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PowerPoint to Captivate - 2 how to questions

New Here ,
Jun 27, 2011 Jun 27, 2011

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I am beginning to use Captivate 5.5 (e-learning suite edition). My goal is to create a short presentation with nice beveled text appearing with narration and images and simple interaction.

First time I created a presentation in CPT directly, without using PPT. But it looks like CPT cannot make such nice text effects as PPT (it's called Word Art) and the text filters are very limited (read: not working at all). So the first thought is to make a slide in PPT and type text into a text box choosing a nice style and then copy the text box (not slide, just a textbox, the rectangular area which has handles etc) from PPT to CPT. And it worked! The text was pasted automatically as an image and looked exactly as it looked in PPT, with nice color and shadows... until I published it. After publishing, the pasted text looked terrible. Pixelated and white area instead of shadows.

1. Why it looks so good in design mode in CPT and so bad after publishing?

So I decided to design the whole slide in PPT and then import the slide to CPT using Insert->PPT slide. This fixed the visual issue of Word Art text - no problems, nice display after publishing. But I ran into another problem regarding narration. The slide is supposed to have narration, and some text should appear synchronized with the narration. I user Presenter to make the sync, but after importing to CPT, the whole narration and sync is gone. There is no narration audio and text appears after clicks.

2. Being not able to import narrated and synced slide from PPT, is it a feature or a bug in CPT? Or maybe I do something wrong?

Looks like the only way to reach my goal is the traditional one: design all text with nice styles in Photoshop, export for Web jpg and import in CPT. Or even better, design in PPT using Word Art and make screenshots and paste to Photoshop, crop and save as jpg.. how creative

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Community Expert , Jun 28, 2011 Jun 28, 2011

Sorry,

I cannot see the screenshots, just a small icon. Perhaps it is on my side?

Have been using Presenter also, but since CP5 I'm waiting for a AS3 version to appear, already one long year....

So, since you have the audio clips, you could insert them in CP, not?

Lilybiri

Just after sending this answer, your images popped up.

What is the slide quality you are using? I'm asking this because the default setting is Low, which will not be sufficient IMO.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 28, 2011 Jun 28, 2011

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Hello,

Since you have the eLearning Suite, why put the audio in PPT while you are having the roundtripping with such a great app like Audition? Sorry if I do offend you but you have a Rolls Royce in your 'garage' and use a small 'C1 - Citroen' for audio.. But of course, I'm not a PPT-lover at all and will certainly never use it for audio. Synchronizing can be done well in CP, because I suppose you will add assets in Captivate which will always need new synchronising. If you not want to change anything to the 'presentation', did you try Presenter to produce the SWF? And are you aware of the fact that combinations of Presenter and Captivate will not work well because of the incompatibility of the ActionScript versions? A new version of Presenter that will accept AS3 is promised for next month, crossing my fingers. I'm telling you this because you mentioned Presenter somewhare in your question.

What did you use for bevelling the text? Since it is an Effect this will only show up on runtime, but works fine for me. Of course you have a lot more bevelling options in Photoshop, and can use the roundtripping in eLS to edit the source file in Photoshop. Be sure to import the PSD with all its layers.

Lilybiri

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New Here ,
Jun 28, 2011 Jun 28, 2011

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I didn't know that Presenter was AS2-based. I googled for "adobe presenter as3" but nothing substantial appeared. Is there an article or something about it? Will there be  possibility to tweak PPT presentations in CPT or maybe even in Flash  using AS3 ?? That would be very interesting. If so, I wonder to what  degree.

The audio put in PPT was already  noise-corrected with Audition, so I used the "Rolls Royce", but I am not  a sound specialist, yet.. The reason to put it there is that I like the  idea of synchronizing the way Presenter does it, it's easy and fast to  sync animations to audio this way. So, I first record audio in Audition  and then insert it to PPT and sync. Doing the other way too (first  record in Presenter and then correct in Audition), but then I noticed a  problem: new audio does not replace old but is added, so the files are  cumulating in Windows folder each time I re-record, so I will not use  this method for now.

