Want to get Captivate 2 .swf into ebook

[Roy_Henry]

I am trying to move a course from CD to ebook. All I have are the autorun CD files, including the .swf file; the .cp file cannot be found and the person who created it is longer with the company. The .swf contains screen snaps and voice over, as well as some cursor animation. My problem is that the .swf file starts playing as soon as the student goes to the ebook page that contains the .swf file.

To the best of my knowledge I can't use the player skin that comes with Captivate without the .cp file, so my proposed solution is to import the .swf into Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, add controls and code that has the movie stopped when opened, and save it as a more user-friendly .swf for the ebook. I am a technical writer, not a programmer, and even though I have spent many hours searching the internet and even reading a book or two about Flash programming, I cannot get a working .swf file. I'm wondering if anyone can point me to example code that will do what I need. I found out about rdcmnd functions and the advantage of the MovieClipLoader class over the loadMovie method, but I seem to be unable to put it all together in a working .swf.

I agree with Captiv8r that a decompiler for Captivate .swf files would be good.

[Roy_Henry]

Is anybody home?

[Captiv8r]

Hi Roy

Have you tried amending the code on the HTML page that presents the Captivate movie?

Try adding the following line to the mix of code:

<param name="play" value="false" />

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Begin learning Captivate 5 moments from now! $29.95 Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcererStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[Roy_Henry]

Thanks Captiv8r.

I tried that with no change in behaviour as a result. The video still begins playing as soon as the page it is on opens. This is now my html with the added line:

<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
        codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0"
        width="801" height="601">
        <param name="movie" value="excercise1.swf">
        <param name="quality" value="high">
        <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF">
        <param name="loop" value="False">
        <param name="play" value="False">
        <EMBED src="excercise1.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="801" height="601" loop="0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
               pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">
        </EMBED>
</OBJECT>

According to the forum administrator at Help and Manual (http://helpman.it-authoring.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7681&hilit=flash+swf)

"How Flash files are played is controlled  entirely by the Flash file itself. You  will need to consult the Captivate documentation or Adobe on this. I  think the settings are somewhere in the skins but I don't remember  offhand."

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

I just popped Captivate 5 open and created a three slide project that automatically played. I displayed the HTML page and sure enough it auto played right along. I then amended the code to add the param value in there and as I fully expected, the movie did not play when the page loaded.

I do note that my false was all lower case and yours has a capital F (false VS False). Could that be the difference?

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Begin learning Captivate 5 moments from now! $29.95 Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcererStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[Roy_Henry]

Unfortunately, changing "False" to "false" makes no difference for my project.

[Captiv8r]

Hello again

Well I'm noticing that you are saying "eBook" here, and I'm not sure what that means. Are you presenting the Captivate from a PDF? Or are you compiling into an eBook format? If so, perhaps that's having an effect on things.

I also notice that while my tweak doesn't allow the movie to play, it also no longer seems to afford an ability to allow the user to play the movie either. So it seems one is a bit dead in the water.

Do you have Captivate available? If so, I'm wondering if you might be able to fudge things a bit by creating a small movie sized identically to the one that auto-plays. Then have this movie simply open the other. You would only need a single slide.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Begin learning Captivate 5 moments from now! $29.95 Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcererStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[Roy_Henry]

I am compiling to the Ebook (not EPub) format. When I select the page in the .exe that has the video, it autoplays. I have Captivate 3 and will try what you suggest. It may take me a day or two to get back to you. Thanks for following up.

Will you be correcting your post on the Help and Manual forums?

[Roy_Henry]

I have a bit of egg on my face; this thread should be renamed to say Captivate 2 rather than Captivate 3. Can someone change that for future reference?

Anyway, I opened a blank slide in Captivate 2, imported my existing .swf as an animation, and published the .cp as a .swf file. When I previewed it in Firefox, it started playing immediately, and the controls don't seem to have much of an effect on the audio or video. When I click the pause button, the movie keeps playing, and when I click the rewind button the player goes to white and the audio keeps playing.

I can put a link to the .html into the Ebook.exe which solves the problem of the video playing right away, but there are no controls for the user to pause or stop the video.