What video formats survive the RH compiler into HTML Help?

Report · Jan 30, 2013

What video format will survive the Robohelp compiler and launch properly in HTML Help chm file?

I am going nuts trying to get three small video clips to work properly and I am having no luck. I am using RH10 on a Win 7 system. What's the secret. This worked without a problem in earlier versions of RH.

The RH help says that some formaets don't work properly. Of course, it doesn't tell you WHAT FORMATS don't work properly. Nor does it tell you what formats DO WORK PROPERLY.

Can anyone help?

Tom Scalise

Message was edited by: Captiv8r - Removed SPAM attractant...

Report · Jan 31, 2013

AVI and WMV are the two I'd suggest. Exactly what is the problem you are getting?

Report · Jan 31, 2013

The environment is Robohelp 10 on WIn 7. Each video clip is hyperlinked to a small icon in the topic. The Help system is Microsoft HTML Help.

I am using the wmv format for these video clips. WHenI view the clips in the Robohelp poreview (Ctrl+w) they display perfectly. However, after I compile the HTML Help, the clips do not launch when I click the icon. The Microsoft Media Player appears and displays a menu: Play All Music, Go To Library, and Play Previous List. The Start button at the bottom of the window is disabled. When I select Play Previous List, it appears that the last video the Player launched plays again...not necessarily the selected clip.

This is a help system that was created using Robohelp X5. I opened it in Robohelp 10 and upgraded the poroject as instructed. These videos are new to the upgrade. There are a couple of other avi clips in the original help that display perfectly. I tried avi format for the three new clips but they behaved as if the player saw them as audio files.

Report · Feb 28, 2013

Yeah... I struggled with this for a long time as well. I tried everything the program had to offer, including Captivate SWF files. WMVs seem to be the most universal for running on computers in a corporation with heavy security controls in place.

Go to your Win 7 control panel, default programs and change wmv to the Media Center, not Player. If the Media Center opens and it doesn't start playing the video immediately close it, then click on the video link again.

I made a Captivate 5.5 demo of my help file, running through everything including the WMV videos. It is 7 minutes long (229meg in size) and included voice over. I took a new 2 gig flash drive, formatted it so as to get rid of any self opening software the maker placed on it and then copied the demo to it. Then I made a new folder on the flash drive and drug the demo into it. Went to the properties of this folder and chose an invisible icon, then highlighted the folders name and pressed Ctrl+225 to make the text invisible as well. Then I let people just plug in the flashdrive to their computer and the demo runs automatically, with controls of course. The file is pretty much invisible to users. I do the same thing on my CHM files, but I also put some cut & Paste / right mouse click copy restrictions in the header and body of my master page.

I have 32 1-2 minute videos with sound in my 1.2gig RoboHelp 9 CHM and they all work fine. You need to select the open option and not the save option after clicking the WMV though. Saving them to the hard drive might really create a problem if they get updated and the user has an older copy with the same name on the hard disk.