ghost lines in published files

Report · Mar 28, 2011

My published files contain ghost lines specifically during actions such as scrolling and typing. When I play the single frame I do not see these ghost lines. Additionally, I don't see these lines when I Preview the next 5 slides.

I have set the Quality to "Optimized" and "High (24 Bit)" for the appropriate frames. This doesn't impact the ghost lines.

I imported a PPT for the first three introductory slides, then recorded the remaining (52) frames by clicking the Record additional slides for this project.

I published numerous times, eliminating the Advanced Project Compression and Compress SWF file checkboxes does not eliminate the problem.

The Retain Slide Quality Settings checkbox is selected.

I have 30 frames per second selected in the Publish Settings area.

Report · Mar 29, 2011

Hello and welcome to the forum,

Just another question, although you provided already quite a lot of information. Overriding the slide quality (set it to High) when publishing, nor turning off all compression will solve your issue, is that right? Overriding means that you deactivate the 'Retain slide quality' and set the output to High. This will not be visible in Preview, only in the published file. Have you been checking that?

My other question: did you perhaps capture at a certain resolution and rescale the project afterward? Was the PPT in the same resolution as the project in CP (asking this because you have a mix of PPT and captured slides)?

Lilybiri

Report · Mar 29, 2011

When I uncheck Retain Slide Quality Settings and move the slider to High. I still get the ghost lines on the FMR (and typing text); additionally I get the ghost lines bleeding into next subsequent five frames.

The best luck I've had is to uncheck Compress Full Motion Recording SWF file; uncheck Advanced Project Compression and uncheck Compress SWF file. This contains the ghost lines only to the FMR and typing text slides but precludes the bleeding.

I'm not sure how to answer the resolution question, as I'm not sure how to check the resolution on a PPT.

However on the Position & Size (Properties tab) suggests that the first slide is 1022 x 767. The Captivate is 800 x 600. So I assume that means that the PPT is not the same resolution as the Captivate recordings.

Report · Mar 29, 2011

Hi again,

For FMR, be sure to set (before recording) the quality to 32-bit, default = 16-bit. And although in CP5 the quality is better, I'm never satisfied with the 16-bit result.

As for the resolution of the PPT, bit difficult because I'm on a Dutch PPT, but be sure to choose the same width/height ratio: in the third menu (Design?) you can choose Page setup, you can choose between different formats (4:3, 16:9, ...) or type in dimensions yourself but, which is a pity, not in pixels.

Lilybiri

Report · Mar 29, 2011

Ok, I did a test. I recorded a brand new project without any ppt slides.

Before recording, I set the FMR to 32 bit and moved the FMR Mode slider to Video

Before publishings, I set the page quality to High. In Preferences>SWF Size and Quality I unchecked Retain Slide Quality Settings. Moved the slider to High.

The published project still has ghost lines.

So my theory that this was from the ppt slides is inaccurate.

Report · Mar 29, 2011

Hi there

When you watch it where you see the ghost lines, how exactly are you playing it back?

Are you viewing the HTML page Captivate creates? Or are you simply double-clicking the SWF Captivate creates?

Cheers... Rick

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Report · Mar 30, 2011

Thanks for your help! Rick.

I published the file as Flash (SWF). I watched the files after the publication procedure finished. Captivate provides a dialog box that asks if you would like to view the published file.

However I also sent the link to my colleagues (published on a shared drive) and they also see the ghost lines.

I watched the published file in Internet Explorer 8.0.6001.19019

Patty

Report · Apr 14, 2011

Hi!

Working on my very first real Captivate project!

I found this thread when I was searching for this problem myself, it sounds like the hints did not work for the OP in this case, however I tried to implement them myself and it took some attempts (I did notice that the problem only occured during/after publish as the source material seemed to be OK when viewing each slide on its own), in the end I set the preference settings to below and published again, and finally all my ghost lines are gone!

Thanks for the hints, and Patty, if you did not solve this the past weeks it could be worth a test!

Report · Mar 01, 2016

This worked for me. Thank you very much, I was going a touch batty trying to fix it.

Report · Apr 18, 2011

Hi, we are having the exact same problem. Our published demos (Flash swf + HTML) from Captivate 5 show ghost lines all over. There are lines in the application as wel as with the text. The quality of our demos is not acceptable, not for us and certainly not for the client. We need a real solution, fast.

