recording software sounds with captivate

[trainingqn]

My company's software has many audio instructions and cues that we would like to capture in our elearning - how can I do this with captivate (is it possible?). I can record my own voice with a microphone, but cannot record the sounds embedded in our software - any tips?

[Shnoogins]

I use a free, open-source audio editor called Audacity. Download it here: Audacity

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To use application sounds as an input source:
Click the drop-down menu next to the microphone input level to select input source.
Select “Stereo Mix", hit record, run your app. The audio from your app will be recorded.
Experiment with your gain to find the right input settings, as you may have to turn it down a little.

[frank_hanfland]

The professional way to record multiple audio strems is to use a mixing deck. A cheap one is about $50, a decent one with USB out about $150. You then put a mike (to record your narration) in it and hook the speaker output from the soundcard to the mixer. You the feed the mixed signal into the MIC in on the PC. Make sure you use a line-level matching transformer before you put it into the mike port. Souds complicated, but is REALLY easy.

[fred_nerk1]

I'm in exactly the same situation as the original poster. My company's software has a tonne of audio buttons which I'm supposed to be using Captivate to explain. Basically, I need to click on each audio button, hear its audio, then explain it - and capture all of this in Captivate. I should mention that I'm not planning to do a narration - we normally rely on Text Captions.

How do we capture those sounds without doing something like plugging the line-out back into the line-in?

From Shnoogins' and frank.hanfland's responses, it looks like there is no such capability in Captivate and that I have to use external editors. Is this correct? I'm not looking for something super-professional. I just need to capture those sounds!

[Captiv8r]

Hi fred.nerk and welcome to our community

Captivate 3, which was announced today and should begin shipping soon may have this functionality.

Until it begins shipping and we know for certain, there does exist a relatively simple way to do this. Visit your local Radio Shack store and obtain a small cable that runs from your Speaker Out port to the Line In or Microphone port. The cable should be less than about $5.

Cheers... Rick

[fred_nerk1]

Thanks very much Rick and Peter!

[Guest]

I tried Rick's suggestion and it worked perfectly. The part was $5.24 including tax at Radio Shack. It was a very cheap and effective solution to a problem which was troubling me. Thanks Rick!

peter

[Guest]

I have also since discovered that Captivate 3 has a recording option that allows it to record Sysem Audio, so the connector is not really needed. Yeah! It is a drop down next to the check box to record narration.

peter

[Captiv8r]

Hi Peter and anyone else that reads this

While the option to record system audio is present in Captivate 3, it probably will not be available on all PCs Captivate runs on. I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 equipped with SigmaTel High Definition Audio. Captivate shows this option as disabled to me, which indicates an issue. I know I have the same issue with recording system sounds using Camtasia Studio. After having a discussion with a TechSmith person, I was told that it's unavailable because "Dell puts crappy sound hardware in their laptops". While I might disagree that my hardware is "crappy", as audio seems fine to me, I would probably agree that there is obviously something these products don't like about it.

So for me, my little $5 cable should work just dandy.

Cheers... Rick