Manual panning in CP4

I have newly installed Captivate 4 and I am having trouble
figuring out how the manual panning works. Under Recording:Keys I
see that F3 is "for manual panning", but it doesn't seem to do
anything. I don't want automatic panning where it follows my mouse
around, but on occasion I have a button outside of the recording
window that I would like to pan over and see. I assume this is what
manual panning would be for, but how does it work?
Appreciate any input...!

I believe that if you have manual panning turned on, you need
to use your mouse to "grab" the red frame and drag it where you
want... or pan if you will. When you put your mouse over the red
frame it changes shape to arrows on 4 sides.. just drag it where
you want it and it takes a capture where you drop it.
Hope this helps.
K

Similar Messages

Manual panning problem

When recording a demo using manually pan, moving the red rectangle gets recorded as part of the demo. Is there any way to avoid seeing the red rectangle recording area being moved? I don't see it in the individual slides in Captivate 6, but when I preview I see it as a thin black vertical line.
Automatic panning doesn't have the problem of the thin black line, but it is difficult to control. Therefore, the resulting movie is rather jumpy. So I prefer to use Manual Panning if there is a way to get rid of the line.

Hi Jay,
I have never used manual panning, and now with the new video capture will certainly never use it. Are you talking about video capture? It is so much easier to do this in the Video editor later on, and that editing is non-destructive. Quality is awesome compared with the old FMR.
Lilybiri

Does anyone actually use automatic panning?

I've tried the automatic panning feature, and I don't understand how it could ever be useful. For example, using Captivate 5.5 for Mac, I'd like to set a recording area smaller than the application window and have the recording area move with the mouse, but I'd like the recording area to stay withing the application window borders. The results are jerky, unpredictable pans and the recording area invariably roams beyond the application window borders, showing undesired screen elements (other apps, Mac menu bar, etc.,) despite my specifying "Application" for my recording settings. I've had to resort to manual panning--which is very difficult to use smoothly; I had to create a "single axis movement" key command on my trackball mouse to help control horizontal/vertical movement, but even that isn't 100% reliable to ensure smoothness.
Am I missing something, or is it simply not possible to control automatic panning in the manner that I'd like? (I've read that Camtasia does this flawlessly, but I've never used it. And I am not certain whether it could be used for eLearning, not to mention it's video based, thus large files.)
I'm having a hard time understanding how this feature could be useful, unless you don't mind very jerky pans and your application is full screen and running on Windows (no OS menu bar to distract the user, although I suppose the bottom task bar could get in the way but at least that could be hidden).
Has anyone actually used automatic panning for a project, and were you pleased with the results?

Hi there
Until Captivate 6, I've long advised folks that if "panning is your thing", skip Captivate and go look at Camtasia.
That being said, it's worth noting that while Camtasia and Captivate both capture what goes on with your screen, they take two different approaches.
With Camtasia, you pretty much record the full screen at the start, then later determine the size you want to produce at. Since you are already full screen and you later determine where the pan goes, it's much better and silky smooth in operation.
As you have seen, with Captivate you get, ummm, how do I say this nicely? Ummm, "less than desirable" pans. So if you are on Captivate 5.5 or earlier, fuhgeddaboudit when it comes to panning.
But I'm aware that Adobe has put lots of effort into Captivate's full motion recording engine. Whether it will now rival Camtasia's remains to be seen. But it's greatly improved in version 6 of Captivate. You did mention Mac. I'm not a Machead and tend to avoid them for value considerations, so I'm ill equipped to say whether Adobe updated the Mac version along with the Windows version for 6. I know TechSmith has different release cycles as well as different feature sets for Mac VS Windows on Camtasia. Perhaps Adobe is better in this respect.
So you might try version 6. Download it, kick the tires and see if upgrading is worth it for you.
Cheers... Rick
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How do i get panning to stop at the edge of my screen?

For the project i am working on i will need to use panning quite a bit. Manual panning is too slow for what i need and auto panning will capture outside of my screen. Is there any way to set the auto panning to stop at the edge of the screen so i am not stuck with large areas of black? thanks,

Hi there
Good luck with that. Captivate presently does a horrible job with panning. If panning is your thing, you will likely find yourself constantly frustrated with the existing versions of Captivate.
Personally, I'd use Camtasia to create the stuff where you want panning. Then push it out as a SWF and combine it with Captivate for the total package.
Cheers... Rick
Helpful and Handy Links
Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form
Adobe Certified Captivate Training
SorcerStone Blog
Captivate eBooks

The sound on all(!) my captured clips isn't audible until i pan them. help!

