Captivate is very, very unstable

[paone]

I have been trying to record a very simple demo.
Captivate is highly unpredictable - it just keeps blowing up.

If there is a programmer out there in Adobe who cares about
quality of this product (Captivate) please respond to this post asap.

I can demonstrate the problem.

thanks.

[Captiv8r]

Hi paone and welcome to our community

Your comment:
If there is a programmer out there in Adobe who cares about
quality of this product (Captivate) please respond to this post asap.

Seems to imply you feel Adobe is monitoring these forums. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case. If you really need support, you need to follow the support channels. At the bottom of this page is a link to support.

Or, if you prefer, you may try articulating what is happening to you and one of us here will try and assist.

Cheers... Rick

[spazmat]

Hi there Captiv8r..

i'm having problems also so i thought i'd post here... my problem is that when i'm recording i have to do so in little chunks, it seems if i record too much at a time (5+ minutes) captivate will crash when i end recording.. often this leaves some process running so that if i try to restart captivate and begin recording again i am told that a session is currently in progress, and i have to restart the computer to kill the process. for the record i am running under xp, on a 1.7ghz centrino duo with 1gig ram and i have ~3gig of HD space free.

also importing frames and saving projects is running extremely slowly.

anybody had similar experiences...?

if i find a solution i'll post it here.

edit: should mention i'm dealing with a fairly large project, in the order of 300+ slides

[ohiocolleen]

My experience is similar- often, after I've recorded, when I hit "End" or stop recording, Captivate just vanishes. I have to restart the application, and often I have to reboot just to restart. I am NOT working on anything large.

[pjplus2]

I just started having the issues described here (clicking "end" and Captivate 2 vanishes; trying to record additional slides and it says a session is in progress). I've had Captivate 2 for several months and am confounded by what would suddenly cause these issues to appear. I've done extensive testing to see if I can pin down the exact scenario, but still not sure. It may be related to recording over a network, but only with some programs. When I record an IE-based application, it's horrible. The particular file I'm recording is about 81 slides long. My system meets all requirements. Today, after several unsuccessful attempts to press "end" and save my work, it all of a sudden let me save it. Then the "disappearing menus" issue occurred (which I fixed by opening hte Library and clicking an item). VERY inconsistent. Very surprising, also, as I've been using Captivate since Adobe took over and have not experienced this degree of trouble.

Anyone find a solution yet for the crashing issue? I wonder if it could be related to virtual memory or caching?

[aplumb]

Hi ohiocolleen,

Sanity check, first. You say Captivate, you are refering to Captivate 2, right?

A few things to try:

1. Close off any and all applications you don't need open to do the capture. Close them *before* you load up Captivate.
- I discovered that having Microsoft Outlook open caused all sorts of speed and stability issues. ...Also helps keep you focused on the task at hand without all the extra distractions. ;-)

Corollary: If you do experience a crash, make sure the Captivate process itself is fully terminated. Ctrl+Alt+Delete to pop the "Windows Security" panel and pick "Task Manager". Check the Processes tab for Captivate-specific processes like "AdobeCaptivate.exe" and End them before starting up a new session.

2. If you're running multi-headed (two or more monitors/displays), deactivate all but the one you're using for capture.
- I do all my capture activity on my laptop, but when it's docked I have a second monitor hooked up and "extend my windows desktop" to it. Shutting off one one or the other frees up system resources, specifically graphics-related resources.

3. In your Display Properties, reduce your Screen resolution to the closest to your capture dimensions.
- Many applications don't like 640x480 or even 800x600, but 1024x768 usually works.

4. In the Advanced settings of your Display Properties, try reducing Hardware acceleration to a lower setting (in the Troubleshooting tab).
- Depending on what application you're capturing from, you may need to leave this set higher or at Full.

Doing 1-3 may be sufficient to stabilize your system so I wouldn't worry about trying 4 unless the other three don't help much.

Hope this helps!

Andrew.

[Kayema]

I'm using Captivate 2.0 for a project and it works great, the only problem occurs when i'm importing a flash movies which refers root, then the application becomes very unstable... it even doesn't work..(my clicks on objects disappear).

Maybe your experience something like that?

I must restart captivate, then it works OK, untill I select some animation which refers to root.

[arkocher]

Hello Everyone,
I have been using Captivate 1 for the last six months. Yes, it has stability problems due to it being a memory hog. As aplumb had mentioned, close all other applications except those you are using to record screen captures. You may even want to clear your memory cache (in Explorer>Tools>Internet Options>Delete files>delete offline content>OK).

The best recommendation is to reboot your system prior to using Captivate. This will make sure that you free up your RAM as much as possible.

The stability directly relates to memory usage. Finally, when recording, do record in smaller chunks. Our team recorded in chunks, then tried to combine everything into 1 file. What a nightmare!! The flash file was still 10 megabytes and did not perform as well as we would have liked.

Cheers
Rob