14
Replies
14
14
Replies
LEGEND
,
Hi Peter
Hopefully Hal won't mind my offering up some clarification. From what I'm seeing, it would appear that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the manner in which Captivate works. It's also possible that you have tried Captivate's loose competitor, Camtasia Studio. If so, you may believe Captivate works in a similar fashion.
Captivate does not capture in full motion mode. From what I've seen of your descriptions, it seems to me that this is how you are expecting it to behave. Just turn it on, let it record the action, then turn it off. This is exactly how Camtasia works. But Captivate is a bit different. What it does is to grab a screen capture when it senses a mouse click or other action that triggers it. This is why Hal suggested supplementing the capture process with manually added print screen actions.
Captivate does "do" full-motion capture, but by and large it is intended for small things such as dragging a window from one place to another or dragging the thumb of a scroll bar or even dragging across a line of text to select it. But it was never intended to just turn it on and record something in full motion mode until you stop. You can certainly try forcing it that way. To do this, press the F9 key to begin and F10 when you are finished. (Unless, of course, you have deviated from the defaults) Oddly enough, I believe the same keystrokes are used in Camtasia to begin and end recording. I do understand version 2 does a much better job of handling full motion video, but I'd be surprised to hear it worked fine to record an hour's worth.
Cheers all... Rick
Hopefully Hal won't mind my offering up some clarification. From what I'm seeing, it would appear that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the manner in which Captivate works. It's also possible that you have tried Captivate's loose competitor, Camtasia Studio. If so, you may believe Captivate works in a similar fashion.
Captivate does not capture in full motion mode. From what I've seen of your descriptions, it seems to me that this is how you are expecting it to behave. Just turn it on, let it record the action, then turn it off. This is exactly how Camtasia works. But Captivate is a bit different. What it does is to grab a screen capture when it senses a mouse click or other action that triggers it. This is why Hal suggested supplementing the capture process with manually added print screen actions.
Captivate does "do" full-motion capture, but by and large it is intended for small things such as dragging a window from one place to another or dragging the thumb of a scroll bar or even dragging across a line of text to select it. But it was never intended to just turn it on and record something in full motion mode until you stop. You can certainly try forcing it that way. To do this, press the F9 key to begin and F10 when you are finished. (Unless, of course, you have deviated from the defaults) Oddly enough, I believe the same keystrokes are used in Camtasia to begin and end recording. I do understand version 2 does a much better job of handling full motion video, but I'd be surprised to hear it worked fine to record an hour's worth.
Cheers all... Rick
LEGEND
,
Hi Peter
Just from the outside looking in, here's my take on it. You said "when you did a 5 minute demo of logging into a site..." that Captivate recorded everything. But in your initial post, you said something about having the vice-pres do the full presentation. When I see this, I interpret that you performed a few steps that Captivate recorded. But you later tried recording something you were simply watching the vice-pres do. And therein lies a world of difference.
If you are performing the steps, Captivate is sensing when you click the mouse, where you move it and things like that. But if you just use it to watch someone else perform the steps (I'm assuming that it's perhaps via some remote desktop or desktop sharing software) there is nothing happening on your PC to trigger the same captures.
Just from a personal standpoint, I find both Captivate AND Camtasia have places in my toolbox. As much as I love Captivate, if I'm correct in what I've interpreted you are doing, it would sound to me that Camtasia is the better tool for recording the process you are trying to record. For the simple reason of the manner in which it records.
Sincerely... Rick
Just from the outside looking in, here's my take on it. You said "when you did a 5 minute demo of logging into a site..." that Captivate recorded everything. But in your initial post, you said something about having the vice-pres do the full presentation. When I see this, I interpret that you performed a few steps that Captivate recorded. But you later tried recording something you were simply watching the vice-pres do. And therein lies a world of difference.
If you are performing the steps, Captivate is sensing when you click the mouse, where you move it and things like that. But if you just use it to watch someone else perform the steps (I'm assuming that it's perhaps via some remote desktop or desktop sharing software) there is nothing happening on your PC to trigger the same captures.
Just from a personal standpoint, I find both Captivate AND Camtasia have places in my toolbox. As much as I love Captivate, if I'm correct in what I've interpreted you are doing, it would sound to me that Camtasia is the better tool for recording the process you are trying to record. For the simple reason of the manner in which it records.
Sincerely... Rick
LEGEND
,
Hi again Peter
I can imagine the frustration. I think once you fully understand and come to terms with Captivate and its recording ways, it will hopefully make more sense to you.
