F4v flv videos in Captivate 5

I use Captivate 5 and am creating a session with slides and attached audio files for each slide. I am wanting to insert a video onto one of the slides in Captivate ( I already imported the slides and audio). I converted the video from wmv format to f4v using Adobe Media Converter. I imported the m4v using the appropriate menu option in Captivate. When I publish, the Captivate session will play fine on my PC. I can get to the slide containing the video and it plays as it should when I click the play button on the skin.
However, when I upload the course (which contains an html page with a link to the Captivate session) to our LMS (Saba), and launch the Captivate session, it functions correctly, except for the video. I get to the slide containing the video, the video area of the slide is blank and nothing happens when I click the play button on the skin.
Why would this play fine on my PC and not on the LMS? I read something about the f4v or flv file needing metadata. Is that the problem? If so, how do I get the metadata into the f4v.
The documentation on this from Adobe is scant at best, and not real clear. Some of the documentation is circular and not real helpful.
I’d appreciate any help ASAP.

I have been having the same problem of getting videos to play within my Captivate 5 slides. I am loading a F4V video file as a "Progressive Video Download". We have a network drive which serves as a development web server. If I load the SWF using local mapped drives, then the video file will load within the Captivate file. Example:
Z:\TestSite\userdocs\LMS\World_of_Choices_test3.htm
But if I try to access this same file thru a web address, the video file does not load. Example:
http://nationalforensics.spintest.com/userdocs/LMS/World_of_Choices_test3.htm
In both instances, the SWF file, and associated video files, are in the same directory on the same physical computer. It feels like there is an issue with how Captivate resolves the location of the video file. Like it uses a full path to reference the video file (with the "Z" mapped drive), which would bomb when the file is pulled thru a web server (2nd address below). Is there a way to tell Captivate to look in the same directory as the SWF file to load associated video files?
Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or possible thoughts on what we may be doing incorrectly to get the video files to play on a web site? If you need more information, please let me know.
Thanks!
Randy

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*.flv Video in Captivate 6 doesn't play on network share

Hey there,
i'm using Captivate 6 including a FLV-Video-File. When I start the preview inside Captivate it work well. When I publish to my local drive it also works well.
But on a network share (i must use a network share for e-Learning in my Company) on the slide with the Video i got a blank Window with a small loadingbar on the top-left corner.
What to do? General Flash Security isn't a Option here, because i can't guarantee that every user is skilled enough to change the settings.
Thanks,
Chris
/edit: *.flv-Video can still played from the Captivate-Output-Folder on Network Share

Okay.. First a big thanks!!
I've resolved the path issues and am now experimenting with formats other than SCORM that will hopefully launch off our LMS (SyberWorks).
I think I know what a cross domain issue is... it seems pretty self evident, (ie) .htm/.swf files live on a different server domain than video or audio files.
I think all my files are on the same domain in the zip file. However, are the following paths also an example of a cross domain issue?:
Z:\orgs\ogslp\courses\2012videotest\videotestinternalsrvr\videotestinternalsrvr.htm
(this is where I upload, or publish Captivate files)
http://gslcampus/ogslp/courses/2012videotest/videotestinternalsrvr/videotestinternalsrvr.h tm
(this is where clients access the training modules via IE & the Syberworks LMS, intranet)
One more..... when publishing with the Captivate > Internal Server option what path do I input to access the server?
Z:\orgs\ogslp\courses\2012videotest\videotestinternalsrvr\videotestinternalsrvr.htm
(backdoor for uploading files)
or
http://gslcampus/ogslp/courses/2012videotest/videotestinternalsrvr/videotestinternalsrvr.h tm
(actual internal, intranet url for accessing courses)
PS when I upload files the following appears before the Z:
Computer > SyberWorks (\\sousa)(Z:)
Any advice would be appreciated - thanks for your time.
wjf

