Blank Screen Problem with Animations

Report · Jan 21, 2009

When we have a slide which contains an animation - the slide, when published (or even just previewed) displays a blank white screen just with any captions we've added over it. However when you play the slide still in editing mode it displays correctly.

We are using Captivate 3

Any help would be appreciated

Cheers

Report · Jan 21, 2009

You might try outputting (publishing) with a different Flash version. Captivate 3 allows you to choose, from the Publish menu, among Flash 7, 8, or 9. Try changing that to see if it helps.

More likely is the same basic issue (Flash version) with the animations themselves - if the inserted animations are SWFs, try republishing them from Flash, as a different version, to see if that helps.

If the animations are actually AVI or animated GIF files, my observations might still apply. Check the source files first, to see if there is a problem with compatibility there. Best wishes for success, Laura.

Report · Jan 21, 2009

Welcome to our community, Laura

In addition to what CatBandit offered, I'll add that here in the forums we have been seeing a fairly regular stream of reporting a similar issue related to folks that have upgraded to Flash Player 10. Captivate 3 doesn't like to allow previewing of certain content when you have Flash Player 10 installed. So if the other suggestions fail to help resolve the situation, here is something else to think about and try.

Link to a thread discussing why Flash Player/Plug in version 10 breaks preview (Posted by an Adobe employee) Click here

Article and link for uninstalling Flash Player/Plug In: http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_14157
Article and links for downloading and installing older versions: http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_14266

Version 9 should work okay.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Jan 22, 2009

We are using flash 10 - so that could be it.
Unfortunately, don't think they'll downgrade it on the network just to solve this.
Cheers

Report · Jan 22, 2009

Hi Laura,

Have you tried previewing your Captivate project in a web browser by pressing F12. You might find that this enables you to see the animations. If not (and I have had to do this since I installed Flash CS4 Professional) you could just publish the SWF and then press the "View Output" button. A long winded approach I know, but it does work for me.

The other solution would be to download the trail version of Captivate 4. This works seamlessly with the Flash 10 player

Download the Adobe Captivate 4 trial

HTH

Best - Mark

Report · Jan 22, 2009

I have tried the F12 thing - it displays perfectly in Internet Explorer. Except it informs me that 'FlashPlayer has stopped an illegal operation' each time.

Strangely though, when we publish this (selecting different versions of flash player each time) - it still displays the blank screen on the animation slides. The animations were just captured automatically when recording the screen captures (so I don't know what files types they are, they are just the default ones Captivate decided on?)

Also, we are then putting each captivate file into the programme eXe - they will not be played as stand alone videos. Don't know if that makes a difference.

I will see if we can get the Captivate 4 trial installed.

Thanks for all your help

Report · Jan 22, 2009

Hi Laura,

The fact that the Flash Player has stopped an illegal operation is very strange to say the least. As Rick pointed out Flash Player 10 does not play nice with Adobe Captivate 3. Whether Adobe will offer a patch for Adobe Captivate 3, especially now that Captivate 4 is out, remains to be seen, though personally I think that this issue should be addressed.

The animations created by Captivate known as FMRs - full motion recording(s) are slightly different from normal SWF files, which is why attempting to use the FMR Editor utility (now built into Captivate 4 ) with "normal SWF" files can caused problems.

As for putting the Captivate files into an EXE program. As long as you make sure the FMR (SWF files) are in the same folder as the main Captivate file, you should be OK. Though I would certainly recommend that you include some extensive testing during your QA cycles. :-)

Let us know if you do experience any issues.

Best - Mark

Report · Jan 22, 2009

Hi all

Mark, I suspect what Laura is seeing is the common issue when you have links to URLs in the Captivate and run locally to test. I frequently point folks to This Link when they report it.

Laura, I'm a bit curious if you are managing to get all the different files you need out where you are using them. It is sounding like Captivate simply isn't seeing them. What seems to muddy the waters further here is your mention of Also, we are then putting each captivate file into the programme eXe - they will not be played as stand alone videos. Don't know if that makes a difference.. So I'm wondering if that isn't a large factor here.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Jan 22, 2009

Hi,

Sorry if I'm confusing anyone: we have no problem with captivate 3 at all, except for the full motion parts.
We output as flash fine, they run fine standalone, and they run when embedded into the learning package software eXe.

