Is it possible to publish a project with a different resolution than the native project resolution?

[Guest]

I think I know what the answer is going to be here, but I'm going to ask anyway. The background here is that I've made a few demo videos for new products and features my company is working on. I'm using CP4 for this. Our marketing department wants to take AVIs of my demos and insert them into their Powerpoint demonstrations. However, the native resolution of our demos doesn't make for a graceful import into Powerpoint. Thus, I've been directed to provide smaller res AVI files.

Thus, I am wondering if you can publish a project at a different resolution than the one in which it was recorded. My initial poking around seems to indicate that the answer is "no," and if this is truly the case, I will be rumbling over to the "Suggest a Feature" forum soon. There does seem to be a kind-of-workaround in that you can change the resolution of the project before publishing it, but this is something that cannot be undone, meaning that in order to do this, I will have to save new, smaller versions of all my projects. This is a bit ungainly.

So, if anyone knows a good trick here, I would love to hear it!

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Just hoping we are using the same terminology for resolution of the project. If you mean the total resolution, number of pixels for the vertical and horizontal dimensions, there is a possiblity to adapt the resolution. But not right away publishing in another resolution.Can I explain with an example?

• You have a CP-file, labeled  "Big" with a total resolution of 1024x768 pixels, but the published SWF is too big (in terms of resolution and size in kB) to be inserted in the presentation.
• Try to find out the ideal resolution for inserting, width and height in pixels, p.e. 400x250
• Downscale the CP-file (Project, Rescale) to a resolution, where you keep the width-height ratio; in this example this would be 333x250 pixels, so you will not have the ideal 'size' but you will have the best quality and no deforming of the picture. If it is possible (but doubt it) you could allow cropping to have the resolution of 400x250 but then you will lose 50 pixels in the vertical direction (width-height should be ideally 400x300). Save this new CP-file as "Small".
• If you publish the CP-file "Small" you will have the wanted resolution.

Some graphical designers refer to the resolution as pixels per inch, but in SWF's this is not relevant, it is always 72ppi.

Side note: File size is not only influenced by the resolution, but also by the presence of Audio (and its quality), FMR (and its quality).

Hope this helps,

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Well, you have it right, though I might point out that you pretty much described the exact same workaround that I did. Unfortunately, I have found that this workaround doesn't work! Or at least, it doesn't work perfectly; some of my slides came out horribly distorted. Looks like I'll be visiting both "Request a Feature" and "Bug Report"!

[Lilybiri]

Sorry to be there again. You said that you got a distortion? Did you really downscale to the same width-height ratio? I have been rescaling quite a lot of projects, depending on the way they would have to be published, and I did never have that sort of problem. Could you perhaps post a screenshot of a slide before downscaling and after when it was distorted? I believe one should be sure before introducing a request to the Adobe team. For the moment I'm quite happy with the result of downscaling, but will never use upscaling because of quality loss. But that is rather logical.

Forgot to mention the possiblity to have the caption texts rescaled or not.

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Here's a slide from my original project:

Here's the same slide after it's been rescaled:

You can see that there are three "lines" of sorts in the resized slide that are suddently distorted. It's like there are a few magnification boxes on the slide that I can't get rid of.

For some reason, this only pops up in slides where this login screen is shown. This screen pops up a few times in this project, and gets screwed up, every time. The only thing I can think of that would cause this is that those slides were recorded slightly differently than the others- I had to record at a custom resolution instead of just snapping to the window, as doing so would cause the window to fill the screen, which did not look good.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

This is indeed a problem. Did you use manual panning to capture this part, because it is visible that the fields to be filled in (in the original image) are only partly there, not complete (I hope you understand what I mean, English is not my native language)? It is a static slide, I think (am seeing the mouse cursor path). What is happening really is not clear to me, only the developing team could perhaps explain. You have been capturing this part separately, apparently CP has problems with rescaling a screenshot that seems not to be 'complete' because part of the fields are missing. I'm just wondering if downscaling would lead to the same distortion if you only had this slide (or similar) in a separate project to downscale.

I just tried a similar situation, with fields not all visible, and panned manually. Afterwards I did a downscaling, all worked well. But I captured only at that resolution.

Sorry not to be able to find an appropriate explanation. If you ever know something more, please report it to this thread.

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Unfortunately, I don't know what you mean when you say "manual panning." And I'm really not sure what you mean when you say the fields are not fully visible in the original image; they are completely visible. Here's a close-up from the original slide:

As you can see, the fields are completely visible.

Also, the slide is not entirely static. For the slide I chose as an example, the Password is filled in before the mouse moves. This typing may be part of what is getting Captivate confused; note this sequence from the resized version of the project:

Slide 35:

The login window first appears. Everything is normal. During this slide, the mouse moves and clicks inside the User ID field, leading to...

Slide 36:

At this point, things begin to go awry. The user name is entered, and the cursor moves to the Password field.

Slide 37:

Whoops! As soon as we click Login, everything goes back to normal.

Slide 38:

I will try a few of the suggestions you offered, and will report back with the results.

[Lilybiri]

Sorry, but in the first posting, the fields were not entirely visible when I made the image enlarge to its max. Not important.

I think indeed that the recording of the typing causes the problem, seems not to have been rescaled. Did you, when downscaling, have the option 'Rescale Captions, Highlight boxes and other objects' activated in the Dialog box 'Rescale Project'? If yes, perhaps try to replace the recording of the Text typing by a Text Animation. Have no time at the moment to try it myself, have to hurry for a meeting. Later this evening, perhaps I could return to this forum.

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Okay, I tried a few things. I recorded a project using just the login window. The project was snapped to the window, with a resolution of 405 X 500. It came out okay, so I then resized it. There were no problems. Since I couldn't undo the resizing action, I scrapped the project and made a new one. I then recorded a separate project of the application proper (1000 x 700). I then copied the first project into the second project, with the intent of resizing it and seeing if the problem reoccured. However, I didn't get a chance, as the project was already flawed. Witness:

This is the normal-sized window, not a resized version. It's somehow separating the text fields and moving them around. I don't know why it things the login and cancel buttons are text fields.

As for your most recent question, yes, I had "Rescale Captions..." selected.

[Lilybiri]

Perhaps we could sort this out somehow. The problem you have now is that the first project has a total resolution of 405x500, which means a total different width-height ratio than the second one (1000x700). Is it really not possible to have the first project captured at 500x350 or something else, but with the same width-height ratio since you want to combine them in one project after rescaling one out of the two projects?

Lilybiri

[Guest]

The problem with that approach is that when I tell Captivate to record the smaller window with anything other than its normal resolution, Captivate proceeds to alter the dimensions of the window so that it fills the recording area. In the specific case of the login window, a resolution of 305 x 500 cuts off the login fields entirely, which somewhat defeats the point.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

You cannot use Snap to window in this case. Can you not position the window to be captured on a neutral background? You create a blank project with dimensions in the same ratio as you will need for the final project. Then Record, without the option Snap to Window, and position the red capture box where you want it to be. An example in the attachment (was refused to upload directly as an image).