Inconsistent behaviour playing FLV videos in Captivate 4

Hi everyone,
this is driving me absolutely batty!
I have created a captivate 4 module which has some short (2-3 minute) flv videos on some of the slides.
In "preview project" it all works fine. When published it worked fine on my computer. I then put it on shared drive on our network and sent an email around the office for people to check it.
Annoyingly some people couldn't view it.
we've got about 10 computers in the office, a bit of a mix of Windows Vista and Windows XP but everyone's got I.E. 7 or I.E. 8
some of the computers play the FLV videos fine.
some of the computer just show a blank slide.
one of the computers gives a security warning.
It's so frustrating, I've tried playing with all the browser security settings and the flash "settings manager" thing but nothing works.
I find it really poor that this is so difficult to get to work on standard installs of Windows and IE. Isn't the sales pitch that "anyone can create eLearning EASILY and quickly!". well, not if the features don't work on every 2nd computer
anyone come across this before? or have any ideas?
Thanks heaps!
Gaspar

Hi there
Captivate relies on the Flash Player/Add In.
Each of the computers may have a different version of the Flash Player installed. Have you double-checked the Flash Player/Add In version? Maybe that's the answer. To upgrade the Flash.
Cheers... Rick
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Unable to load flv video to Captivate 6

Hello, Please assist. When I'm inserting a video in my Captivate 6 project, the following message appears "Video encountered an internal error". How can I solve this problem?

Hello There,
Which version of Captivate are you using? Have you applied the patch which was released some time back? Are you seeing this issue during the Preview within captivate? Is it happening while you preview in browser? BTW, is it a slide video or event video?
Thanks
Vish

How to control framerate in f4v/flv files in a Build / Flash process?

I am quite new to Encore and would kindly ask for an advice.
I am trying to build Flash material from projects, to be played from local PC, not necessary to be used as internet stream. In the final material I just run "index.html" and it plays in my local browser, say Google Chrome. I need that the generated f4v / flv video clips to be rendered in high quality (usually 1280x720 progressive) with framerates as high as 30 fps or 60 fps. Suppose I load in Encore CS5 as asset an AVC mp4 clip rendered with 60fps. I select preset "1280x720 Widescreen High Quality". When executing "Build / Flash..." Encore produces a flv / f4v file with 25 fps. I cannot find where to control this aspect, I would like to endup with a f4v / flv clip with same framerate as the asset, in this case 60fps. Or at least 30fps. Any idea where to control this? I do not find any controls in Encore regarding this setting. Encore simply outputs 25fps flv clips, and sometime 15fps clips (I could not find out why 15fps...). Is there a way to force Encore to output flv clips with same framerate as the original asset?
Thanks in advance!

Thank you, Stan, for looking at this problem.
Yes indeed, Flash output in Encore is limited in many ways. I have done some experimenting now. It seemes I have found a nice application for Flash, but this application was not forseen by the developers of Encore, thus it is only poorly implemented. Unfortunately. Let me explain.
I produce multimedia material (video clips with film footage, still pictures & some effects) to be watched on PC with large screens or on PC & projector. Thus I need HD resolutions. At large resolution effects may sometimes not be perceived to run smoothly unless the video clips are rendered with high framerates. A trivial example would be rolling vertical credits at end of a video clip. When the clip is rendered with 25fps or lower you need to make the credits roll to run very slowly, otherwise the rolling down looks not smooth. Smoothiness gets better with material rendered at 29,97fps or 59,94 fps. I expected Encore would keep the framerate of the original asset when transcoding to Flash f4v / flv. This does not happen. I input assets (carefully observing the accepted input formats you mentioned) with high framerate, whereas Encore produced 25fps f4v files out of them. Unfortunately DVD formats have too low resolution for my intend and BR disks are not very popular where I live. I discovered that delivering material in Flash, to be played as an off-line website from local PC in the default browser - this would be a very nice solution. Unless Encore would perform better for this job. Probably it was simply not designed for this.
My first surprise was that I ended with 25fps f4v material. Trying to change this in Project Settings was not possible. Project was started in PAL and this option was now greyed out. Ok, I started a new project from the scratch as NTSC material, now at least the generated f4v files feature 29,97 fps instead of 25 fps, which would be acceptable. Unless...
The Flash transcoding machine of Encore drastically lowers bitrate for the generated f4v / flv files. I believe somewhere near 4Mbps (but may vary, I have not tested thoroughly). This can be ok for 360p material or lower resolution, or for watching video on youtube, but for HD resolution the effects look very bad and they do not run smooth at such low bitrate. I also noticed there is a problem with the Flash Player. The same generated (poor) f4v palyed in VLC or WMP looks much better than when played with Adobe Flash Player. Not to speak about difference between playing the original asset at 59,94fps with VLC versus playing the generated f4v (25fps) with Adobe Flash Player - here the difference is enormous!
It seemes I had some unrealistic expectations from Encore. I realy like the menus one can design with it, I like the possibility to build the project as Flash, but the results are quite poor. I need to look for an alternative solution.
When issuing the first post I just hoped I was doing something wrong...

