Recording Shared Screen Problem

[Guest]

We are using Captivate 4 to record a screen shared using Adobe Connect.

File size is huge. 200MB for an 8 minute recording.

If we use NetMeeting instead of Adobe Connect, file sizes are much smaller. However, in this case we have to use Adobe Connect.

We have tried to adjust all of the project and audio properties. We are not recording Adobe Connect meta data.

Does anyone have an idea on how to make the file size smaller? At this point the file sizes are so large we can't publish the file in Captivate.

[RodWard]

What are the physical dimensions of the screen you are capturing?

Are you capturing slide by slide or FMV?

What quality settings do you have set for each slide when publishing out?

Does this have voiceover audio? If so, what settings for MP3 have you set (e.g. 64 kbps)?

[Guest]

Rod,

What are the physical dimensions of the screen you are capturing?

800 x 600

Are you capturing slide by slide or FMV?

FMV

What quality settings do you have set for each slide when publishing out?

Standard

Does this have voiceover audio? If so, what settings for MP3 have you set (e.g. 64 kbps)?

56 kbps

[RodWard]

OK.  All of those settings seem reasonable enough to me.

My suggestion would be that if you REALLY want to reduce your filesize significantly, you need to move away from using FMV across the board and only use it where you need to show significant movement on the screen.  For example, you could just use normal slide by slide captures with animated mouse cursor (as Captivate normally does things) and just use FMV where you need to show a scrolling window or animated dropdown menu or drag and drop operation etc.  That's the way I do things in Captivate and an 8 minute tutorial publishes out to an SWF of well under 6 megs, even with voiceover at 64kbps.

[Guest]

Those are all great tips, thanks.

The nature of the recording dictates that is must be done with FMV. Both parites are remoting into a server and Captivate doesn't recognize the other user's actions.

This still doesn't explain why sharing through Adobe Connect produces a bigger file than Netmeeting.

When we use FMV with Netmeeting, the files are manageable.

In this case both parties have to loginto Adobe Connect remotly. Computer A & computer B both login to a remote server that hosts Adobe Connect.

Netmeeting is a direct connection, computer A logins into computer B.

The problem we are running into has something to do with the way we are connecting to the screen we want to record.

I can't understand why it makes a difference to Captivate how I access the screen. It should record it to the same files sizes whether I choose Netmeeting or Adobe Connect

.

[RodWard]

For Captivate's automatic screen capturing to be triggered it has to detect a screen event such as a mouse event or some kind of change.  Because you are remoting, these screen events are not being picked up.

But this still doesn't mean you MUST use FMV to capture the entire thing.  All you have to do it use manual captures.  I usually set up the F2 key to be my manual capture key so that I can use the mouse with one hand and hit the manual capture with the other. 

There are always some situations where you'll need to do manual capture with any simulation.  Your situation is that you need to do almost the entire thing manually, if you want to reduce filesize significantly.

[Guest]

Rod,

Thanks, I'll give manual capture a try.

Cheers,

Monica