Hi all, I'm fairly new to FCP.
I have captured hours of HDV documentary footage, and used the Easy Setup HDV presets to do it. This captures sound as 'channel grouped' rather than stereo pair.
The sound I recorded in the field was generally from a single stereo mic. I'm now going through the bins of clips, and giving them names... the trouble is that the audio on every clip isn't audible when I play them. The weird thing is that if I pan the 2 mono channels for each clip to full left and right, then the sound returns and is fine. I thought I'd have to do it on the timeline, by modifying every clip i used to be 'Stereo Pair', but I've worked out I can manually pan the clips in the bin using the audio mixer tool.
The trouble is, I have a LOT of clips, and was wondering if there was a clever way of sorting out this problem? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thomas
(ps. the sound for the clips comes out fine when I play them directly just using quicktime outside of FCP).

Hi all, I'm fairly new to FCP.< </div>
Welcome to the family, we all started someplace. But you have committed yourself to a big project without testing your workflow before jumping.
First piece of advice: Locate your tapes, you are probably going to recapture everything.
The sound I recorded in the field was generally from a single stereo mic. I < </div>
"Generally?" What about the exceptions? If you have shot with different audio settings, you cannot use the same preset for all of tapes.
What you have not determined is whether or not the sound exists in your captured media. Do the VU meters show audio data in all tracks? If so, you've got one kind of problem and some of the HDV guys can help you. If not, you have a different kind of problem and you'll want to gather your tapes for a marathon recapture session.
bogiesan

Forcing FCP to play timeline in mono before panning

I've never been able to get FCP to consistently play in mono out of both speakers or headset
before panning the channels, so you can get a better sense of what the mix is before you start
adjusting.
I will be panning channels left and right at the end before export, but if I want to hear mono
(all tracks coming out of both speakers or headset sides), is there a way to do this other than
selecting every clip and PANNING CENTER every time I add a new clip to the timeline?
I've tried going into sequence settings and changing stereo to dual mono, but that doesn't do
it either.
I've also notice whether it plays in stereo or mono (before manually panning) changes from
machine to machine and isn't consistent).
Any input would be appreciated.

Yes, I beleive that is part of the issue.
Is there no way of correcting for that other than panning every time you drop a clip into
the timeline?

Is it possible to publish a project with a different resolution than the native project resolution?

I think I know what the answer is going to be here, but I'm going to ask anyway. The background here is that I've made a few demo videos for new products and features my company is working on. I'm using CP4 for this. Our marketing department wants to take AVIs of my demos and insert them into their Powerpoint demonstrations. However, the native resolution of our demos doesn't make for a graceful import into Powerpoint. Thus, I've been directed to provide smaller res AVI files.
Thus, I am wondering if you can publish a project at a different resolution than the one in which it was recorded. My initial poking around seems to indicate that the answer is "no," and if this is truly the case, I will be rumbling over to the "Suggest a Feature" forum soon. There does seem to be a kind-of-workaround in that you can change the resolution of the project before publishing it, but this is something that cannot be undone, meaning that in order to do this, I will have to save new, smaller versions of all my projects. This is a bit ungainly.
So, if anyone knows a good trick here, I would love to hear it!

Unfortunately, I don't know what you mean when you say "manual panning." And I'm really not sure what you mean when you say the fields are not fully visible in the original image; they are completely visible. Here's a close-up from the original slide:
As you can see, the fields are completely visible.
Also, the slide is not entirely static. For the slide I chose as an example, the Password is filled in before the mouse moves. This typing may be part of what is getting Captivate confused; note this sequence from the resized version of the project:
Slide 35:
The login window first appears. Everything is normal. During this slide, the mouse moves and clicks inside the User ID field, leading to...
Slide 36:
At this point, things begin to go awry. The user name is entered, and the cursor moves to the Password field.
Slide 37:
Whoops! As soon as we click Login, everything goes back to normal.
Slide 38:
I will try a few of the suggestions you offered, and will report back with the results.

Is there a way to slow down the playback of video in Captivate 5?

I just made several recordings (FMR) and would like to slow them down for the viewer. The video was actually of someone else's software demo that moved way too fast. On the Captivate skin there is "2x" to move the video twice as fast, but no "1/2x". Is there another way to slow down the video?
Thank you!

