Looping animations indefinitely

[oliveracat]

I'm just starting with Captivate, so I apologize for such a basic quesiton....
I'm trying to create a slide which has a continue button (no problem there) and a looping animation (swf that i have imported) that continues to play in the background until I stop it. Unfortunately the timing seems to be linked to active button properties. I would like the animation to be completely independent of any other properties on the slide. Is that possible?
Thanks in advance for the help.

[archq]

Hi -- two thoughts come to mind! If I understand your dilemma, I believe you'll need to embed the start/stop action into the movieclip you're importing. Once that movie is in the captivate timeline, it's just another object on the slide, and will be answerable to any button or click-box object you put on the slide to control that timeline.

Other possibility is to have a slide with the movie paused, and other with the movie playing... you could then effectively switch from one to the other.

-Marty

[oliveracat]

Thanks for the reply.
Your first solution is unfortunatly not viable as these swfs are being created in AE.
The second option, how would that work? Essentially create an action script that moves between the two movies?
I'm confused as to why this isn't simpler since there is a "looping" checkbox in the slide preferences....
thanks!

[archq]

Hi -- I'm not familiar with the AE abbreviation.... Adobe?? I think my idea was that the movieclip would have to be self-contained. Any animation, as well as any interactivity to control that animation, would have to be within the movie clip. You could then load it up onto a captivate slide and its actions would be independent of the slide. If you don't have access to Flash, however, and aren't able to build a self-contained clip, I'm not sure how you'd handle this.

The other option I was describing was to have two slides... one with the animation on it, the other with a freeze frame of that animation. Clicking your stop button (captivate button) would simply advance you to the 'freeze' slide. A 'start' button would take you back. It's a poor workaround, at best, but it may work.

[oliveracat]

Marty,
Sorry for the delay in replying, I was out of town.
AE, sorry for the confusion, is After Effects.
It allows for the creation of a looping flash movie, which I created.
Then the I imported this into Captivate by using the "Insert Animation" in the the Insert pulldown.
At this point I checked the "Looping Animation" in the slide options area. Also, note that I tested this by adding it to an existing slide from the sample project that comes with Captivate (simulation).
Again, the slide does not loop in the background, but simply plays for a moment, then stops.
It seems odd that there would be a looping option, but it wouldn't allow for looping an imported flash animation...
Thanks!