The only problem is when there is a full motion recording within the file; that particular part shows as a white screen, then as soon as the slide containing the animation ends, it carrys on playing as normal. The captivate files that contain no animation, work perfectly all the way through.

I have had captivate 4 installed, but as it says once converted you cannot open in captivate 3, I will have to create some test files before testing it.

Thanks for all your ideas

Report · Jan 22, 2009

Hi,

Sorry if I'm confusing anyone: we have no problem with captivate 3 at all, except for the full motion parts.
We output as flash fine, they run fine standalone, and they run when embedded into the learning package software eXe.

The only problem is when there is a full motion recording within the file; that particular part shows as a white screen, then as soon as the slide containing the animation ends, it carrys on playing as normal. The captivate files that contain no animation, work perfectly all the way through.

I have had captivate 4 installed, but as it says once converted you cannot open in captivate 3, I will have to create some test files before testing it.

Thanks for all your ideas

Report · Jan 22, 2009

Hi Laura

Okay, here's the deal. I'm assuming the "animations" are full motion recordings that were created during the process of recording your presentation. Typically any click and drag will create these. Common actions include moving a window from here to there, selecting across some text and dragging the thumb of the scroll bar.

These full motion bits end up as externally referenced SWF files in the output. In a common setup, all the files are plopped into the same folder and as long as everything was included, it should work. But what you are describing seems to infer that the externally referenced full motion SWFs aren't being found and loaded. This is causing the white screens to appear. I'm just guessing here, but when you say things don't work when loaded into the learning package exe this makes me think that something about that process is causing the externally referenced SWF files to not be included as part of the package.

What to do?

One option that may help is to combine it all in a single SWF. To do this, you may employ a neat trick pioneered by fellow Adobe Community Expert and Adobe Certified Instructor John Daigle.

Publish the content to Flash 7 version. Use a folder that is considered a temporary location. This should create the full motion SWF files. Now, back in Captivate, create a blank slide immediately before or immediately following a full motion slide. Click Insert > Animation and insert the matching full motion SWF from the temporary folder. Then delete the slide with the original. Repeat this process as often as needed to replace all the originals with the published versions. Then publish again. Again, ensure you target Flash 7. You should end up with a single SWF with the full motion clips as part of the main movie.

Give that a go and see if you have better results.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Jan 23, 2009

Thanks for all your ideas.
We are upgrading to Captivate 4 and everything we do with the files works perfectly (well has done so far on the trial version)
Cheers

Report · Jan 23, 2009

LOL! That is certainly a viable option!

Report · Feb 09, 2010

Hello Captivate Experts,

I am not really new to Captivate, but am to this, "White Screen Problem with Animations" issue. I have Flash Player 10 installed and am using Captivate 4.

It first started with a simple form that I made in Flash to be installed into Captivate. Because of the way the slide was fading in, it didn't play the swf correctly. I had to add 10 frames to my Flash document at the front so it would play correctly. That was no big deal. Here's the big deal:

I created a simple intoduction swf for the first slide in the show, not even 30 frames long. I published it for Flash Player 10 in both Flash and Captivate, using AS3. When importing the swf, it plays fine in the import dialog thumbnail, but doesn't play at all when I preview it. I too get the dreaded white screen. However, like another user was explaining, the swf plays fine if I preview it in the edit mode. Additionally, I got the following errors from Flash Player 10 when previewing using "next 5 slides":

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at captivate.Veela_AS3::rdSwfLoader/UnloadSWF()
at captivate.Veela_AS3::rdSlide/hideSlide()
at captivate.Veela_AS3::rdMovie/doPlay()
at captivate.Veela_AS3::rdMovie/doGotoFrame()
at captivate.Veela_AS3::rdMovie/gotoFrame()
at captivate.Veela_AS3::rdMovie/checkPreviewCommands()
at captivate.Veela_AS3::rdMovie/movieonEnterFrame()
at captivate.Veela_AS3::CaptivateMainTimeline/onenterframe()

I tried publishing both the swf and preview files for Flash Player 9 with no help.

