Captivate 4 Captions

Hi all,
I have just purchased Captivate 4 for the use of building
scorm courses for my company's LMS. Could anybody help with the
following 2 issues.
1. I have seen in some scorm courses (not created with
captivate) that you can provide learning to the user with 1 word at
a time in a paragraph. Like the sentences are almost being typed 1
word at a time. If you can do this within Captivate, could somebody
let me know how?
2. Some of my slides contain text that looks almost grainy
with text that looks fine. All of the settings for the two captions
appear to be the same. The nearest comparison I can give is that
its the difference between outputing a flash file (from an old
version) and having 'Use Device Fonts' unchecked. Is this an
anti-alias type problem?
Would appreciate anybody's input.
Thanks
Chris

Welcome to our community, Chris
You are probably seeing the difference that happens when you
mix captions using backgrounds with transparent captions. The
captions using backgrounds (Adobe Blue, Adobe Red, Cosmos, etc) do
not have anti-aliased text. But most often the transparent captions
cause Captivate to anti-alias the text. If you want all captions to
have basically identical text appearance, you can coax Captivate to
NOT anti-alias text on transparent captions.
The simplest way is to just place the cursor at the end of
all the text, press Enter a couple of times, then apply a bullet to
the very last line. After this, adjust the caption so the bullet
isn't visible.
Cheers... Rick

Similar Messages

Captivate captions aren't appearing in project preview

Why are my timed captions appearing perfectly in the slide preview but not appearing at all in the project preview? I have something selected that shouldn't be, but I can't determine what that might be.

Hello,
Slide preview is NOT a real preview, just meant for editing, synchronizing because there is no temporary version of the published project created at all. It is useless as real preview.
Please, post a screenshot of the timeline of a slide. Probably you have somewhere an interactive object that pauses the play head and is waiting for a user click. In the timeline that would be very clear.

Font Problems in Captivate 2

Hello,
       I am a developer working for a company that needs to make marginal text changes on an old Captivate 2 project.
       We are aware that the products age, however, it is licensed and we only need to marginally maintain the existing solution.
       The problem is that our historically 'working' font now does not display correctly in my new licensed/editing environment.
       Functionally, I am unable to make the simple changes because all font is not rendering correctly.
       Here is a screenshot:
        We have compared many settings, and attempted many tests.
       1. One determination that we've made is that it is not the font itself, as it is used adequately in PhotoShop, it historically worked in Captivate, and the font face does display correctly in some cases currently:
The "Please select one...." is the correct historically working font.
   2. Another determination is that the problems are generally manifesting within animated text and new captions.
          We can select the desired font and see it displayed correctly in the selection dialog, but the animated
           example of the text never animates correctly.
   3. We did test the files from the original developers computer and his version of Captivate2, does still render the font correctly.
            It is my newly licensed installation that is having the difficulties.
   4. My OS is WindowsXP Pro, 2002 Service Pack 3. Same as colleagues.
   Can you direct me to someone that has seen this problem or knows how to fix this problem?
   I've searched the forums but have not come across information relevant to this version.
   Thanks for your help.
All the best,
Nash

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Captivate captions (other than transparent captions) are basically turned into bitmaps when rendered out to published content, which might explain why text in some captions is looking OK.
Does your new licensed PC running Captivate 2 actually have the preferred font installed? If not, this might explain why Captivate cannot find it.
To be quite honest...your preferred font may be what the branding people would like to see (they get very anal about such things), but to the naked eye there doesn't appear to be a very distinctive difference to this font. It looks a fairly generic sans-serif font, and there are dozens out there just like it. I would submit that most end-users wouldn't be able to tell the difference if you DID substitute it with Arial. If this solves your issue quickly, it may be your best solution.

Audio - Best Practice

Hi,
I have been using Captivate for a while now, and am slowly
starting to get the hang of it!
I am currently working on a project which includes static
instructional material that is broken up by interactive software
demos, all deployed through a LMS.
I have not delved into using audio in my captivate projects
before however am about to take the plunge . . .
I am wondering what information to best include in the audio
tracks?
Should i essentially cover the (limited) content that is
shown in the captivate captions or should I expand on these and
provide more in depth detail (i.e. information taken from the more
theoretical static content)?
I want to steer away from providing any new information in
the audio tracks because I do not know if all users will turn the
sound on :)
Any thoughts, advice, or links to articles covering this
topic would be most appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Matt.