No. Not there. Honest.
When I go to Edit + Preferences, I see a menu on the left.
General Settings:
Show Welcome Screen (checked)
Generate Project Backup (unchecked)
Default Locations (I set this to my output folder)
Project Cache (I set this to my C:\ drive)
Comments At: (blank)
Grid Size: 16
Spelling Preferences
Confirmation Messages
Defaults:
Background Color: white
Object Defaults:
Select: Text Caption (or highligh box, or image, or smart shape)
Display For: Specific Time 3 secs
Default Style: Default Caption Style
Restore Selected Button
Restore All Button'
General
Autosize buttons
Autozize Captions
Calculate Caption Timing
Recording:
Settings:
Generate Captions in: English
Audio Options:
Narration
Actions in Real Time
Camera Sounds
Hide:
Recording Window
Task Icon
System Tray Icon
Others: Move New Windows Inside recording Area
Smoothen movements for:
Drag and Drop Actions
Mouse Wheel Actions
Video Demo Settings button:Video Demo Recording
Show mouse in video demo mode
Working folder (mapped to my C:\ drive)
Keys
To stop recording: End
For Automatic panning: F4
For Manual Panning: F3
To stop panning: F7
To snap recording window to mouse: F11
To toggle mouse capture in video mode: F12
restore Defaults button
Project
Information
Author
Company
E-mail:
Website:
Copyright:
Project Name:
Description:
Publish Settings:
Include Audio (checked)
Publish Audio as Mono (checked)
I don't see anything in the whole menu that says anything about fps. What am I missing? Thanks!

Comprehensive Captivate Screen Recording Tutorial

I am looking for a complete treatment of screen recording, software simulations, FMR, and so forth. The ones I have found tell me how to check boxes and establish the settings. What I am looking for is how to capture a full screen (so resolution and screen size is an issue), how to scroll smoothly (on a website "how-tom" the scrolling is jerky, auto-panning frequently overruns the position of the screen view, and manual panning results in mouse movements that are more for moving the recording region than for the demo being recorded.), and how to edit the results without having the mouse appear on a subsequent screen shot or how to take out portions or how to add a delay on certain portions.
I am using Cp7. I want to record a demonstration about using our website. The CP project is to be published at 800x600. My monitor is 1920x1080. How do I work around the size differences and avoid the poor scrolling and panning? I have recorded at 1920x1080 and then resized the project in Captivate to 800x435 (my numbers may be off but I maintained the aspect ratio) and when I play it back, it is jumpy and certain images flash.
I just want a decent turorial. Perhaps a training class. I full treatment of how-to do screen recording so that it is smooth and is at the right screen/image size.
Any help is appreciated.
Signed, a small Adobe product user who yearns to be a big Adobe product user with just one great product: Captivate.
Michael

If I turn out to be correct, yes. But I might be wrong.
You can test whether or not this is the issue by just capturing a section of the Prezi where nothing much in the way of animation is happening. Find say a five or ten second slot with little or no animation and see whether that FMV part still exhibits the same issue. If your PC seems to handle that OK, then try a longer section with more animation. If I'm right, you should not have the issue where little or no animation is present, but the longer your file goes on and the more animation the chip in your motherboard has to decode, the slower it will get,

Is there any way to slow down playback?

i'm trying to note down times of changes in the music for an animation i'm doing but am new to soundbooth - is there any way of simply slowing down the music file i have to note these down easier?
Thanks.

No. Not there. Honest.
When I go to Edit + Preferences, I see a menu on the left.
General Settings:
Show Welcome Screen (checked)
Generate Project Backup (unchecked)
Default Locations (I set this to my output folder)
Project Cache (I set this to my C:\ drive)
Comments At: (blank)
Grid Size: 16
Spelling Preferences
Confirmation Messages
Defaults:
Background Color: white
Object Defaults:
Select: Text Caption (or highligh box, or image, or smart shape)
Display For: Specific Time 3 secs
Default Style: Default Caption Style
Restore Selected Button
Restore All Button'
General
Autosize buttons
Autozize Captions
Calculate Caption Timing
Recording:
Settings:
Generate Captions in: English
Audio Options:
Narration
Actions in Real Time
Camera Sounds
Hide:
Recording Window
Task Icon
System Tray Icon
Others: Move New Windows Inside recording Area
Smoothen movements for:
Drag and Drop Actions
Mouse Wheel Actions
Video Demo Settings button:Video Demo Recording
Show mouse in video demo mode
Working folder (mapped to my C:\ drive)
Keys
To stop recording: End
For Automatic panning: F4
For Manual Panning: F3
To stop panning: F7
To snap recording window to mouse: F11
To toggle mouse capture in video mode: F12
restore Defaults button
Project
Information
Author
Company
E-mail:
Website:
Copyright:
Project Name:
Description:
Publish Settings:
Include Audio (checked)
Publish Audio as Mono (checked)
I don't see anything in the whole menu that says anything about fps. What am I missing? Thanks!

