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Not a glib question, repeat Not a glib question.
A few months ago I had a limited experience using Captivate 3 to create material for an on-line systems training package. I found the pack intuitive, fast running and generally a pleasure to use.
Based on that experience I purchased Captivate 5 thinking it would be the perfect tool for a new project.
It has been anything but perfect; I spent a large part of Easter in the office re-doing work that I had lost through various crashes. Here are my litany if gripes.
1) Time to open/save/close projects. It can take 10 minutes or more to save changes to a project. Sometimes it just gives up the ghost and crashes. These delays would great if I want to take 20 coffee breaks a day but they hopeless for meeting my deadlines
2) Saving and such often results in project freezing and LOTS of work being lost. I have tried the fix of deleting the lock file. It doesn’t work.
3) Audio: one minute I can record audio commentary to a slide, the next minute I can’t. Doesn't matter how I adjust the mic settings it just will not pick up any sound. Sometimes it looks like it is recording but all it picks up is static other times I get an error message saying there is no microphone.
The record to slides works on some presentations but not on others. Sometimes it only works on the first few slides of a project: then just stops. There just doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the way it stops working.
Sometimes it works but the sound quality is unbelievably bad. I have tried recording with 4 different mics with the same results.
4) Collecting quiz results via adobe.com: nothing doing there. The other methods of collection don't work either (although that is not really a surprise).
I wonder if these are common or if there is something inherently wrong with the set-up on my computer?
All in all my last 2 weeks of using Captivate has been pretty hopeless. PS if you are wondering why I have to time to write all this when I have deadlines it is because I am waiting for a project to close.
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Are you on a corporate network and storing your Captivate project files on a LAN drive somewhere instead of on your local PC C drive?
Is your IT environment set up so that your My Documents folder is actually housed on a server instead of on your local PC drive?
Can you please upload a screenshot of your Preferences > General Settings so that I can see where your default locations are set to?
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Thanks for your swift response.
Here the screen shot you requested (I think).
Hope this is the issue because frankly I am on the verge of cracking.
Look forward to your response.
Thanks
Malcolm
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Malcolm, I cannot see any graphic image in your last post. Did you use the small camera icon on the post toolbar to insert the graphic?
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Sorry Rod I didn't.Here is a second attempt. Thanks!
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OK. That's what I thought.
Your screenshot indicates that your IT department has hijacked your My Documents folder and placed it on a network drive. My guess is that your Captivate project files are also located inside your My Documents folder on this network drive, correct?
This might be a great strategy from their point of view because it means employee files that would normally be scattered across hundreds or thousands of PCs, can all be backed up very easily just by backing up one server. However, this same strategy can be a disaster when it comes to Adobe Captivate because Cp needs all of the working files and folders to be situated on your own PC hard drive.
I'm hoping that they haven't locked you out of the ability to create folders on your own C drive otherwise you won't be able to do as I'm going to instruct you next.
First things you need to do to resolve your current issues are:
Try this and let me know if things improve. This won't fix your audi recording issues. But we'll deal with that once we know you can open and save Captivate files properly.
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Hi Rod.
Got the save down from who knows how many minutes to 30 seconds. Provided IT don’t take over my new Captivate folders through some automated process when I shut my computer down I’ll consider that one solved!
I’ll do the flash think tomorrow, I’m to addled to start Googling.
Anyway thanks for that, I appreciate how quickly you replied to me.
Malcolm
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OK. That's more like it.
We still have a few more issues to close out from your initial list, but I think the ability to work at all on your files without risking crashes or corruption was the most important.
Unfortunately, it's issues like this that cause people to criticise Captivate, when in fact they're setup is the main cause of the problem. You at least asked the question as to whether your issue was due to setup, rather than ranting about the software being junk like some other users have done. I commend you for that.
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By the way, a couple more things I forgot to tell you to:
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Just as wee addendum I think I may have partially cracked the microphone/audio issue. In some slides the Audio Settings> Audio Imput Device is set to use the integrated mic in the lap top in others it is set to use the various other devices I have used. Possibly my audio issue stems from trying out so many different sound recording devices on one project.
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Hi Andy
Just turned on the back up. Thanks for the tip.