Matt,
I have had similar questions and I decided to look for some
answers rather than give my own experience. In attending seminars
on learning and e-learning I remember getting conflicting advice
from experts. Some say the audio should be exactly the same as the
text and others say they should not be the same.
Ask your self, what value will the audio add to the project?
Do all of your users have audio and do they have headsets or
speakers? Why are you adding audio? Is it because you want to
experiment or because your audience is asking for it?
I did a google search on "elearning audio vs text" and it
turned up some interesting ideas. One was an article on the Adobe
site. Try this link
elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/03/what-prevents-use-of-research-example.html
and this article
http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/pdfs/captivate_leveraging_multimedia.pdf
I also thought this was a good article and it has some other
links you may want to explore.
communication.howstuffworks.com/elearning6.htm
Some of the other ideas in this google search may be good but
they are blocked by our security. At any rate, this is food for
thought.
My own preference is to have text and audio be similar but
different. You have to think about the people who can only read vs
those who can only hear. Do they both get the same story as the
people who do both? At least with text, screen readers can do the
audio for those who cannot see and it still works for those who
cannot hear. Another thought is with text people can read at their
own speed. With sound, you have to listen at the rate of the
machine. The other thing is audio takes up a lot of computer space
especially over the web. Captivate files are huge when adding
sound.
Hope this helps.
Jeff

Error by exporting Captivate to Word: "Project Captions and Closed Captions"

Hello everybody,
I'm from Germany, working in Heidelberg and I've got a problem! I would so much appreciate if somebody would have a solution for it.
Nobody could help me yet - no Adobe support via chat, no Adobe support via phone. They said the forum is my last chance. I'm frustrated. But a solution is important for my ongoing project...
Description of the problem situation:
I've created an e-learning project in German language. This e-learning shall be translated into other languages, so I want to export a word document with the captions inside. I'm doing this way:
File > Export > Project Captions and Closed Captions, and save it as word doc.
But then, after I typed in a name for the word document, another "Save as"-window appears in the background (I discovered it by coincidence) and wants me to save a word template before the export process starts. Here's a screenshot:
I don't know the reason for this second "Save as" window, so I try to save a word template (I saved it on my desktop, because I don't know where else).
After klicking on "Save" the following error message appears:
(in English: Error by exporting of captions. Try the following things: if Microsoft Word is installed, if Word is open, if the exported file is open etc.)
It's not depending on the captivate file as such, I tried it with other ones (which have only one slide) - the same problem.
It's not depending on my computer, I tried it with another one in my office - there was the same thing, same error message (but without the step of saving a word template!).
Maybe important: My hardware and versions I'm working with...
Windows 7 Professional (Service Pack 1), 64bit
Adobe Captivate 8
Microsoft Word 2010
Does anyone has the same problem or does anyone know the answer for this problem?
I would really really appreciate your answers!! Thank you in advance!
Chris

Dear Mayank, dear Lilybiri,
thank you both soooo much, I couldn't belive what I saw as the export of captions worked!!! It was really surprising!
I guess your both solutions helped me out - Mayank's hint of the admin's rights was the necessary information! But it first worked because Lilybiri told me to insist and to try it after I restarted the PC - and to do it several times! So it worked!! Otherwise I would probably still be confused.
Thank you so much!
Here's the proof
Chris
PS: Does anyone know, why I still have to decide if I want to save the "Adobe Captivate" Template thing?
Every time I'm doing an export it asks me every time if I want to save or not save the "Adobe Captivate"-file...

Variables in email reporting or quiz variables in captions for captivate 4?