Convert QuickTime VR file into Screen Saver

I took a 360 degree panoramic photo with my camera and used the camera software to stitch them together and create a quicktime vr file. When I open the file I can manually pan around and around endlessly. I found free programs that can create a screensaver from a movie file that plays by itself. Any ideas on how to convert the manually panning image into a video?
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Open the file in QuickTime Player and drag the lower right corner to get the size as large as practical. Use the - to zoom out (Control key also does this).
Use the keyboard shortcut Command-Shift-4 to turn the mouse into "cross-hairs" and carefully drag from upper left to lower right while holding down the mouse. Try to avoid capturing any of the QuickTime window. When doing the Command-Shift-4 combo do not have the cursor over the QuickTime file (Shift key will zoom).
Adjust the QTVR file and make as many captures as are needed and assemble them using an image editing app. Because wide angle lenses are used in making these QTVR's you may also need to "skew" some of the images before pasting them into the final image to re-create the wide angle look of the original shot.
http://homepage.mac.com/kkirkster/.Pictures/pano.jpg
I didn't bother skewing and only used two images but you get the idea.
Probably not worth the the work but it could be done.

Captivate 7 Trial version not capturing all movements

This is a new trial install and record settings are for Training, tried Auto/Manual Panning, etc. and only the last slide appears. I cannot get the software to record anything else. Is there something I am not doing?

Hi there,
May I know the application you are trying to capture? Can you please try recording a 'Word document' in Training mode with automatic /manual panning and see its working or not?
Thanks,
Nimmy Sukumaran.

Recording: difference in Application and Screen Area?

Beginner questions:
1. What is the difference between recording with Application and with Screen Area?
2. With Application selected, what is the difference between Application Window and Application Region?
Thanks.

Hi there
Imagine you have a camera and you are taking pictures of your computer screen. You can take a picture of the whole screen or you might zoom in and take a picture of just part of the screen. Panning allows you to move around an application and take pictures of a smaller part of the computer screen.
For example, you open Windows Notepad and you have panning enabled. You move the mouse around and take screen captures. You click four times.
With Panning enabled, you end up with four different areas of Notepad captured. (Four Captivate slides) Similar to the image below.
Each of the slides in Captivate would correspond to the area that was clicked in Notepad.
No panning says to ignore the panning options.
Automatic panning says to follow the mouse automatically.
Manual panning says to allow panning, but only when you (the Captivate author) request it.
Cheers... Rick
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Click here for RoboHelp and Captivate eBooks

Converting 16 x 9 footage/sequence to 4 x 3

Hi - I have a sequence that was shot in HDV 1080i60, but I need to convert it to 4 x 3 for uploading to the web.
What's the easiest way to do this? Please advise, thanks.

You can modify the presets in Compressor to resize and crop your video, and will show you the result in the preview window.
However, simply editing in 16:9 and cropping to 4:3 may not crop each shot as you prefer. Your other alternative is to drop the widescreen clips into a 4:3 sequence in FCP so that you can reframe each shot for better centering.
If you do this, youmay find it helpful to start with a native widescreen version, then create a 4:3 version from that - pasting or apple-dragging the clips in (apple dragging one sequence into another will drop in all the clips in the sequence. Once you have the wide clips in the 4:3 sequence, FCP will want to letterbox them by default. You can scale up the first clip and use past attributes to get that scale applied to all the clips before you start your manual pan & scan process.
Hope this helps -
Max Average

16x9 in Viewer, 4:3 in Simulator

I'm making a mixed DVD of 4:3 and 16:9, each on a separate track. To make the track 16:9 I chose 16:9 Pan-Scan. When I play the track it looks 16:9 in the Viewer. But when I play the Simulator it looks like 4:3. What am I doing wrong?
Elmer Lang
H2E Productions - "Better Than Water"
http://elmerlang.com - 60+ films strong

You can actually set the 16:9 track to Pan&Scan
Yes you can, but you must do so? The 16:9 will be shown full frame cropped in both sides in 4:3 TVs. Check this fast Search in the forum and how many times it has been adviced NOT to do so:
http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?objID=f952&search=Go&q=pan%26scan
This info is from DVDSP User Manual:
pan-scan: A method for displaying 16:9 video on a 4:3 monitor. Content is cropped at
each end so that the 4:3 monitor is filled. An MPEG-2 video clip with pan and scan can
include vectors that dynamically change the part of the picture that is cropped. See
also letterbox.
Alberto

Manual panning in CP4

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