Capturing custom screen area for use within existing project

[Guest]

I'm working on an existing project demonstrating the features of an application.  What I'd planned was to have a slide for each feature and a short screen capture animation of the salient part of the feature in operation.  However, the only way I've found to capture custom areas is to record a new project, capture the video, export it as a Flash and then switch back to the main project and import it.  Inserting new video into the main project seems only to have the option of recording a full app window and creating complete slides, not inserting as an object within an existing slide.

This seems terribly clunky.  Is there no way simply to request a custom area capture that can be inserted directly into a slide?  It seems odd that it's possible as a new project, but not as an option within an existing one.

Jon

[Guest]

Hi Jon,

It will not be possible to insert slides of custom area in between slides of a different dimension.

However, the talk you have described above can be accomplished with a workaround.

Consider two projects, project A and project B.

1. Project A is your existing project and Project B is where you will need to record an animation of your features.

2. Select Record New project from File menu in Captivate OR Software Simulation from CP Welcome screen to create your project B

3. Recording options window appears. Select the custom size required, and then select "Full Motion" under Recording type.

4. Record the required content and End recording.

5. The recorded swf which is an FMR (Full Motion Recording) gets added to the library of Project B.

6. Save and Close project B on an available location

7. Now switch to Project A

8. In the library, click on Open Library Icon as shown below:

9. Choose Project B in the browse dialog

10. An external library pops up on Project A workspace.

11. This external library refers to the project B you saved in step 6 and contains the FMR swf - the animation that you need to insert in your project which is of custom size.

12. Drag drop the FMR swf to the required slide on Project A.

Thus, you have the animation as required in your existing project.

Hope this solution helps. Please let me know if you need more information.

Thanks,

Sushma

[SSchwa]

Hi Sushma,

I came across your posting a few weeks ago and used your suggestion to insert a full motion recording swf file into another project. This worked beautifully, however, the third project I tried this with I came across a problem. For some reason, the recording is looping on the slide that I've placed it on. I noticed that in the properties for the swf animation, there is an option under the timing section where I could select the option to loop, but I haven't seleted this, nor do I want this to happen. Any suggestions re what might have caused this problem? The other projects seemed to work just fine. I'm using Captivate 5. Thanks for any help you can provide!

[Guest]

Hi,

Please re-verify if the animation you are inserting is itself looping.

If not, then you could try clearing your preferences located at "<user>\AppData\Local\Adobe" and Publish/Preview the project again.

Thanks,

Sushna

[SSchwa]

Hi there,

Tried deleting the preferences, but this didn't work. So here's what's happening. When playing the slide that has the animation pasted on it within my Captivate project, the animation loops. It looks like I've recorded the same steps twice, which I haven't. Then after publishing the project and viewing the htm in a browser, the animation displays much slower than how it was actually recorded.... forgot to mention that part in my first posting.

[Guest]

Hi,

Is it possible to send across both the cptx where you imported the animation?

I could take a look.

Thanks,

Sushma

[SSchwa]

Sure... how can I send you the file... can I email you the attachment? Sorry, I don't see how to use any of the tools on this

editor to attach it here.

[Guest]

Sorry, I missed out giving you my email.

Could you please mail it to sushma@adobe.com?

Thanks,

Sushma

[SSchwa]

So unfortunately I wasn't able to email you my project due to size limitations in my email system, but the good news is that I was able to finally fix this problem by locking the full motion recording slide, then locking the slide I added the full motion record to in my main project. This worked!