Hi,
Captivate 4, cp4
I have been all around the forums without getting an exact answer to what I want to do. Perhaps there isn't one but, anyway...
I am trying to collect quiz information. I just want a simple collection of data that shows that someone has completed the quiz, which just a set of multiple response statements, and who that someone is. I have started by using Text Entry Boxes (TEB) to collect their name and assigned a variable (v_Name) to this to reuse the information in a certificate. So far so good and this works. I have set up email reporting on the quiz and, providing users actually hit the button and accept both messages, the email gets sent. All I am looking for in the email is that a user has completed the quiz. The score and results do not matter. Now, here comes the issue. I would like to record the user's name (v_Name) in the quiz results that are emailed in. No matter how many reporting options or marks I give the TEB or what options for reporting I select the information will not appear in the emailed report. I can set up a question slide to ask for the name and this will appear in my emailed report but will not appear in my certificate.
Any ideas?
I have tried to play around with padMail in the resulting HTML to try and draw out the variables but had no luck (I am a JavaScript novice).
Is there a way of emailing a slide view? Or a widget to do this (I have been unable to find one).
LMS is not a solution at the moment and upgrading is unlikely to happen as I am still trying to get all Captivate users in the office up to 4 from 3!
Is it possible to take a quiz answer and use it like a TEB variable and put it into another slide via a caption? E.G., $$Interaction1234$$ or some action script to make v_Name = interaction1234?
I am looking for a simple solution. I have looked into all of the post to database articles and they have been somewhat helpful but I am only trying to capture simple data so as the users can just be ticked off as having completed it.
I am not holding out much hope. It seems quizzing in Captivate is good for self-assessment and to provide branching but the reporting feature is a bit of a failure.
Thanks very much to anyone who just reads this and gets this far!
Even more thanks to anyone who is willing to share ideas.
Greig

Email reporting has so many potential failure points that (in my opinion) it has to be considered one of those reporting options that you only use as a last resort when nothing else is open to you. LMS reporting is by far the best way to go, but that's just not an option for many people. Adobe kindly provided External Server Reporting as an option in Captivate 5, but that also requires access to a server running PHP and at least some technical exoertise.
In your case, the only things I can suggest trying are to make sure your publish folder location has been added to Flash Player Global Security as a trusted location, or to upload your published project files to a web server and test from there. Sometimes this email reporting issue turns out to be Flash security related.
The email reporting widget is definitely worth a shot and is very inexpensive when you consider how many hours you can spend trying to chase down these issues.
In the end, if you get email reporting to work reliably, consider yourself one of the lucky few.

Captivate 5.5 Review message no longer wraps in Review area caption box

Has anyone else experienced this issue? I logged it as a bug when someone else in my company reported the same issue to me. I searched for it on the Internet and didn't get any hits. We tested to see if it was just for converted projects from 4 to 5.5 or for new ones as well. It's not working for new ones. This problem did not exist in version 5.
Basically the text won't wrap so the text displays completely across the screen (no matter what size the Review Area caption size is), cutting off the text at both ends for longer feedback messages.
Workaround: You can work around this issue by forcing a carriage return in your feedback messages by pressing Enter at an appropriate place in the message. You'll probably have to fool around with that a bit to determine the best place.

So, here is my workaround:
On the Quiz Review slide, I created two captions, one for passing, and one for failing. I set both of them to be hidden. I then created a conditional Advanced Action called ExamCaption and set one expression to show the Pass Caption if cpQuizInfoPointsscored was above or at my passmark, and set another expression to show the Fail Caption if cpQuizInfoPointsscored was below my pass mark. I also set each expression to hide the other non applicable caption for good measure.
I set the On Enter action to ExamCaption for this slide.
Reading Lilybiri's blog, I also replaced the Captivate Pass/Failure captions with just a space for each, so that nothing is shown.
Only problem is, the captions fade out after 3 seconds, the duration of the slide, despite being set to No Transition. I therefore increased the length of the slide to 60 seconds. If anyone has a better workaround, please let me know.
Hope that helps!

What happens to the closed captions when you delete a video or audio from a slide? (Captivate 7)

This might be a silly question but ...
I have a presentation with audio voiceover on every slide and videos on some. I have entered closed captioning for all of them. This is a pretty time consuming job.
What happens if I run into a problem with a video or audio clip and need to replace it? If I delete that audio or video from the slide, what happens to all the closed captioning that you added to it? I'm assuming it's deleted when you delete it from the slide.
If I export the captions before deleting the audio/video file, can I then reimport them when I replace the audio/video file with a fixed version?
Thanks for any clarification.

