Flash animations not playing in Captivate 5.5

[KeyWestie]

When I import a swf from Camtasia 5 into Captivate 5.5, it plays when I "play slide," but not when I play "project" or "from this slide." So.... I saved it as a flv. It plays... if I click the play button, but that's not what I want.

I've used this technique many times before over the years with no problem. I create an animation in PowerPoint, record it with Camtasia, and import it into Captivate. I need to be able to do it in this version.

What has gone wrong? Thanks for any suggestions!!

[RodWard]

Is the Camtasia SWF published as AS2 or AS3?  Captivate 5x only accepts AS3.

[KeyWestie]

How do I find out?

[RodWard]

If you were not the person that created this Camtasia SWF, then you need to talk to the person that did and ask them.

[KeyWestie]

I am, but I don't see any settings in Captivate that allow me to choose or even mention AS2 or AS3 or Action Script. I even searched Help for it.

[Lilybiri]

Captivate 5.5 ONLY can use AS3, Rod already pointed to that in a previous answer. That is why you cannot change the version of ActionScript.

Lilybiri

[Domaine]

I also keep reading posts that say Captivate 5.5 can't play AS2 flash, but I loaded a flash animation that runs fine for me, though, according to the properties when I click the "i" info icon in Captivate (in Properties, when the file is selected), it says it's an AS2 file.  It didn't work at first but I read something about making sure the source file was copied into the same folder as the course, so I manually copied it into the zip file that resulted (it was published as a SCORM package for loading into Moodle), and that fixed my problem.

I now have an AS3 interactive flash animation that plays fine when I preview it in Flash, but just shows up as a blank space when I preview or publish the Captivate course.  It's a timeline with an interactive bar that the student should be able to move along a timeline to see changing information.  Anybody have any advice? 

Thanks!
Kim

[RodWard]

OK.  I'm a bit confused by your post here.

Are you talking about the same SWF animation in the second paragraph above as you were in the first paragraph?  Are you saying that this AS2 animation is the interactive timeline that isn't working? Or is this a totally different (and AS3) SWF animation that you're not able to get working when inserted into Captivate?

[Domaine]

Sorry, clarity check ,  I mentioned the AS2 file in the first paragraph just in response to the comments that Captivate 5.5 doesn't let you use AS2 files (I'm no expert and I have no idea why an AS2 file is working fine in my Captivate 5.5 slide, but that was just a comment, not a problem.)

The AS3 file is a separate file, separate issue, I do need help with that problem.

Thanks!

[RodWard]

If your AS2 file is working fine, chalk it up to luck and buy a lottery ticket.  Most users are NOT going to be as fortunate.  Remember where you placed it in your project though, because if you ever start seeing this project go into spasms and flicker like it was having a fit, the quickest solution will probably be to get rid of this AS2 component.

As for your other issue with the AS3 file, there may be a number of possibilities. My first guess is that your SWF is probably set up as a symbol in the Flash file and the animation is buried inside that symbol.  Due to the way Captivate 5x loads SWFs now, the animation may actually be playing in the background before you reach its slide and that means it will have finished playing by the time you get to where you want it to play. 

If you want to test this theory, you'll need access to the original FLA file used to create this animation.  Try placing some piece of marker text on the final frame of the animation along with a stop(); action.  Then reinsert into your Captivate project.  If this results in you seeing the marker text on your slide at runtime, then it means the animation has completed playing before you got there.

If this is the issue, try taking the animation out of the Symbol and placing it all on the main timeline of the Flash file.  Then republish and insert back into your Captivate project.

[Domaine]

Thanks for the help!  I opened the .fla file but the timeline looks empty. All I can see is one line called "Art" that appears to last for just 1sec. I may be looking in the wrong place, so I'm going to keep searching.  I didn't mention it in my previous post, but this file also has an xml file where the changes to the appearance, etc. are made, does that make any difference in how the timeline looks in the .fla file? 

As you said, there may be a number of possibilities and because I'm a total amateur (even though I like to try and figure these things out myself) if I'm in over my head I can accept that and get professional help for the issue, but if you do not mind giving me more feedback on this, I appreciate it.  I have been searching the forums for answers, too, and trying any solutions I can find that seems even remotely related.

If it's at all helpful, here is the link to the file that I am trying to integrate into Captivate... http://activeden.net/item/smart-xml-history-timeline-with-slider-2-as3/667141

Thanks again!

[RodWard]

From your description it sounds like the animation is inside a symbol object on that singly layer (Art) that you saw in the FLA file.  You'll need to open up that symbol to see the other timeline inside it. Flash objects can each have their own separate timeline to the main timeline.  Unfortunately, this can then mean that when these objects are used in Captivate, they finish playing before the user reaches the slide they are on.  The easy fix is to pull the animation out of the symbol back onto the main timeline.  But you may still need some help from someone a bit more familiar with Flash in order to do this.

[Domaine]

I've been working all weekend trying to figure this out, I even found another post of yours http://forums.adobe.com/thread/822494 with some directions, but it's become painfully obvious that it's beyond my scope.  I wonder if Adobe will have a fix for this kind of problem in future.

I really appreciate your time, though, thanks again!

[Erik_Lord]

Can we back up a bit?

You have a Camtasia movie. You exported as FLV but you don't like the result... Why? Because you have to click the FLV for it to play? Are you embedding the FLV *directly* or are you embedding the SWF that Camtasia publishes, which itself then embeds the FLV?

I ask because if you're embedding the FLV itself, you should be able to set the video to play automatically in Captivate. If that's not working and you see a play button on top of the FLV, that would indicate you're actually embedding the SWF player that contains the FLV..?

Would that work for you?

If not, if FLV is just not going to work for you and you must embed a SWF...well, it may be a dead issue. What version of Camtasia are you using? Can you confirm with Techsmith that the version you have is outputting AS3-based SWF files? If it is, you should be able to get this working. If not, and the Camtasia output is indeed AS2, well, you may be stuck