Video Objects not always showing

[eliecreative]

I have a slide with multiple video objects and multiple buttons.  Each button corresponds to a video object.  On load all video objects are hidden.  When a button is clicked, an advanced action hides all video objects (aside from the correspnding one) and shows the corresponding video object.  Since I do not have a player/skin for the video objects, when they are show, they automatically play.

The issue I am having is that occasionally when the learner revisits the slide (or even the first time they visit the slide) not all video objects show and play. It is not consistent, sometimes the videos will all load, sometimes a few won't.  I don't believe it is a bandwidth or video bitrate issue.  I've tried putting the show action in the same decision block as well as a secondary decision block with no difference.  The show action is always following the hide actions.  Any thoughts? Anyone experience inconsistencies like this as well? 

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

I would never use Show/Hide, but a multistate object with the event videos (I suppose you use Event video) each in a state. The buttons will just have to change the state. Did you try that workflow? It may be that so much has to be loaded/reloaded on that slide that it chokes. With Change state you don't even need an advanced action. Instead of many duplicate advanced actions, or a complicated advanced action with many decisions, why not switch to multiple instances of one shared action? You need to optimize as much as possible, videos are big files.

[eliecreative]

This worked, thank you.  I didnt want any video to show when the learner reaches the slide so I created an extra state and deleted the video in that state so that I could set a on enter action to the blank state.  Everything seems to be working nicely.  

[RodWard]

If you have a lot of these Hide and Show actions all stacked up on an Advanced Action then the speed at which they are executed might be contributing to the inconsistency.  One test you can try is to add Delay Next Actions By actions in between the other Hide Show actions.  You may only need to separate them by a tenth or a second or two in order to test whether that seems to contribute to the consistency.

Lilybiri's suggestion of using MultiState objects is also a good one to try.

[eliecreative]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm confident one of these will work.  There are so many quirks like this in captivate, it's good to have experienced users to help navigate the best ways of doing things.

[Lilybiri]

I have a blog about using an empty Normal state, a workflow I use personally as well:

Why use an empty Normal state? - eLearning (adobe.com)

[eliecreative]

Is there a reason why this multi-state object wouldn't work on mobile?  Nothing Pops up when the buttons are clicked.

[Lilybiri]

Which type of mobile: Android or Apple?