Hi there,
You can have CC with Slide audio and Multi Slide video in Captivate.
If you will delete the slide audio or Multi slide Video, then CC will get disabled on that slide, but same CC text will retain there as Slide notes.
Now, once you will re insert the audio or multi slide video you can mark that slide notes as CC again, or can have new CC.
So, even after deleting the audio and multi slide video, CC will not be deleted.
check following section in Captivate:
Thanks.

Captivate: Using Javascript to show/hide text captions

Hello,
I want to show/hide a text caption using javascript. I can't find the way of doing it with advanced actions. I dont know if it's because it belongs to a question slide in a pool. Does somebody knows if it's possible and how it can be done??

You can set the length of the variable when you insert it.
15 characters is just the default setting.
What I meant by COULD is that the kind of thing you are asking about here (using JavaScript to hide objects inside a Captivate movie at runtime) is not as simple as you'd like it to be.
JavaScript is not my particular area of expertise, but there are some people that chime in on this forum that ARE experts at JS. But I think they would also be the first to say that it's not as simple a thing to pull off as just "knowing the command to hide/show an object".
The easiest tool to use in Captivate for showing or hiding objects is Advanced Actions. The next easiest thing to use is ActionScript 3, and that's hard. JavaScript is a very useful programming language, but it spends all of its life outside the Captivate movie looking in through AS3's External Interface. So JS alone is not going to solve all your issues.

Captivate 5 on Windows - Round Trip text captions not working

When I Export project captions to Word, edit the text captions in the Updated Text Caption Data column, save the Word document, then Import to Captivate, the edited captions do not change in Captivate. My changes to the Word document were indeed saved in Word -- I opened the document in Word and the changes I made were still in the table -- but the changes are not updating in Captivate upon Import.
If anyone can help with this problem, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Hi Jay
I think you have to either close and re-open the Captivate project and retry the process or to restart Captivate.
Cheers... Rick
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How to include closed captions in captivate?

How to include closed captions in Captivate? I found that the
option is available in Accessibility, but it is disabled. How to
enable it? Anyone can help me please?

Welcome to our community, prabuu77
Closed Captioning is not available in Captivate until you add
a sound file. The thought is that you add a sound file containing
audio narration. Then you may add Closed Captioning.
Once you add a sound file to a slide (tap the F6 key and you
may add a sound file) you should see a Speaker icon on the slide in
the Film Strip. Click the Speaker icon and the menu that appears
should list Closed Captioning.
Cheers... Rick

Captions and Buttons for Captivate 5.5 Templates

I can't seem to find the buttons or captions from the templates in Captivate 5.5 so I can edit them (change the color). Does anyone know where they're located? For example, design5_correct_caption or design5_submit (from the Black_and_white.cptx template).
Thanks.

Hello and welcome,
Did you see the Help? And that is certainly not a complete documentation. How do you want to see such a list for an application that has that many features?
In the Help you'll certainly find an answer about SCORM supported (1.2 and 2004) and the templates used in 6 are improved ones. Types of questions you'll find in the Help easily (didn't change that much) but the extended features like Branch aware, partial scoring, remediation, Submit all, pretest, penalties you'll have to look a bit further. No games, nor mathematical equations included except the Wordgame Interaction in Captivate 6. With Advanced actions you can have the 4 primary mathematical operators, but no functions are available.
I published some lists on my blog (Effects, Widgets, Statements in Advanced actions, System variables), with more details, use cases and tips. Perhaps not what you are looking for?
Lilybiri

Captivate 5: Where is the history of Caption types stored?

