to have JSON files enabled.

[tome10125604]

Hi Rod and Eric,

Thanks for your responses. I will forward them to the person who manages the host platform. We tested the separately published files and we are still experiencing the same publishing issues.

The PP element is directly imported into Captivate. It plays fine when previewed in Captivate 9.0. Would the version of Captivate used for publishing have an impact? We think it was Captivate 10 used to publish the files that were previously published and work fine on the platform, but Captivate 9 used to publish the recent files that are experiencing this error.

Are we able to provide you a zip file that is working as expected and one that is not for you to compare?

Response from Host Platform Manager following recent test:

The SWF one is the same result as this morning. The HTML5 one is as we’ve been experiencing previously – the
player displays and loads content, but the scaling of the PowerPoint portion is
the same, and the player automatically stops after a few seconds of play. It
would be worth checking with Adobe as to whether there were changes between
versions 9 and 10 around this area of the product? They may have release notes
available that could highlight changes to the exporting logic.

Kind Regards

Tom

[edparry]

Hi all, I'm the contact on the host platform in question here. Thanks for your responses so far.

The server is configured for JSON filetypes. We have previously used Captivate HTML5 exports on this server and they continue to work correctly, and the current files that we're having an issue with work fine for the video/screen-capture aspects.

As Tom mentioned above, it'd be useful to understand if there are any differences around the HTML5 export functionality between Captivate 9 and 10, as our historical files appear to have been exported from 10 and appeared to work correctly.

Thanks,

Ed

[RodWard]

Just so that we understand each other, this is NOT Adobe support.  It's just a user forum made up of people that all use Captivate professionally and help each other out when able.

The last couple of updates to Captivate 9 introduced a big change in the way PNG and GIF images were rendered in HTML5 output.  Previously the images were just images, but in the later updates the PNG images in particular were generated from JSON files, hence the need to enable JSON on servers for HTML5 content published after that update.

I'm not aware of any major changes to the way that PowerPoint content in Captivate was rendered in output between Captivate 9 and 10.  But it is important to note that if your PPT slides included custom animation effects, then those effects were not likely to work as expected once the slides were pulled into Captivate.  In older SWF output the PPT animations were converted to animated SWFs.  But in HTML5 output the animations were likely to just end up as static PNG images (in my experience). 

Due to these issues you won't find too many experienced users here that prefer to use PPT import.  In fact we generally discourage new Captivate users from using PowerPoint as a starting point for elearning projects as there are just too many things that can go wrong and your options are limited (especially around animation).  The better way to develop elearning is just to use Captivate's default slides and objects from the ground up.

My gut feeling with your current project issue is that there is either corruption in the project or else we haven't been told everything there is to know about what the original PPT deck contains.  That might explain why this weird scaling issue is occurring.  I've never seen that before as far as I can recall.

[Erik_Lord]

Agreed. I've not seen this before and I would suspect something with the PPT deck. For example, if you edit an image in Photoshop that has perfectly reasonable screen dimensions (i.e. 800x600) but is at 300 DPI (as opposed to 72 or 90), the image is going to render HUGE on a web browser due to that DPI.

I'm not sure if there's something similar in PPT but maybe.

How about making a copy of the project, remove the PPT emeds, and replace with two example screens where you simply copy/paste two slides of content from PPT into those CP slides, publish, and test.

Still huge? Likely something with the PPT content itself.

Not huge? Something funky with the PPT settings (like, maybe it was designed at a Large size but is being viewed at a scaled-down 50% in PPT itself so it's not noticable?

I think you can save PPT as HTML, no? Right from PPT Save-As...? If so, maybe try that and load from a generic webserver and see if the same issues persist?