What is the maximum project size?

[cvgs]

Using Captivate 5.5 on Windows XP.

I prefer to publish using .swf and I was wondering what the limitations are regarding project size.  Are you limited by the number of slides, the length of time, or file size?

Thanks in advance.

Mary

[Captiv8r]

Hi Mary

In Captivate 4 and earlier we used to say there was an unpublished limit that said you should keep any given project to somewhere between 50-65 slides. We discovered that seemed to be the "sweet spot" before things got dicey.

When Captivate was re-written and version 5 was in beta, we asked Adobe about this limit and were told there really wasn't a limit. We should be able to work with 400, 500 or 600 slides or more.

Personally, I believe there *HAS* to be some practical limit. But I don't believe we have identified it yet.

I think it's a bit like making a recipe. How much Salt is too much? (depends on the taster as well as the ingredients you are blending!)

Cheers... Rick

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[cvgs]

Rick,

Bad way to find out what the limit is in the middle of a project. 

I googled my question and didn't find anything regarding size either.  Just ways to reduce the size of a project.

Thanks, Rick!

Mary

[RodWard]

If it's any help, we've had some users on this forum log in asking questions about projects that had thousands of slides, and if memory serves, one of these project file was more than a gigabyte in size.

Mostly their issues were that the projects were taking too long to load (as well they might at that size), not that their projects had collapsed under the weight of so many slides.

I'm not saying I endorse the use of so many slides.  I'm just mentioning this to back up what Rick said.  So far we don't appear to have found a solid basis for saying what the recommended limit should be.

[cvgs]

Okay, that's giving me more of an idea of what I'm facing.

Thanks for your response.

Mary

[John_Meidl]

Rick and Rod,

I appreciate your postings regarding Captivate 5 file size.

I'm developing an online course with audio. It's 79 slides (BMP backgrounds on most slides and a small amount of audio on most slides). So far I've imported the audio through slide 53, and the cptx size is about 86,000 KB. From what I've read at this forum, it sounds like with Captivate 5, my 79-slide project won't have a corruption problem: if it had a problem, it would be only a slower loading time, correct?

Nevertheless, I'll plan to back up the project file twice a day, just in case. Do you think that would be safe?

Also, even though the cptx file is about 86,000, when I publish the file to SWF, the swf file is much smaller, which is good, right?

Thanks in advance for any advice or tips, as I don't want my project to "break." I need to complete it real soon.

- Jan

[RodWard]

Make sure you turn on Create Backups in Captivate Preferences, and do frequent saves so that the files in the Adobe Captivate Cache folder in your My Documents folder will be up to date just in case you have a disaster and need to resurrect a project that way.

Although Captivate 5 allows you to have multiple projects open at the same time in tabs, I tend NOT to use this feature unless I am copying from one project to another for some reason.  I've had occasions where something went wrong and when Captivate crashed it wasn't just one project affected.  Captivate 5.5 was much better at NOT crashing.  Still waiting to see what Cp6 does when pushed to the limit.

The project file will have everything required to create the output but in a relatively uncompressed format.  The SWF will have only what it needs to play, and will be heavily compressed.  Hence your SWF file should indeed be much smaller than the project file.

[John_Meidl]

Rob, thank you very much for the tips for protecting a Captivate 5 file, especially explaining that there's the option in Preferences to "Generate Project Backup." I never paid attention to this option previously. So now I just selected it.

Question about Captivate cache: When or why would a person want to clear the cache? I'm wondering whether clearing cache may be a good idea for me at this time since my project file (cptx) is now 102,900 KB and probably will get a bit larger as I add the audio for the last few slides. I've been working on this project file for several weeks.

Another issue: If for the second time in a day, I attempt to move a copy of my cptx file from my C drive to another drive on the network, my PC balks (freezes), causing me to do a forced shut-down. [I'll post a separate question on the forum about this issue as it's a bit different: I'll name it "Copying project file to another drive"

Jan

[RodWard]

Clearing the cache is mainly for housekeeping so that your cache directory doesn't become to huge.  It can get to gigabytes in size if you have several projects you're working on.

Unless I've experienced some major issue with a project, I only clear out the cache for that project AFTER I've finished with it and moved on to another project.

With the issue with moving your project file...Were you trying to do this with Captivate still open?  Were you using Save As inside Captivate or were you just selecting the CPTX in Windows Explorer and doing a copy/paste to back it up to a LAN drive?

[John_Meidl]

Rod, thanks for the guidelines about when to clear cache.

Regarding the dragging the cptx file to another drive -- I had closed the project file and I had also exited out of the Captivate app. Also, I was just dragging the cptx file in the Windows Explorer windows -- I wasn't doing a "Save as."

- Jan

[RodWard]

OK.  I always advise AGAINST using Save As from within Captivate as this then has Captivate looking at the remote drive when you next start it up, and this can appreciably slow down the app.  Since the filename of the project file on the local and remote drives are then going to be the same, using Save As also sets up the possibility that you will open the remote project file by mistake and end up with corruption due to network gremlins.  So my recommendation is always to close down Captivate completely and then use Windows Explorer to do a Copy / Paste to the remote backup folder.