Hi,
I recently created two image files that were meant to substitute the Text only captions for the Success/Failure outcomes for each question answered within a True/False quiz.
However, for subsequent T/F qustions I cannot replace these image files with any other, as for some reason Captivate only picks the initial two image files.
Is there anyway of clearing the history of all captions above the "transparent" (see diagram). I tried clearing the cache from Edit >> Preferences but that did not help. Is there a file in C:\Local Disk\Users\NameofPerson\AppData\Local\Adobe\Captivate5 that needs to be discarded?
Many thanks,
John

Hi there,
Please see below for the answers
Even as of Captivate 7, there are too many restrictions on object types that can be converted. One example that comes to mind is rollover captions. We use these extensively and they don't work with Captivate 7 HTML5 output
As you figured out, Rollover objects are not supported in HTML5 output. The list of non-supported objects are mentioned in the link http://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/using/publish-projects-html5-files.html#unsupported_objec ts_in_html5_output
We need a solution that is easy to distribute and load onto an iPad.
You can either use an LMS (e.g.: Scorm CLOUD) or can use the "Adobe Captivate App Packager 7" along with PhoneGap to achieve this. This application helps you package the courses as native apps using the Adobe Phone Gap Service. Please see the link to know more about Adobe Captivate App Packager. http://helpx.adobe.com/captivate/using/captivate-app-packager.html
We need to fill the entire screen with our demo, eliminating browser or other application elements entirely
You can achieve it by publishing the course through "Adobe Captivate App Packager 7". Please don't select the 'Scalable HTML output' option during Captivate publish as the HTML5 output may not work well on Ipads.
We need a solution that works when an iPad is offline such as wandering around a show floor.
You meant, you need an offline solution to track 'Reporting or Completion'? If that is not the case then again "Adobe Captivate App Packager 7" solves the issue.
We prefer a solution that doesn't require additional software to be purchased for each iPad.
To publish an iOS app through Adobe App packager and Phone gap, you need to get the "Certificate password and PhoneGap'
Thanks,
Nimmy Sukumaran.

Imported Captivate video playbar doesn't display close captioning icon

I've imported a captivate 6 demo into robohelp 10 and everything works perfectly, except that the closed captioning (CC) icon does not display on the Captivate playbar. It shows up just fine in Captivate, but not in Robohelp.
I've tried externalizing the skin to import into Robohelp and I still get the same result. The CC icon doesn't show up in the playbar. I have to have closed captioning in my work environment for my Captivate videos. Can anyone help?

Hi there
Screen captures might prove useful, but if you are to provide them, you will need to use the camera icon and upload them here.
When you are linking to the Captivate, how are you doing it? Are you pointing to the SWF or are you using HTML 5 output from Captivate?
Cheers... Rick

Closed captions unreliable in Captivate 6.0.1

Hi all,
The company I work for is getting ready for several courses to go live on their website. Accessibility, in the form of closed captioning, is very important to my employer and to our clients. We've put a lot of time into getting the captions the way we want them, timing them correctly, etc.
However, when I publish a course for our review, and open it in a browser, the captions may or may not work. The CC button is available on the playbar, and sometimes one click will bring up the captions. But just as often, it takes 5, 6, 15 clicks before the captions appear. Sometimes I have to stop the course and click the button, and sometimes they won't work until I move on to another slide and then click the CC button.
Has anyone else run into this problem? We might just opt to have the captions on by default, and hopefully that will work. But either way I'd like to know why this is happening and if there's a solution or workaround.
Running Cp 6.0.1 on a Mac. Choosing 'publish to folder' and exporting a .swf to Flash 10.
Thanks in advance--
Jason

I haven't personally run into this issue before with any Cp projects, but since the CC text actually belongs to the Skin rather than the content area I would look at the skin first. Have you tried removing the current skin and assigning another one from Cp6 to see if that improves matters? If your project was upgraded from an earlier version of Cp at any time then some issues may have crept in via the skin not being entirely compatible with your current Cp version. Even if the project was created from scratch in the current version, changing the skin may give it the kick in the ribs that fixes the issue.
If changing the skin has no effect, try deleting or renaming your preferences folder. Perhaps you have some corrupted preferences that are causing the issue.
See details here in troubleshooting tip #8:
http://www.infosemantics.com.au/adobe-captivate-troubleshooting/basic-troubleshooting-tech niques

Captivate 4 Captions

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