Video slide problem

[ebano]

Hi, everyone. I'm working on a interactive knowledge check type quiz which I'll eventually upload to a video sharing site. So far it's working but I created a 25 second intro video(mp4) which is 1920x1080 and put into the first slide. When previewing it, it seem to be too large. What is the ideal dimensions for a video inserted in a slide? Is it better for a flv format video instead of a mp4? Also, when the above-mentioned ends, there is a 5-second delay before the next slide(beginning of the quiz) starts. Any suggestion/tweaks to eliminate the 5-second delay? Thanks.

[RodWard]

Only 5 second delay?  I would think that fairly good for a 1920 x 1080 full HD progressive download video placed on the first slide of a project.  The ideal size for a video is: As small as possible and as short as possible.

FLV is short for Flash video, which is not going to be an option because anything Flash-related will be finished at the end of this month.

You would be well advised to use a streaming video provider such as YouTube or Vimeo to deliver this.  But I hope you are also aware that videos by themselves are not interactive.  Captivate allows you to have 'interactive' video because it has overlaid HTML hot spots.

[ebano]

Hi, Ron. Thanks for the prompt reply. I should have given more details on what I'm trying to do.

The actual interactive knowledge check type quiz does have question overlays with an video in the background.

The video intro is on the first slide and the question overlays are on a different video that runs the entire length of the question overlay slides. When I said that the intro video seem too large, I meant that edges of the video is cut off when viewing. I notice that in the properties there is an option to modify the width/height of the video. Would decreasing those numbers help the video to fit into the viewing area? Thanks.

[RodWard]

You can specify the display size of the video on the Captivate slide.  But that's won't help the video load quicker because displaying it at a smaller size doesn't change the filesize.  If you don't really need the video to be full HD then perhaps you should consider having it re-encoded at a smaller physical size and with more compression.  Even so, going with a streaming video provider would be better because they can adapt the video to the end user's available bandwidth when streaming.