A few examples:

We tried all the solutions suggested in this thread, but the problem remains. Here are a few of our findings:

It is does not seem to be browser specific. It occurs in Internet Explorer (8), Firefox (4) and Chrome (10). The problem is much, much worse in Internet Explorer than in the other two. But this is basically the browser we are designing for as most of our target audience still works with this browser.
We always capture the application in Internet Explorer 8, because the other two do not always display all objects in the application as intended in the first place.
It is not related to a specific application. We have examples of two entirely different applications (although both web-apps). We also captured on different computers.
One important factor is the zoom. It gets worse when the users zooms in or out in the browser. So we made sure to capture on a browser zoomed at 100% and made sure that we did not have to resize anything in Captivate. When we play the published files in a browser that is zoomed at 100% as well, the problem is still there. When you zoom in or out, even for 5% the lines get worse. Although you do have some some control over the window in which the demo opens, you can never control that the user does zoom in or out, right?

We played around with the settings (a lot!), and here is our current setup:

Recording settings: 32 bit and FMR Mode "Application" (selecting 'video' seemed to make it worse)
Project settings: SWF size and quality: high 24 bit (tried all the combinations there as well)
Slides: all set to Quality: High (we tried optimized as well)

Any idea about what we are up against? Thanks for any suggestions you may have.

BTW Adobe: it is a bit strange that there is a thread with "ghost lines" in the title, but that you get 'no results' when you enter "ghost lines" in the handy search bar on this forum.

Report · Apr 18, 2011

I know this suggestion is going to sound a bit wierd, but one thing I found out several versions of Captivate ago is that these ghost lines only seem to occur with images that are on the background layer. So something that worked quite well for certain slides that seem more prone to these ghost lines is to do the following:

Right click on the background of the slide and select Find Background in the Library.
Drag the image from the Library onto the slide but don't merge it with the background.
Set the image on the bottom layer of all layers on the slide.
Set the image duration to be from the first frame of the slide to the last frame (use Ctrl + E)
Make sure the image transition is set to No Transition.

Since Captivate reuses images from the library as many times as you want, doing the above doesn't have a penalty in terms of adding filesize to the movie. But for some reason I don't adequately understand, it seems to eliminate the ghost lines.

Try an experiment by doing the above steps for a few of the slides you know to be really bad for ghost lines and see if it works for you.

Report · Apr 18, 2011

I have been apologizing and making excuses for "ghost lines" for a long time now ("it must be the projector" is a favorite of mine) and this works perfectly to fix them.

Very happy that I won't have to explain them again!

Many thanks.

Report · Apr 18, 2011

Hmmm so I was happy I got rid of those lines however when I was finishing up my project making real publications of it they were all back again, although not as severe... Before they stayed on the presentation for ever basically just adding up more and more... Now they are "only" there for the remainder of the slide. The fact that I am getting vertical lines between typed in letters is not so bad but when moving objects around it gets really messy.

I tried to implement this solution however cannot get it to work. I DO send the image to the back but what ever I do it always seem to cover the action taking place in the slide.......

Never the less this is a so called grishack in Swedish and not really a feasable solution. My current presentation has 264 slides and this would be something I had to manually perform on about 80% of them............

Can we not get any comment from Adobe at all?!?!?!!?!?

Report · Apr 18, 2011

OK. Now THAT'S interesting. 264 slides you say?

Have you tried breaking your project up in to smaller chunks to see if the issue is reduced by having fewer slides?

Save a copy of your project file. Delete all but the first 50 slides from your project and then publish again. See if the ghost lines are still present. If the issue is unrelated to the size of the project, they should still be there. If however the issue is exacerbated by project size, the lines should be less of an issue for 50 slides than for 264.

Report · Apr 18, 2011

Ok good idea, at least it makes the compile time much more managable..

So I did a few tries down that alley but didn't do any difference. I also deleted all power point slides I still had in there as that was also something I had added in between my animated slides afterwards. no change.

BUT....

I sent the files (flash html) to my colleague who opened it in Windows 7 / IE9 (myself I am running XP/IE8)... And there was no trace at all of the lines.......

So I have spent severall hours down the wrong alley here.... Need to start thinking of what the problem might be when viewing it......

In Captivate there is the option to compile for flash player 9 or 10, I have tried both.

we are both running flash player 10........

