Recording audio and video

[regentmike]

Hi - I'm new to Captivate and am currently evaluating it for purchase. I have two questions that I hope someone can help me with.

1) Is there a way for Captivate to record the audio that is playing on the local workstation. For example, if I have a CD playing and want to capture a sample of it while recording the video. Neither the microphone or inline options picked it up.
2) Using captivate, I recorded a 30 second section of a video off a website and included it on a slide. That one slide .SWF-- when published -- was 16 meg. Is this typical?

I would appreciate your help with these.

Thanks
Mike

[CatBandit]

Hi Mike. Welcome to the Captivate User Community!

1) There is no way that I know to intercept the audio portion of antoher app or activity - EXCEPT - to plug in your mic and lay it in front of your machine's speaker system. The ambient noise may ruin it for you - or for that matter, it might not even be captured by Captivate. If the latter is true, open Windows Sound Recorder (or a 3rd party audio app) and do the recording from there, then import the result to Captivate.

2) Not sure what you actually did here. When you said you "included it on a slide" do you mean you recorded it using Captivate's FMR (full-motion recording) function, or do you mean you recorded it with a 3rd party video recorder, then imported it to Captivate as a SWF or AVI???? A little explanation if you please . . .

Any time FMR is used within Captivate it should be with caution. Captivate's FM function was never designed to capture and save much more than a 3-4 second "drag-n-drop" or "scroll-action". If you want to record a long motion sequence, I suggest Captivate is the wrong tool for you - you need video recorder software designed to work in DVR or AVI (or whatever) as its primary medium.

I can tell you that it's not hard for 30 seconds of "video" (dynamic action) to get large in a hurry (regardless of Captivate's use or not) depending on the physical size of the video file as well as the number and type of of elements included (like audio).

The last time someone on these forums asked "what's normal" and I answered "How high is up?", the user got their "dander up" ( prior expression edited for political ccorrectness). So please take this in the spirit intended - it is just not possible to answer what is "typical" for anyone other than the individual who is actually keyboarding. Yes, I think 16 Mb is large for ANY SWF, but that's me. Others might regularly create files in sizes that would prompt me to call them names, but maybe in their world, those sizes are "typical". I know that sounds like a cop-out, so we are right back to "how high is up?".

Have a good 'un!
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[regentmike]

Thanks, Larry. I appreciate the time you took to answer my questions. As far as my second question is concerned, it's the former: I recorded it using Captivate's FMR (full-motion recording) function. The quality wasn't great...but it was OK. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I will take your advice regarding the use of another tool; actually, I tried Snag It! to capture the video and it looked pretty good. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks again,
Mike

[CatBandit]

I can offer only a bit of direction: I use Sorensen's "Squeeze (4.3)" for video and love it. It is not a recorder itself, but is the world's best compression tool for your videos.

For an actual screen (video) recorder there is "Camtasia Studio", which is "Snagit"'s Full Motion Recording (FMR) big brother, and I'm sure about a million others of various quality and price. Best of luck, Mike!

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[KCWebPlaza-5meuTi]

In Captivate, you can select the "inline" option to record the audio from your app. I've been doing this - but generally the audio quality is VERY poor.

[Captiv8r]

Hi KCWebPlaza

I'm a bit confused by your post. I recall during an early beta of version 2 that they were experimenting with a feature that recorded system audio and maybe it was even referred to as "inline". Is this possibly what you are referring to? I see no such option on my existing version 2, unless possibly it does exist somewhere and my hardware doesn't support it. I know Camtasia Studio has a similar option and it fails to work on my particular PC, but in that case I DO actually see the option. It's simply disabled for me.

Were you possibly referring to the "Line In" setting? If so, that shouldn't work unless something is connected to the Line In input of a sound card. I have seen others report that they use a mixer and connect the Speaker out connection to the input of the mixer along with a microphone to record voice.

Cheers... Rick