My captivate project is 105 or so slides. It has two FLVs, which play just fine, and just two swf animations: one simple checkbox form that plays fine and the intro slide that gives me the white screen. I published the whole thing (without the intro slide swf) to my server and tried to play it, launching the show from the "htm" file. All I got were Flash Player 10 errors and it wouldn't play. However, if I lauched just the swf, it played fine; without the playbar available of course.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Report · Feb 09, 2010

Dear Captivate Experts,

I have another problem with Captivate 4 (C4)... Intermittently, F12 yields nothing in my project. Using the menu selection yields nothing as well. Now it goes through the process of crunching everything from sounds to slides, but after everything is processed, no browser action. I say intermittently because it WAS working yesterday off and on. Today, it's just not working.

I created the slides in MS PPT 2007 and I first published the project using Adobe Presenter. When it couldn't hack the Flash CS4 form I had on one slide (played it wacky), I thought I'd give C4 a try. Well C4 handled the form fine, but I'm getting the White Screen when previewing on the first slide Flash swf and it freezes there, like it's waiting for the animation to end.

Could it be that when I imported the pptx file into C4 that C4 acquired some stuff from Adobe Presenter as well and is affecting how Captivate is working?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Report · Feb 10, 2010

Hi there

I'm going to crawl way out here on this little limb and suggest that there isn't anything related to Presenter lurking about. I've played with it a bit and I it seems to me that it simply grabs things from PowerPont and builds a Flash animation from them. But it really doesn't insert anything specific to Presenter into the slides that I'm aware of.

My guess here is that it's the Flash Animation that may be gagging both Presenter and Captivate. What happens if you omit the slide containing the additional Flash content? Do things begin working in both Presenter and Captivate?

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links

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Report · Feb 10, 2010

Thank you for your reply.

When I developed the PPTX initially, I used Presenter and published it with, oh, a dozen or so PDF attachments, so the learner could look at the source materials for my discussion. Neat little feature. I also liked the Presenter screen better than the simplified captivate one. I tested it on my desktop and it played the Flash CS4 form wrong. Meaning, it didn't obey the [stop();] commands that I installed. Please allow me to explain: The form is a checkbox type, where the learner makes selections based upon his/her opinion and then clicks a button; the form reveals a change in the title and adds a red square, surrounding a group of checkboxes. Basically the form is two frames long in theory: first frame provides a title, checkboxes and button; second has a title change and adds a red box. Presenter played the form back and forth between the two frames very, very rapidly, as if I had not installed actionscript to stop the animation on the first frame. That's when I decided to try Captivate 4, to see whether the form would be treated differently, which it was: it played better, but I had to add a few frames in front of frame 1 for some reason. When loading the form, Captivate went straight to frame 2 in the form's animation sequence, and didn't obey my [stop();] actionscript that I had on frame 1. The workaround for me was to add a few frames in front of the stop(); actionscirpt to delay it a bit.

Now here is where I get to my point in disagreement with your hypothesis "that there isn't anything related to Presenter lurking about."

When I imported the PPTX file into Captivate 4, I did a default import (all slides selected). During the process of development, I decided to edit one slide in PowerPoint from within the Captivate environment; cool feature. After I was done editing, I saved it and a strange dialog appeared, alerting me to the fact that Captivate (or PowerPoint) could not find the PDF files that I had attached (originally in Presenter) and gave me three choices, Browse, Delete and ignore. The first time this happened, I browsed for the PDFs and found that it gagged Captivate to the point where it was telling me that I didn't have enough memory to create the preview swf, and other odd things (I have 4Gb of RAM and 1.5 Tb drive), like it wouldn't save the file (soft crash?). So the next time, I decided to delete instead. The result was that everything worked fine. However, when I tried to edit a single slide again, Captivate (or is it Powerpoint?) asked me for the location of the PDF attachments again. So whichever program is in charge during the edit (I imagine it is PowerPoint within a Captivate shell of some sort), that program is asking me for the PDF attachments, which I originally did in Presenter. So for some reason, when I imported the PPTX file into Captivate, included were pointers to the PDF files. Why would that happen?