FLV videos not playing correctly in Captivate 6

I am running into an issue where my FLV video is not playing correctly when my Captivate project is exported out and saved to the web. The FLV video is about 20 mins long (~100 MB) and it is being streamed from Kaltura. The FLV video is inputted into the Captivate project as a multi-slide synchronized video across 27 slides. The slides themselves are imported from Powerpoint. The problem that we are running into is that the Captivate project and the FLV video play correctly when viewed with decent bandwidth, but they do not appear to play correctly for users with slower bandwidth. However, if a user views the videos independently of Captivate, they can view the videos correctly, even at slower bandwidth. I have tried hosting the Captivate files on several different webservers, including an LMS. But the issue continues and I'm searching for any type of answers that might help.
Thanks for reading and any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Nathan

Nathan,
Your welcome, if that is the case, then can you try and insert the MultiSlide Video, you can insert the streaming video URL.
You can add the server to you computer as network Drive and then browser to that location, once you do that, the options to add the Video as Streaming can be chose and your Vidoe would remain insync with main playbar, users can play and pause content that way.
See if this can be implemented at your end.
Thanks,
Anjaneai

Linking to external video in Captivate 7

I develop video-based training. Each slide includes mostly video. I've been successfully embedding f4v videos into Captivate projects for some time but video quality and file size issues make it necessary to begin linking to videos on external servers.
I've tried a number of options without success.
I create a video event, choose the url option, and add the url from the uploaded video. The only usable server choice is the Adobe Media Streaming Service. I've tested the videos on different servers including Amazon since the troubleshooting advice alerted me that only Adobe partners servers will be recognized. The project previews and the progress bar moves as if the video is playing but only the background file is visible. I tried all the preview options - no luck.
I decided to try the YouTube widget. I uploaded test videos to YouTube, inserted the Interaction widget and added the url, etc. This option results in a successful preview only when I choose the html 5 output in web browser option. Captivate will successfully publish the project but I get "Java Script Error unable to acquire LMS, API content, may not play properly" messages.
The published file performs like all of the unsuccessful previews. The file loads and acts as if the videos are playing in that the progress bar moves but there is no video, just the slide background image. I tried different output settings like just SWF, just html5, both SWF and html5, different versions of the flash player, etc. I also added the output folder to the Flash Global Security settings in case it was a permissions issue.
I'm working on a mac so I emailed a zipped file to my PC and tried to open in Internet Explorer to see if the file might play on a different system or browser - same outcome - no luck.
Making external video work is critical to my work and use of Captivate so I'm hoping there's something I'm missing or misunderstanding about what I need to do.
Any help or advice will be appreciated.

I'm continuing to have problems with the YouTube widget. My client sent me YouTube links and when I copied and pasted the new links into the Captivate file and the published and uploaded the file, the links didn't work.
To review, I uploaded video files to YouTube and used the interactions widget to insert the linked videos. The videos which I uploaded can be previewed in html5 in web browser but not in any other way. When I publish this file and view the file on my system on my browser (Safari) the file opens but the videos do not play. However, when I upload to my ftp site and open the file from there, the linked YouTube videos play.
So this led me to believe that I have a file that will work at least in html5 output. But when I replace the original YouTube links that I uploaded with new links provided by my client the videos preview in html5 in web browser mode but do not play on my system or when uploaded to my ftp site. All of the videos (mine and my clients) play in YouTube and preview in html5 mode.
Additionally, when I ouput the html5 file, the quiz doesn't work properly. The radio buttons don't appear on screen so when answers are selected the user has no way of knowing their selections have been accepted. Oddly, the quiz is registering answers since when you submit there is a brief flash during which you can see the buttons but they quickly disappear and results are tallied accurately at the end. But the quiz is unusable without user feedback for selections. You can view this performance beginning on the sixth slide (the beginning of the quiz).
http://videoactive.org/PreventingObesityOnlinelinks/index.html
Are html5 output files compatible with Learning Management Systems? Is there a way to use the YouTube widget in SWF output files?