I'll be back.... if I solve this on my PC

Report · Apr 19, 2011

Oki update

Upgraded to the latest flash player I could find, 10.2. No difference.

Installed Chrome on my XP machine....... And the short test version of my project plays just fine!!!! Gonna take a break from this now but might look into IE settings later.... the problem is really that my material will evnetually be released on our webbpage as self study material on our SW, so many different ppl will be looking at it from their PCs.... If I was only going to make presentations myself with it I could control how I displayed it, but this makes it harder......

Report · Apr 19, 2011

You may already have thought of this, but don't forget to check the magnification setting in the bottom right corner of IE8. It should be at 100% for best results. If by any chance yours has been changed to something other than 100%, set it back again and see whether that improves things on your end.

Report · Apr 19, 2011

D'oh.....

yeah. no further comments. I often "CTRL"-mousewheel in IE so I was zoomed in.... My colleague can reproduce exaclty the sam thing now on his Win7/IE9...

I am very happy by the commitment you and others can have to someone elses problem... Thanks a lot.

From my very first post here I did set everything I got to "maximum", gonna play with that a bit now and see if that was to no point either, I would not mind if my finished publication shrunk a bit in size....

Again, thanks.

Report · Apr 27, 2011

We were finally able to somewhat resolve the ghost lines. In the end, using the settings as described by BamseKisen gave the best results.

But it is not resolved. The ghost lines still show up from time to time, especially when typing in text. Also, when you zoom in or out in the browser they will show up. Whether the end user is zooming in the browser or not is not something you can control as a designer.

I was just looking at one of Adobe's own demo's today, and guess what I saw. It's not zoomed, and it shows in Adobe's own Adobe Community Help window. Adobe, please look into this, urgently. Thanks.

Demo can be found at: http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/files/captivate/2010/07/16/Captivate/EffectsFMR1.swf

Report · Apr 27, 2011

Whether the end user is zooming in the browser or not is not something you can control as a designer

I completely agree on this, it seems like a grishack (eng?) to add the phrase "please look at the bottom right corner of your screen and make sure that your zoom level is at 100% or else press CTRL and turn your mousewheel until it does, and yeah by the way if you are a Windows 7 user you cannot see this bottom line at all you need to enable it in some menu somewhere that you probably does not see anyway".

So yeah it should be fixed.

It was quite funny watching the lines in the Adobe presentation.... One thing that struck me here, this one must be compiled as "fit to screen" or such as my zoom level did not change anything at all... if I do zoom in and out of my own presentations they do indeed change in size... and at 100% my lines are gone...

And THIS is something that is set when you Publish... could you see it this is the setting you have as well? I guess it will force a zoom level upon you no matter if you like it or not.... Try Publish with standard ratio.....

Report · May 17, 2011

First time Captivate user... I really liked this program until the ghost lines started to appear.

I have read all of the above discussion and tried the work arounds suggested... but I still have lines.

I've noticed that the lines only appear when I have to resize the video frame of a FMR. For example, I need to shoot a feature of software that is 900X675. There is no wiggle room in that or work around I can do. It is what it is. The final video needs to be 600X450 however, so I resize using the best settings I can come up with. I don't care about file size at this point. Lines. All over the place. During mouse movements. During text typing. It's ugly and distracting. Does anyone out there have any settings I can try to see if these lines will disappear? I've already tried all of the above.

Thanks!

Z

Report · May 25, 2011

I'm having the same issue with ghost lines in captivate 5. I'm recording in demo mode but the ghost lines still appear. What should my settings be so that I don't have these issues?

Report · May 25, 2011

Set your FMR quality to 32 bit, and DON'T resize your captures at any time. Capture everything at exactly the same size you intend to publish.

Report · Jun 03, 2011

That is the trick actually! NEVER resize the video in Captivate. I worked around this issue by making a video that was larger, but the same ratio as what I needed the finished size to be. Then I ran the video .f4v through the Adobe Media Encoder to get a .flv... and during the process I set the dimensions to what I wanted to set them at in Captivate. It isn't my favorite work around due to some extra stationary area in each frame, but no one else knows or cares... and best of all, there are NO ghost lines. Captivate really should figure out something on this one... not sure I would use their product again.

Report · Oct 17, 2011

I am having the EXACT same problem but DURING recording, and playback, preview, etc. Please help! I tried everything and still not working.