Recording output questions

[Guest]

Hi all!

I have a few questions around recording sreencasts from Captivate 5. I did find a really old thread from 2006 on this, but thought to start fresh.

Basically I'm confused as to how to get the actual video file from a screencast. When I am in Captivate and press the record button, it does offer to change the size of the recording window but no matter what I choose the actual output is then the "background" of the slide as an swf. How can I record a screencast and simply have it ON the slide as a separate file, (so that for instance I can record a full screen cast that still fits on the slide).

Thanks!

Chantelle

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

I'm confused by your question, but suppose that it is due to terminology.

By 'actual video' I suppose that expect to have a video as a result, as is the case with screen capturing applications like Camtasia, Jing, Screenr....

Captivate has another approach, if you use the Automatic Recording mode. It will create static screenshots, and only switch to recording like a video when necessary such as for drag-and-drop or mouse wheel actions. But each static slide has a timeline, objects can appear at different moments on that timeline, you can add objects like arrows, text captions etc on different moments on that timeline. When the file will be published perhaps to SWF (most common publishing option) it will play like a video, but this approach allows interactivity by the user: he can click, type in text, choose menu options etc. This is not possible if you capture something like a video does. But if you want a video, without interactivity, you could choose to capture in Full Motion Recording mode; I really do not recommend that because the filesize will be a lot bigger and you will have much less editing possibilities.

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Lily,

Thank you for your explanation! It was very helpful in understanding how Captivate captures things and the implications of doing the full motion recording.

A follow up question I have would then be what options I have for sizing. Is the "project" size the only way to change how the recording looks on the page? My difficulty was that I don't want the video to just take up the entire slide, as then if it is in a course it doesn't flow well when a big video screen pops up.

Thanks again!

Chantelle

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

If you do not want to have the captures taken up all the space on slides, perhaps my blog post about the creation of a Knockout Master slide could give you a possible workaround?

Create and use a Knockout Master slide

You can modify the resolution of a captured project, using Modify, Rescale. But in that case I do recommend to rescale while keeping the same width/height ratio. It is never a good idea to upscale the resolution, because the quality loss can be consderable. Anyway you need to keep the same resolution for all the slides in a CP-file.

Lilybiri

[RodWard]

I think what you may be wanting is to create a Captivate screencast session, publish it as an SWF and then add that SWF to another Captivate project as an animation on a particular slide.

I don't particularly like this method of doing things because it means when I want to change something in the animation I have to go back to the other screencast project, make changes, publish, reimport/update the second project.  To much double handling. Plus, if I'm using voiceover audio to describe the screencast, there's a chance the audio will be getting compressed twice and not end up being matching quality.

[Guest]

Rod,

That is a good suggestion but your point about having to go back to the original to make any edits is good.  I didn't quite understand the difference between how Captivate records vs. general screencasting like Lily mentioned so combined your answers are helpful.

Thank you!

Chantelle