Playing video in captivate 5

I'm trying to insert a flv. video into one of the slides but it will not play. Is there something I'm obviously not doing? Everything comes up like it's supposed to but it won't play. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks

Welcome to our community
Sorry but we need more information. Your post is similar to walking into a garage and saying your car won't go. It leaves too much to the imagination.
Does it start? Does it go into gear? Does it sputter and die when you press the accelerator pedal? Are the brakes locked up?
So you told us you inserted an FLV and it doesn't play. Where are you expecting to see it play?
Did you expect to see the FLV begin playing immediately upon inserting it on the slide? Like you would if you opened a YouTube page on the web? If so, that doesnt' happen. You just inserted a placeholder that will present the video after you publish your movie.
Did you preview and you aren't seeing the video play during the preview? If so, how exactly did you preview? There are many ways. Perhaps the manner in which you are previewing doesn't allow the video.
Did you publish and you aren't seeing the video after you publish? If so, where are you running the file from? Local PC or did you copy it to a web server?
As you can hopefully see, there aren't any pat answers. We need lots more information.
Cheers... Rick
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SorcererStone Blog
Captivate eBooks

.flv VIDEOS not playing smoothly

A heavy video-generated Captivate project has been created in Cap 4:
* 18 slides all up, with the total size of .flv videos coming to 90.7MB
* Using Captivate, as looking for interactivity -- there is also a menu, so users can jump to whichever section they'd like to watch/use
When accessing the completed project online:
1) The loader quickly goes up to 100%
2) Shows the preloader image I have inserted
3) User clicks play, and the first slide with video plays...
The first video either freezes / move quickly along the timeline. You are also unable to jump to other sections shown in the menu. While I am not too worried about this, my priority is for comfortable viewing for the first video. I am assuming that the first video freezes, etc because the whole project has yet to load completely. How can one work towards this solution? I have tested the loading time, changing it from 10%, 20%, towards 100% but the video is still freezing at times / moving quickly along the timeline.

Thanks for your PM - I just checked your project and it runs 100% fine and smooth for me.
I checked it on two different PC's
1. Vista 64-bit, IE 7.0, Flash player 10, 10mbit/10mbit internet connection.
2. Win XP Pro, IE 7.0, Flash player 10, corporate LAN
This leads me to the conclusion that the issue is the speed of your internet connection. The first video is around 80 seconds and is 13.5 Mb. That is very big when you consider the length and especially the dimension of the video you are using.
If you dont already have FP10 then try and upgrade to see if that helps. It's much better at handling videos etc. than the older versions of Flash players.
Secondly you need to recode your videos. You will be able to get the first video down from 13.5 to perhaps 4-6 mb, with a noticable quality loss. If you have Flash you can use the Adobe Media Encoder to do the recoding.
/Michael
Click here to visit the www.captivate4.com blog

FLV colorspace is different from Android to Android? Is FLV video HW accelerated?

