Problem with unstable and slow SWFs

Question

Good evening,
Some of my users are reporting problems with the SWF output of my intensive Captive file which includes significant software simulation. I knew that these files were going to be resource intensive due to the nature of the project, but I felt comfortable with system requirements of at least 2 gb RAM and a mid-range processor.
Unfortunately, some of my users who meet this criteria are reporting problems including text animations not playing in full and slow slide transitions. I cannot replicate this problem on any of my machines.
I have been playing around trying to compress images as much as possible and otherwise reduce file size. What else can be done? What are the top five things I can do to remedy this problem?
My presentation is about 50 slides and the SWF output is about 4.5 mb.
Thanks

Answer 1

I've seen this type of thing many times, especially in corporate environments.
My top suggestions:
If you've taken all reasonable steps to make your project as web-friendly as possible by this time, don't make any more changes to your project until you've exhausted the possibilities below.  It is most likely NOT your project that is at fault.
Find out more details from the users that are complaining.  If at all possible, actually go and sit with them to watch the behaviour they're talking about.  Don't believe everything you hear.
Check that users are on the correct version of Flash Player. For example, Flash Player 10 can play significantly better than Flash 9.
Ask the user to check defragmentation on their PC.  Most users DON'T know how to do this and never defragment. As a result, I have seen PCs in corporate IT environments that had not been defragmented in years.  Their hard drive showed up mostly red when the fragmentation analysis was done.  This lack of PC housekeeping can contribute to many issues, especially with Flash or multimedia playback.  Ask the user to defragment 2 or 3 times to be on the safe side.
Watch the CPU on Task Manager while the PC is playing the Captivate presentation.  The performance monitor should tell you if the CPU is struggling and unable to decode the content fast enough.
Try to have another user log onto the same machine using a different profile and see if they experience the same issues.  This can tell you whether the issue is due to a corrupted user profile.  Conversely, have the same user log onto a different machine, creating a new profile for themselves on that PC to see if they experience the same issue.  If it seems to be their profile at fault, they may need to get some IT dude to blow away their profile and set it up afresh.
Check whether or not the issue could be due to server latency.  This is especially the case where LMSs are involved.  Users will often experience latency issues such as slow transitions from one quiz slide to the next because the course module has to wait for the LMS to respond before it can move forward.  If this is occurring for a significant number of users, you can try using the optional SCORM template that only sends tracking data at the end of the module instead of all the way through.
In my experience, if 95% of your user base is playing the content without issue, you don't need to change anything.  Chances are that whatever is going wrong for the few that are complaining about poor playback wouldn't necessarily improve no matter what you did to your project.  In the vast majority of cases, you need to isolate what exactly is causing the issue for these users and correct it ON THEIR END.
Rod Ward
www.infosemantics.com.au
UPDATE: I just realised that a lot of this information would probably help others, so I created a blog post documenting these steps: http://www.infosemantics.com.au/debug_slow_playback