Captivate not publishing mpeg-4 video's or uploading to youtube

Question

Hi,
Got a really annoying problem with Captivate 5.5, it's the trial version and until this I was intending to buy the product. But I've just spent a day producing a video with it, the project comes to 1.8Gb so it's not small.
Anyway, it all works fine, until I click on File > Publish > Select MP4 Video(*.mp4) > Select the Apple iPhone 4/ Apple iPod Preset and click on Publish.
The software launches does it's pop-up dialoge thing and Adobe Captivate Video Publisher appears with a second progress box saying "Generating Video..." the progress bar sat at 0% while I went away and watched a 2 hour movie. All it says under the progress bar is "Initializing..." and it does bugger all else. I've rebooted the PC, and tried several times with absolutely no sucess.
The project exports as a SWF and EXE file just fine. But the process balls up when exporting a .MP4 file. I've even tried different formats. But as far as I can tell the sodding thing isn't even starting the encode.
The software is running in administrator mode, and exporting to a file location that isn't protected by UAC so there's no reason for it I've even disabled my virus software just in case that was lagging the system down. But nothing I do seems to make the damndest bit of difference.
Can someone offer any advice. I'm not spending hundreds of pounds on software that can't even export to MP4, not when Camtasia does it just fine.
(System spec, Windows 64, 4Gb RAM, 3.0 Dual core, nVidia 8800GTS 320Mb)

Answer 1

No it's not dragging it's feet. I can deal with dragging feet. If I had to leave my system rendering for a day, so be it. I spend more time then that rendering CGI graphics. It's not "dragging it's feet" it's not even getting up out of the sofa. It can't be arsed. Error reporting? Not for Adobe! None of that peasky information for users from them! No, lets just leave them sitting there waiting while it "initializes" that's real helpful. Sitting there with a 0% bar. No helpful information like "whow dude your project is MASSIVE, this will take a while." no handy progress bar showing how the initialization is going. No no, none of that for Adobe. That would be too helpful. Obviously they're going to charge you so much money for the single most unprofessional peace of tat I've ever had the misfortune to use.
P.S. I chopped up the project, into no more than 15 minute segments. It managed to render out the first 4, how it's doing exactly the damn same thing for section 5. Apparently 15 minutes of real world tutorial too much to expect as well.
P.S.S. It's hundreds of megabytes isn't a problem in this day and age. I can download a 500Mb file in what? Half an hour? Perhaps 2 for slower users. Hell I download games from Direct2Drive totalling 8.7Gb takes a coulpe of days, but there's no problem doing it. As for users without broadband, DVD's hold 4.7Gb, couple of those isn'g a problem. I've got other solutions that will stick 5 - 7 hours of HD interactive content onto a single DVD without a problem. The only real world bandwidth colleges really have to use is whatever it takes to report the examination statistic and answers at the end of the session. I don't think a PC is sold these days with less than 80Gb, and single issue network deployment solutions aren't a problem.
It's not like their streaming system is worth damn, if you're worried about users running off with your materials. There's no effective DRM solution built into captivate so nothing stopping users capturing the stream and re-hosting it. Not low bandwidth sales pitch they've got you on is totally insane. I can't see any way in which this product can justify it's price tag. I can only imagine there's educational material out there that's so bad it's making users wonder why they pay for the course in the first place.
Sod it, I'll program the thing in C++ that'll shave off a few gigabytes given the bloated shite Captivate generates. 1.8 is a sodding joke. I can encode 2.5 hour movies at just over 1.2gb in freaking 720p HD. This thing can't even manage 50 minutes of full motion content, and 40 minutes of still images with mpeg-3 compressed audio inserted into the slide. 1.8 Gb for 50 minutes FMV?
/end rant