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Question

Why is Adobe Captivate so slow?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
June 13, 2017
13 replies
10155 views

I am using a late 2013 MBP with 16GB RAM, and the latest version of Adobe Captivate downloaded with my Creative Cloud subscription, but I consistently find that Adobe Captivate runs especially slow. Enough to hinder my day-to-day workflow.

I've noticed that it will only use a max of 3GB of RAM, and doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the full capabilities of the CPU, as my CPU % sits at around 15-20, even while performing presumably resource-intensive tasks. I could understand if it was maxing out the CPU and performing poorly, because at least it was using all the resources it could to try and deliver the best performance. But it is laggy and slow without even using the resources available to it.

Does anyone know if you can adjust the RAM or CPU allocation settings for Adobe Captivate? I've used other software that performed poorly before, but I was able to adjust the settings for how many resources I allocated to it, and saw great performance gains.

As an example of just how slow Adobe Captivate is for me, I like to move objects on the slide with shift+arrow keys for precise placement. Adobe Captivate is so slow that I can press the arrow key about ten times one direction, and then just sit there for almost a full minute and just watch the object slowly make its way to my desired location. Comparing this to other software on my MacBook, it is extremely slow. Keynote for example provides the same functionality, however objects snap to the position I move them to in real-time, with no lag whatsoever.

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U

user370955456Author

Inspiring

I just recently discovered what must be Adobe Captivate's biggest competitor: Articulate

As someone who has been struggling with Captivate's slow and unresponsive application day in and day out, dealing with bug after bug, and crash after crash, this software-find felt so relieving! For those wondering, Articulate does well to replicate almost every feature offered by Captivate, so you should easily be able to make the switch. It only runs on Windows unfortunately, and it has no built-in TTS (though it is very easy to generate TTS elsewhere, and Articulate has a beautiful process for handling the captions of any audio file). Articulate also offers many more features not supported by Captivate that make it more of a step up! Such as mobile support.

I just used Articulate today to re-create a lesson I previously created in Captivate, and I experienced no issues whatsoever. In fact, the experience was so smooth and enjoyable, I actually had fun and was able to replicate the lesson in less time than it would have taken me to do within Captivate!

Just a couple other stand out features that I want to highlight about Articulate:

Handles mobile exceedingly well with a custom player for mobile devices and gesture support
Many more animations and options for animations that feel much more 2017 than "Captivate 2017"...
Very smooth animation playback compared to what Captivate creates
LIGHTNING FAST! (which is the main advantage, especially if you're visiting this forum because you too are annoyed by Captivate's poor performance.)

All-in-all, if Captivate is too slow for you as well, at least give Articulate a good look. You can get a 30-day free trial without the need for a credit card. And it's good to see healthy competition amongst the big e-authoring companies out there! Hopefully this will entice Adobe to pull up their socks a bit ;]

N

Nutley

Known Participant

Anecdotally for me on a Mac, Adobe Captivate 8 was slow as molasses (pretty well unusable) but Captivate 9 seemed to solve this issue. I recently upgraded to 2017 and that is also painfully slow. So for the time being, I'm sticking with Captivate 9, which is totally workable and reliable.

I wonder if Captivate is like Star Trek movies, good followed by bad followed by good etc?

Lilybiri

Legend

Wait for a patch to 2017, first version of 9 was slow as well.

I call your Star Trek the MS OS work flow: one bad, one good.

Lilybiri

Legend

Which version are you using? Be sure to clear the cache regularly (it grows very quicckly), to run Captivate as Administrator (if you are on Windows, don't know anything about Mac version). Captivate is a 'heavy' application, I like to have a dedicated graphics card. You may be correct for CP not being optimized for use of GPU as is Photoshop (love the speed of that app now), but I'm not a programmer, it is just a 'feeling'.

U

user370955456Author

Inspiring

I am using the 2017 release: 10.0.0.192. I believe it is the latest release. I am using a dedicated graphics card (Nvidia GTX 750M), but as you say, Captivate may not be written to take advantage of the GPU... I am a programmer myself, and use a lot of different software on a regular basis. Captivate does feel heavy and sluggish compared to most applications I use (even feature-rich, pro applications such as Final Cut.) It feels as though Captivate has not been optimized yet, on this the 9th version...

Lilybiri

Legend

Sighing... I know. It is the first release of 2017, mostly patches will fix bugs and provide a better performance. Just wanted to tell it is a very heavy application, and the required minimum settings are much too low. I use it only from SSD's, with plenty of RAM. But I admire the way Photoshop is taking advantages of the GPU, which isn't really the case with CP. CP has features of video editors, of desktop publishers, of graphical bitmap and vector apps, and on top of that a lot of interactivity (forget the software sims). I suspect it is much more complicated for that reaon than most users do realize.

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