Anyway, here is a thread about the same isue that I have, regarding the images:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/683819?tstart=-1

But  he says he resolved the problem in CPT4, while in my case, I do  everything exactly as they say and my files are either not transparent,  or transparent but not aliased.

Either when pasted directly from PPT or and imported from Photoshop as psd or imported as png.

This is a screenshot from my CPT presentation in edit mode. It looks good, has transparent background (here the blue comes from CPT slide background).

scr1.jpg

And here is how it looks when viewing in browser or pressing F8:

scr2.jpg

And  besides, after the slide just displays when pressing F8, so before it  becomes as visible above, for half of a second there is something  strange, unwanted "animation" when the reflected text turns all green  and other color. I managed to make a screenshot also, it lasts very very  short but still is well visible, so even if someone would not notice  the non-transparency on the above slide, he would surely notice the  "animation":

scr3.jpg

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Community Expert ,
Jun 28, 2011 Jun 28, 2011

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Sorry,

I cannot see the screenshots, just a small icon. Perhaps it is on my side?

Have been using Presenter also, but since CP5 I'm waiting for a AS3 version to appear, already one long year....

So, since you have the audio clips, you could insert them in CP, not?

Lilybiri

Just after sending this answer, your images popped up.

What is the slide quality you are using? I'm asking this because the default setting is Low, which will not be sufficient IMO.

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New Here ,
Jun 28, 2011 Jun 28, 2011

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The images popped up because I inserted them the correct way At first I just pasted and they were in editor but not after submitting.

Thank you so much for the tip about quality. How simple. There is absolutely no problem with pasting partially transparent Word Art from PPT once I set slide quality in CPT to something that supports partial transparency.. By the way it should be the default, imo.

Regarding the import of presentation together with audio to CPT. It would be better if they were possible to import in one go (slides with audio) automatically from PPT to CPT, but yes, it is an idea (must check it yet) to make the sync in Presenter so that animations are synced with audio but import audio separately from Windows folder. Is this mess one of the effects of Presenter being AS2 only and CPT AS3 only ?

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Community Expert ,
Jun 29, 2011 Jun 29, 2011

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Hi Tony,

Have a look at the CP-blog (official one), there is a post about PPT-audio that could be interesting to you. Seems to be a MS-bug?

http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2011/06/issue-with-powerpoint-2010-recorded-narration-adobe-captiva...

About the AS-incompatibility: really do not know if that could be the cause, sorry.

Lilybiri

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New Here ,
Jul 01, 2011 Jul 01, 2011

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Unfortunately, this hotfix does not change anything in my case - there is no audio in the imported PPT slide. I created a new presentation after applying the hotfix, then recorded sound using Presenter, saved. There is a subfolder myfilename_pptx which contains file Media.ppcx and "audio" folder, which contains mp3 and lthmb files.

In CPT I created a new slide using the "From Microsoft PowerPoint" wizard and my saved presentation - and it was without audio, as before. Then I created a blank presentation in CPT and inserted a PPT slide as linked - no audio, also as non-linked - no audio either. In all cases, the Audio folder in CPT slide library was empty.

Has anyone made it work, I mean, succesfully inserted a PPT slide with audio into CPT presentation? There are no complaints on this subject, so I don't know if this is only my problem, or other people have this problem, too. By the way, I also installed Presenter demo on another computer which has 2007 and created a test presentation with audio, then imported it to my computer with Captivate - result is the same, only slides are imported, no audio.

The workaround to import audio separately worked. It is possible to click through slides in CPT and import audio from the folder where Presenter records it or where the original recordings are. The job must be done twice: once import to PPT for synchronisation and then import to CPT.

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LEGEND ,
Jul 05, 2011 Jul 05, 2011

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Hi there

I stand to be corrected on this, but I believe if you record audio using Presenter it is handled in a different manner than it is if you just use PowerPoint. I think because Presenter is just another PowerPoint add-in, Captivate likely has no clue that Presenter is in the mix and doesn't know it should bring in the audio.

Cheers... Rick

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