Captivate 5.5 Playback controls disappear after playing embedded animation (swf)

[ShanieM]

I've just discovered a new problem with Captivate 5.5.

I have a project created from importing PPT slides. Near the end, I added a slide with a short swf animation object, then the slides continue after.

What happens is that during playback, after the swf plays, the playback controls vanish from the main project. (The embedded swf has no skin). The bottom border is still visible, but the play/pause buttons are just gone.

Anyone ever seen this?

Oh, and I tried splitting the presentation after the swf and daisy-chaining the two parts together, but that doesn't work either. It won't play the "new project".

Thanks for any help!

[RodWard]

What can you tell us about this embedded SWF?  How was it created?

Is it perhaps a Captivate simulation that you have nested inside the main Captivate project?

[ShanieM]

It is exactly that. A short Captivate simulation. The .swf is about 2.5M.

I’m seeing two other things in Cap 5.5 that weren’t in v5, so I don’t know if they’re related. When the .swf plays in Design-time, there’s a small box that appears over it that says “Created by Adobe Captivate 5.5”, also a file called “test42.png” is being created in the folder where the .cptx files live. It’s always just the letter “E”. Very strange, but I couldn’t find anything about it on the forum.

Thanks for looking into this!

Shanie Mattox, CTS-I, DMC-E

Crestron South

Ext 13014

[RodWard]

OK, the news I have to give you is not good.

The reason your playbar is probably disappearing just when you play this embedded SWF is that the embedded SWF doesn't have a playbar of its own, and since it's also a Captivate project file, the settings in the embedded SWF are affecting the settings in the parent SWF at runtime.

It's been mentioned many times on this forum that it's a bad idea to nest Captivate SWFs inside other Captivate SWFs.  It causes lots of issues.

Your better solution is to add the slides from the nested project into the main project and edit them from there.

[ShanieM]

I think I can make that work. Thanks for the info.

By the by, I noticed that you were in on this thread as well:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/742195

about the audio cut off issue.

Bad news is, I still have that problem in 5.5. THAT one is a big problem. I had to fight for the upgrade because tech support said it was fixed, but it's not.

If you can look into that one, I would be your new best friend.

Thanks again.

[Jim_Leichliter]

I hope you don't mind me adding my 2 cents here....

I had a client who had this same issue.  The work around for him was to add a playbar to the embedded/nested swf... BUT you can hide it by setting the playbar's alpha to zero, set it for "overlay", removing all the buttons, and also removing the border at the bottom.

Give that a try and see how it goes.

Jim Leichliter

[ShanieM]

Excellent! Thanks for the $.02!

Shanie Mattox, CTS-I, DMC-E

Crestron South

Ext 13014

[ShanieM]

That worked great. Thanks!

Shanie Mattox, CTS-I, DMC-E

Crestron South

Ext 13014

[Laura_LS_Marketing]

Jim - thank you - I had this problem in a software demo for a client and your fix worked - now I can go to sleep without dreading tomorrow in the office - Laura xxxxx

[Colday213]

But what about the 'test42.png' issue?

I'm now getting this, very weird.

I have 6 of them over 6 different products. But mine have the letters E C D C D C across the 6 files. Just one letter per file.

I'm bemused.

I cannot find any reason as to why this is being created!

[Bulbbamander]

I GET THE STUPID IMAGE ALL THE TIME

test42.png -> just a frking letter E

[Guest]

Another 0.2 cent's worth ...

I spent a good few hours on this problem yesterday and manage to crack it, in a manner of speaking, before spotting this Forum entry.

Just to add a quick comment to Jim and Rod's excellent advice: I found that the embedded SWF would still play, without causing the main project's playbar to disappear, if you follow Jim's advice, above, for each embedded SWF's Skin Editor settings, with the following minor tweak, which may be appropriate for some situations ...

a) Clear the Playbar Overlay check box

b) The Playback Colors check box becomes available, so select it

c) For Background, select the same colour as your slide background (white, in my project's case)

This is just another option to try, if you experience the "disappearing playbar" problem.

[Guest]

... and yet another .2 cents worth.

Have we been making this needlessly complicated? I suspect so. I've just stumbled across the solution proposed here:

http://www.dorna.nl/?cat=56

All that's needed is to "add an action Assign that sets cpCmndShowPlaybar to 0 to the first slide in the small [i.e. the embedded] project".

I haven't tested it, but I can't think of a reason why it shouldn't work!

[RodWard]

I just tested this and it seems to work fine.

I'm still not a fan of embedding Captivate SWFs inside other Captivate SWFs but it's nice you know that there is a workaround for at least one of the issues this causes.