I'm not sure how long this problem has been there, maybe since November 2012 when we launched the app, or did it just appear. I can dig deeper if I get any replies. It seems some of our FLV videos, which have a person speaking on front of a white (as in #ffffff) background, end up having gray background in some devices. I had a lot of trouble originally getting the encoding process work and I'm not sure if I even understood it in the end.
Videos have different color spaces, one having RGB values from 0-255 and others from 16-235 for example. The color space information is encoded in the video, which video playback software may use or not. In the end, videos look different with different playback software and hardware combinations.
I've trusted FLV, because I thought Adobe AIR does everything by software and thus it should work (and has worked) exactly the same on all devices. But not any more. The only thing I can think of, is that some parts of video playback is HW accelerated. Is it possible that my Galaxy Tab 10.1, which shows all videos correctly, doesn't use HW to render video, whereas Galaxy Tab 3, which shows some videos incorrectly, uses HW? It may also be, that some of our videos indeed have wrong color space information in them, a bug in our encoding process. But I need to understand how AIR works a bit better to get the problem solved.
We're using a complex command line script, involving Avisynth. The line I underlined may not have always contained ".ConvertToRGB().ConvertToYV12(matrix="pc.601")" part, which could be the problem, but not explain why this happens sometimes and on some devices.
SET p1="%~dp0bin/x264.exe"
SET p2="%~dp0bin/Bepipe/BePipe.exe"
SET p3="%~dp0bin/faac.exe"
SET p4="%~dp0bin/MP4Box-0.4.6-rev2735/MP4Box.exe"
rem 2.1. Create Avisynth file
echo QTInput("%~f1", color=2, audio=1).FieldDeinterlace().BilinearResize(740,410).Crop(10,5,-10,-5).ConvertToRGB().Conv ertToYV12(matrix="pc.601") > "%TMPFOLDER%/%~n1.avs"
rem 2.2. Encode video
%p1% --profile main --crf 10 --fps 25 -o "%TMPFOLDER%/%~n1.264" "%TMPFOLDER%/%~n1.avs"
rem 2.3. Encode audio using Avisynth script
%p2% --script "QTInput(\"%~f1\", color=2, audio=1).GetChannel(1, 2).Normalize(0.80)" | %p3% -b 256 -o "%TMPFOLDER%/%~n1.aac" -
rem 2.4. Create mp4 file
%p4% -fps 25 -add "%TMPFOLDER%/%~n1.264" -add "%TMPFOLDER%/%~n1.aac" "%~dp1%~n1.mp4" -new

Hi BKSTER
I just tested this and it seems to work fine. Here is what I
did.
1. Within my Captivate project, I inserted the Flash .FLV
file.
2. I browsed to a file on my hard drive and the File Link
field listed the absolute path of C:\somefolder... blah blah blah.
3. I then changed it to point explicitly at the server where
I placed the .FLV. The link then looked like this:
http://www.MySever.com/FileName.FLV.
4. I dismissed the dialog and published the Captivate
project.
5. I uploaded the Captivate files to one server and the .FLV
on the other.
6. I ran the Captivate .HTM file and observed. The .FLV
played as expected!
Hope this helps... Rick

Inserting FLV videos that allow student to start and stop anywhere

Hello,
I am inserting flv videos that students need to be able to start and stop anywhere, and when the video reaches the end, the student clicks on the NEXT button to go to next slide.
As long as the student lets the video play without any interruptions, the NEXT button appears at the end.
THe problem I am having is that everything works except the NEXT button is not appearing at the end of the Video unless the NEXT button is visible for the whole time the video is on.
If the NEXT button is visible during the whole time the video is showing, the student is able to skip the video without watching it.
I need the students to view the whole video as part of the course.
Is this possible?

Your original post didn't mention that the students should be able to repeat a portion of the video again if they choose to do so. This of course complicates matters further as you would then need to show either one of the standard Captivate playbars or use a Playbar widget as you are doing now. However, this also opens up for the user being able to skip the video once again, so it's not the best solution.
As I see it you have two options:
1) Present the video without the playbar as I described in my first post. Add the next button at the end of the video. This will make sure that the video has been watched to the end before the user can continue to the next slide. Perhaps you could add a "Replay" button so that the user would be able to watch the entire video again simply by replaying the slide.You can create Start and Stop(Pause) buttons by inserting Smart Shapes or Regular buttons and assign an Advanced Action to Pause or Continue the project.
2) Modify one of the Playbar widgets so that the scrubber and the next button isn't activated until a certain frame has been reached on that particular slide. Once this frame is reached the widget could activate Play and Scrubber allowing the users to navigate to the next slide or move around in the video. However, this requires extensive knowledge of Flash and Actionscript to achieve and it will also be a very troublesome approach as the frame numbers would change if you insert new slides (or extend / shorten existing slides) prior to the slide(s) containing the video.
www.cpguru.com - Adobe Captivate Widgets, Tutorials, Tips and Tricks and much more..

Why there is a small black blinking dot got on FLV video??

I have 11 FLV videos in my captivate file and when i published it there is a small black blinking dot on all my videos. Does anybody have the same problem? I checked the original videos and the dot is not there.