You said:
Yes, what i did was to download the demo of Captivate. I got a guest logon to their employee website. I tried it for about 5 minutes, clicking around and filling in boxes. For five minutes it worked perfectly.
By "worked perfectly", are you saying it seemed to be recording? Or are you instead saying you recorded five minutes worth of action, played it back and it seemed to do fine? Assuming it's the latter, I'm simply guessing here that what you watched in playback mode seemed acceptable and you had no actual understanding of the source at that point? What I mean by that is that you hadn't quite grasped the whole individual screen shot thing and what you observed led you to conclude it was all full motion.
You then said:
I bought the program and took it to the clients site, installed it on their computer and there is where i learned about the uphill battle i had on my hands. Right now, i am trying to recreate his movements around the website, using his narration as a guide. I just don't understand why it worked for me using the demo and then the first slide recorded when the money was on the line was recorded at 51 seconds instead of the 3 seconds that was set in the preferences???
Unfortunately, without actually seeing what you were doing it is rather difficult to ascertain what may be happening. I suppose it's entirely possible that you managed to start recording in Full Motion mode with Captivate. Hmmm, as you say you have Camtasia, this actually makes some sense. When you began recording, did you press F9? And F10 to stop? If so, those are typically the keystrokes that force Captivate to begin recording full motion clips.
When you click Options > Recording Options... what do you see at the bottom of the Recording Options tab? Is there a check mark inside the check box labeled: Record actions in real time? If so, this might explain why a single slide might be timed substantially longer than others. And as for that "default' slide time, I believe that only applies to slides you manually create. For example, by clicking Insert > Blank slide...
Sorry. Sometimes it seems I end up causing more questions to be raised than actually answering the questions that were posed. But with a little patience and perseverance, I think we'll get through it.
Cheers... Rick
I can imagine the frustration. I think once you fully understand and come to terms with Captivate and its recording ways, it will hopefully make more sense to you.
You said:
Yes, what i did was to download the demo of Captivate. I got a guest logon to their employee website. I tried it for about 5 minutes, clicking around and filling in boxes. For five minutes it worked perfectly.
By "worked perfectly", are you saying it seemed to be recording? Or are you instead saying you recorded five minutes worth of action, played it back and it seemed to do fine? Assuming it's the latter, I'm simply guessing here that what you watched in playback mode seemed acceptable and you had no actual understanding of the source at that point? What I mean by that is that you hadn't quite grasped the whole individual screen shot thing and what you observed led you to conclude it was all full motion.
You then said:
I bought the program and took it to the clients site, installed it on their computer and there is where i learned about the uphill battle i had on my hands. Right now, i am trying to recreate his movements around the website, using his narration as a guide. I just don't understand why it worked for me using the demo and then the first slide recorded when the money was on the line was recorded at 51 seconds instead of the 3 seconds that was set in the preferences???
Unfortunately, without actually seeing what you were doing it is rather difficult to ascertain what may be happening. I suppose it's entirely possible that you managed to start recording in Full Motion mode with Captivate. Hmmm, as you say you have Camtasia, this actually makes some sense. When you began recording, did you press F9? And F10 to stop? If so, those are typically the keystrokes that force Captivate to begin recording full motion clips.
When you click Options > Recording Options... what do you see at the bottom of the Recording Options tab? Is there a check mark inside the check box labeled: Record actions in real time? If so, this might explain why a single slide might be timed substantially longer than others. And as for that "default' slide time, I believe that only applies to slides you manually create. For example, by clicking Insert > Blank slide...
Sorry. Sometimes it seems I end up causing more questions to be raised than actually answering the questions that were posed. But with a little patience and perseverance, I think we'll get through it.
Cheers... Rick
LEGEND
,
Hi Peter
Try this:
First, you need to determine the audio used for the narration. So click the slide containing the existing audio and examine the Slide Properties. After you do that, click the Audio tab. Note the name used. Dismiss the properties.
Now click the slide where you want to actually use the audio. Examine the properties for that slide. Then click the Audio tab and click the "Select audio from library" button. After that, choose the file you noted earlier.
Cheers... Rick
Try this:
First, you need to determine the audio used for the narration. So click the slide containing the existing audio and examine the Slide Properties. After you do that, click the Audio tab. Note the name used. Dismiss the properties.
Now click the slide where you want to actually use the audio. Examine the properties for that slide. Then click the Audio tab and click the "Select audio from library" button. After that, choose the file you noted earlier.
Cheers... Rick
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