Persistent Background Animation

[Guest]

Hey all,

I'd like to use a SWF file as a persistent background animation.  The problem I'm running into is that it stops playing when the playhead stops.  I've tried all the timimg options and no luck.  In fact, when I choose the Play for rest of project option, my animation is played ON TOP of all objects, not in the background.  I'm on Cap5.5 Windows7.  Any help is greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

[vcantera1]

Ran into the same problem.  Here's my work-around:

1. Create your background design (including the swf) in powerpoint.

2. Import the powerpoint slide to captivate.

• To make it keep looping, you must pause the captivate project before the end of the slide (i.e. if the ppt slide is 10 seconds, make sure your Captivate slide pauses before 10 seconds)

The downside to it is that you will not have the ease of selecting it as a background.  But it'll be relatively easy to paste it to every slide.

Hope it helps.

-Vic-

[Guest]

Thanks for the speedy response.  Unfortunately, it didn't work.  The PPT file failed to play in in the slide.  The PPT played automatically within PPT but not once I imported it.  I might be doing something wrong and, if I am, I'm open to further instruction.  Thank you for your help so far.

[vcantera1]

My apologies... I was thinking gif files.  Not sure how I confused it with swf.  I'll test and let you know if I find something.

[Guest]

It would seem the challenge still stands.  I still can't seem to get a persistent animation that continues independent of the playhead.  Any additional thoughts are appreciated!

Cheers all!

[Amy_Blankenship · Accepted solution]

I highly doubt that the Captivate team put in the effort necessary to dig through your movie and stop anything that could be looping. So you might want to try just converting everything that's at the top level of your Flash movie into a symbol.  That way, if they stop() your main timeline, the nested timeline might continue.

Good luck!

[Guest]

That did it!  So, what I ended up doing was the following:

• Import FLV file into Flash via File/Import/Import Video...
• Make sure that the video is imported as a Movie Clip - here's how:
  • Locate your FLV file.
  • Select Embed FLV option.
  • Click NEXT.
  • In the Embedding screen make sure to select Movie Clip (not Embedded - that was my mistake)
  • Click NEXT.
  • Click FINISH.
  • NOTE: if you want the backround to just continue looping, there's no need to write any ActionScript commands at all.
• Export movie to SWF via File/Export/Export Movie...

Thank you for all your responses!  I couldn't have figured this out without all your help!  Hopefully this will help someone else!

[AndyKingInOC]

have you tried adding the swf to a master slide?  I tested it just now and seemed to work OK.