I don't have experience with FLV doing that, but that sounds similar to what happens when the slide quality is not high enough to support the graphic objects on a slide.
Have you tried increasing the image quality for the slides with video to 'high' or 'optimized?'

Problem adding Video to Captivate Slide

Hi,
I'm having a problem adding an FLV video file to Captivate. Basically, after I've published to a SWF file, the video doesn't appear on the slide at all. It's just blank.
After researching a bit, I found that the FLV file MUST include *metadata*.
However, I added medatada with VLC Media Player, and it still shows the same behavior. Must it include a certain *amount* of metadata? Is there a *type* of metadata without which the video will not show?
Adobe's Help thread talks about something called the "Flash Video Kit" - is that a stand alone product or an extension of another product? Is it free? Are there any other free alternatives?
I'm just very confused.
Thank you!

I ended up answering my own question. But just in case this helps anyone else, I'm going to post my solution.
Essentially, I just re-created the video in MP4 format. Then I used MetaZ (for Mac) to write Meta Data to the video. Lastly, I imported the video as an object and when I published the video, Captivate transmuted it to the necessary FLV format.
Now the video displays properly.

Flv video not playing in AIR application

Hi everybody,
i'm building a tutorial with flash catalyst and since the 20 states limit i've split it up in different swf files that I import and show in different states.
One of these swf (which i built with Catalyst as well) is supposed to play a flv video, and it actually plays it if i run it alone.
The problem comes when i build the overall tutorial: it works perfectly with the "run project" command in Catalyst and with the run-local version but the video won't play if i try the AIR application.
Does anyone have any suggestion?
NB: the "asset" directory created with the AIR application installer does contain the flv file (i didn't have to put it there manually)
Thanks in advance for your help,
Giuseppe

Hi Giuseppe,
what I do is:
1. create a file using Captivate
2. i place a .flv video in this file
3. save the file as .swf
4. then i go to dreamweaver and put the swf on a html page.
Now:
when viewed in a browser, everything runs fine.
when i pack this page into an air application (in dreamweaver) the video does not appear,
instead I get this "Connection Error"
I do not know a console or log file.
However, I learned that there is a .xml file located in the same AIR folder that you publish in.
In this .xml file there is a setting :transparency. in order to playt a .flv file this must not be be "transparent"!
(i read this somewhere in the net)
hope that helps
I will talk to a professional programmer, if I have any news, i will let you know
Claus

F4v & flv show as generic icons and are not scaled

Hi!
I'm using Bridge CS4 for some years and since the reinstall of my operating system (Vista Business 32bits) and of CS4, all the f4v and flv files are showing as generic file icons. That means that I do not get the video thumbnail for f4v or flv files in the Content panel. This was working before my reinstall.
Also, the f4v or flv videos show only the top left corner in the preview panel. This has something to do with scaling: Bridge shows the preview of a 640x480 f4v or flv video normally but the 1920x1080 videos are not scaled.
I also use MOV files and for these, I get a scaled preview and a thumbnail in the Content panel.
Any clue how I can get back the video thumbnails for f4v and flv files as well as the scaling?

@ Curt Y,
I really appreciate your input. It brought me one step further in any case.
I made a couple of screenshots with a before and after state. Please note that the before and after pictures where made on two computers with different screen resolution, one laptop I am now trying to fix and one desktop (this will show in the degree of scaling of the previews in Bridge). These two computers, however, display the same problem regarding the flv and f4v files.
This is before: (desktop, unfixed):
- a flv shows as generic icon, in this case the VLC Media Player icon
- the flv preview is not scaled (I see only part of the picture, the top left corner)
This is what VLC Media Player shows with the same file (desktop and laptop):
- the flv plays
- I get the full picture (scaled)
This is after the install of K-Lite (laptop, partially fixed):
- the flv and f4v files have a thumbnail (and not a generic icon anymore)
- the preview is still not scaled (to avoid confusion please note here the resolution difference between the laptop and desktop screen: I see less on the laptop but it's normal. So I get a smaller top left corner with just the sky and no house).
For my flv file, G Spot shows exactly the same codec and warning as your screenshot with barsandtone.flv.
So, now I have thumbnails. I just need to find a way to tell Bridge to scale the preview...

F4v flv videos in Captivate 5

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