Regards

Report · Feb 10, 2010

Another funny thing happened to me today: Putting a simple text animation on a slide, I made a change in the options tab and clicked apply. I got the following dialog: "Cannot Load winswfgenerator.dll." Afterwards my editing stage went blank.

All throughout this project, I have had to continuously save my project, i.e. do something, save; do something else, save again. I have acquired a CTRL-S twitch in my left hand from years of dealing with development software that has bugs. Captivate has my old twitch back. I have been noticing that Captivate will only let me make a few edits before the edit stage will go blank and all I will see is the blank slide dimensions that show up in the middle of the slide. My next move is to close the program and restart it. In the process of closing (using the "x" at the top right or using the FILE menu exit item, it doesn't matter), I am prompted to either save my project or not. Pretty typical so far. I choose SAVE. The program looks like it is saving, but it doesn't. After the save button is pushed, the dialog box closes and one would expect to see the program close; well, it doesn't do that either. So I try to exit again, and again it prompts me to save my project. I could do that all day long. Furthermore, none of the saves are accomplished. The only way I can get the program to close is to select NO when prompted to save my file after selecting EXIT.

I always know when the above scenario will occur when the edit stage goes blank. I have had it happen when scrubbing through the audio on a slide numerous times.

Regards,

Report · Feb 10, 2010

Hi there

Where exactly is your project when you are making edits? Local PC or somewhere on a network? If you say somewhere on a network, try moving the project to your local PC and only making edits to it while there.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links

Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form

Adobe Certified Captivate Training

SorcerStone Blog

Captivate eBooks

Report · Feb 10, 2010

My project is on my local drive. It's a 1.4 Tb drive.

Report · Sep 08, 2010

Is the proposed solution to the infamous white screen only to manually select "Flash 8 or 9" from the publish options and then have to publish the movie file every time I want to verify it looks good?

You're basically saying the preview method is broken and not to use it. The publish method works if you happen to have the patience of a Saint and overrite your files every single time just to preview it? The program does not have a method for remembering the flash version. No publish settings?

When can we expect an update? I won't be able to use this program for now in it's current state.

Report · Sep 08, 2010

Welcome to our community Vfire

Are you using Captivate 3?

I ask because Captivate 5 is the current version.

If you are still using Version 3, you may also preview using the browser. (F12) You may also downgrade your Flash Player/Plug In version.

Cheers... Rick

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Report · Feb 06, 2009

Hey Rick, I think I have a similar issue, and at this point I can't tell whether it's a bug or cockpit error.

I have a short test video (.wmv) that was recorded from a webcam. I ran that through Flash 8 to convert it to a .flv file. I imported the .flv file onto a slide in a Captivate 4 (trial download) project. When I preview, I can see the movie perfectly.

But, when I publish and view the output, I get the slide, but no movie - no footprint for it - it's like it's not even in the project. I have tried publshing as an .exe, and as a .swf - just not sure which format is best.

My ultimate goal is to create a Captivate project that combines a very short simple software demo with a brief life-action webcam movie, then embed the whole hot mess into an email that I design through an online email marketing host (Constant Contact), to send to our clients. Am I asking for more than is humanly possible?

Edit: I should add that I tried importing the .flv both as a Flash movie and as an animation, after surfing the Adobe KB for a while. No luck on the final output, either way.

Report · Feb 06, 2009

Hey backatcha!

That's odd that you would see it fine and it would work during preview but not after publishing. The only thing that comes to mind here is that FLV also requires some metadata to be present. But I would think if that were the case, that it were missing the required metadata, it wouldn't even preview. So I'm a bit stumped.

How are you viewing after publishing? If you are copying to a server, it's possible that you are forgetting to include the .FLV. They are external. But then again, that's the odd part. You said you tried EXE too. And as far as I'm aware, the EXE format would bundle the FLV into the EXE so you had a single file.

Hmmm, another thought was sparked. How is the FLV triggered? There are different ways to configure it. I think by default you get a skin and it's paused until you hover and click play.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Feb 06, 2009

a lot to play with and test - thanks for the suggestions. I can see that there are a few others here in the forum who have the same question in other topic threads. I wonder if there is actually a defect mucking up the whole thing.