Cap 3 versus Cap 4

[Jadeen1975]

My org wants to create CBT/WBT modules (primarily for MS prods) and we have purchased one license for Cap 3.  Currently I am the only one using Cap 3, however this may change soon and we may have more designers (ergo more licenses) working on the modules.  If we bring more people into creating the modules, then there will be collaboration and all users must be able to access all of the projects.

I have been reading on these forums about compatibility issues between Cap 3 and Cap 4, namely bringing Cap 3 projects into Cap 4 and other forward compatibility problems.  Also, I understand that there is no reverse compatibility.

I am still in the paper-design and learning Cap s/w stage.  Before I actually begin creating the modules in Cap 3 I would like your opinions.  Since my org  has only one Cap 3 license right now, would it make more sense to upgrade to Cap 4 right now and avoid any possible future upgrade problems?  I suspect that I will get an overwhelming "Yes" from all of you.  There is a problem, however:  I work for the federal government and getting permission to purchase the upgrade may be difficult as I will have to justify the upgrade and will need a solid rationale for spending the funds.

Any help and advice is greatly welcome.

Cheers!

[www_cpguru_com]

It really depends on what you are planning on doing with Captivate. For the most parts Captivate 3 would be adequate and you could probably get away with using that for quite some time. However, Captivate 4 is a better product.

In my view the biggest differences between Captivate 3 and Captivate 4 are these:

1. The introduction of user defined variables and advanced actions.

2. The possibility to use widgets (although you can still make most of this with regular Flash and use it in Captivate 3).

3. The speed increase when working with Captivate.

For me point 3 alone was worth the upgrade. Captivate 3 always felt a bit sluggish and lagging when you were working, but this has significantly improved with Captivate 4. The investment of US$ 299 for the upgrade was probably returned within a couple of weeks due the the performance increase.

As for reverse compatability that is non-existant. Forward compatability from CP3 to CP4 has worked flawlessly for me and my team. We haven't experienced any problems with this.

When you write "avoid any future upgrade problems" is that because you are worried that if you don't upgrade from CP3 to CP4 now then you wouldn't be elligible for an upgrade to an eventual CP5 later? Usually the upgrade licenses from Adobe go back the last 2-3 versions so you should be okay with that.

Well that was my 5 cents.

/Michael

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Click here to visit the www.captivate4.com blog

[robin_c_flores]

So, using widgets and user/system variables are only available with CP4?

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Indeed they were introduced with Captivate 4. They continue on in Captivate 5.

Cheers... Rick

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[Jadeen1975]

When you write "avoid any future upgrade problems" is that because you are worried that if you don't upgrade from CP3 to CP4 now then you wouldn't be elligible for an upgrade to an eventual CP5 later? Usually the upgrade licenses from Adobe go back the last 2-3 versions so you should be okay with that.

Michael:  thanks for the knowledge and the time taken to write it!

To your specific quotation above:  Yes, I am worried about the eventual CP5.  Knowing that Adobe (generally) isn't a one-up upgrade system is very helpful.

When you said that your team had no probs converting Cap3 files fwd to Cap4, did you mean that the s/w did most of the work?  Or, did you have have to recompile projects and re-publish everything?  I can not easily download the trial Cap4 due to the massive security system on our networks or else I would just do some experiments on my own!

Many thanks!

[www_cpguru_com]

The software - Captivate 4 - did the converting. Basically if you open up a Captivate 3 file it will tell you that it needs to convert it to Captivate 4 format. You get the choice to save the file with a new name (which always is a good idea to do.)

For the majority of our courses - I would say 90% - the conversion went without any problems and we could do our corrections/updates and then republish the course and load in into our LMS.

The remaining 10% was not without problems, but these were courses that contained voice-over. In the beginning when Captivate 4 was released there were some major issues with the sound handling and compression, so any voice-over you had in your courses sounded awful in Captivate 4. This has later been resolved with a patch for Captivate 4 so to my knowledge this wouldn't be a problem anymore.

/Michael

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Click here to visit the www.captivate4.com blog