Audio skipping to last slide

[Learner_01]

Using Captivate 3 (but also had same issue in 2). Imported separate wav files for each slide. Audio plays perfectly in edit mode, however, once published, only the first few slides will work, and then all subsequent slides play the audio from the very last slide. I've read message boards but dont see an issue like this. Even tried exporting audio, deleting from each slide, and reimporting audio for every slide but to no avail. Also, how can I program slides to advance only when user clicks?

[CatBandit]

Hi Learner 01,

You can "program slides to advance only when user clicks" by placing a button (something like "Next") on each slide. You can learn about buttons, click-boxes, and text-entry boxes, the three interactive objects, in the tutorial labeled "Interactivity" on the main user interface (UI).

The audio is a little tougher to trouble shoot: It sounds like your audio files are all the same after the second or third slide, is that right? Have you checked the audio content outside Captivate to be sure the audio is what is supposed to be before it is imported?

What object is the audio being added to?? The Slide itself? An object on the slide? If so, which object and what is its timing on the slide (start, and length of display)?

If necessary, I'll take a look at your CP file (provided it is possible at your end). In any case, if you are having the same problem in version 2 and 3, it is probably way past time to find the cause and get it fixed, and I'm happy to help if you wish.

Addendum: Did you say you imported several WAV files for each slide, or did I imagine that? It can't be done, thus I'm asking about it ...
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[Learner_01]

Thanks for the reply. I knew about the "next" button option to force user to click to next slide, but was hoping there was a better alternative. One alternative that I've tried (and that may be part of the problem) is programming the slides to be 600 seconds each. The user of course doesn't know this and therefore is trained to click on the arrows in the skin to navigate. you are correct, my audio files are ok the first several slides, but then after several slides, the audio that plays for each slide after that is the audio that is attached to the last slide in the deck. i did check the audio outside of captivate and all is well. it even works/sounds good in edit mode in captivate. the audio file is being added to the slide iteself, at the beginning of the slide (0.0s). i even tried moving the audio on each slide to 0.1s, but that didnt change anything. the length of the audio for each slide varies, but b/c the slides are set to 600s, the audio always finishes before the end of the slide. all animation is timed to correspond with the audio. and each slide only has one wav file. although one or two slides, i did run two wav files back to back (the narrator only recorded one minute wav files. so on the 2 or so slides that were longer than 1 minute, he recorded 2 wav files). this doesn't seem to affect the issue i'm having b/c i thought of that and therefore deleted the audio completely from those slides, republished, and still had the same issue. i'm sure its something i'm doing incorrectly. i just can't figure out what it is.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Learner 01

Why would you configure your slides to be 600 seconds long? That's what, 10 minutes per slide? Most of the Captivate movies I've ever seen or dealt with are less than 5 or 6 minutes total for the whole movie. Single slides themselves are rarely longer than maybe 10 or 12 seconds.

I'm also confused as to what you are looking for with regards to having slides progress only when the user clicks. My fellow Community Expert advised you can use a button, but you come back with saying you don't much like that approach. Can you maybe tell us what your ideal would look like? You say you want the user to click, but click what? The slide or only the playback control? You could also cause slides to pause by using a Click Box object. Those are really like an invisible button.

Cheers... Rick

[Learner_01]

as i mentioned in my original reply, i set the slides to 600s long to ensure that the slide would never advance before the user was ready. i prefer not to create a 'next' button b/c i want the user to navigate using the buttons in the skin. i'm amazed that you've only seen single slides that are 10 or 12 seconds long. alot of the tutorials/demos on the adobe website are longer than that. and even then, they're difficult to keep up with and i find myself having to pause most slides. which is why i want my user to be able to advance at their own pace. do you have any recommendations regarding the audio issue i'm having?

[CatBandit]

Learner 01,

Since fellow community expert Rick has jumped in here, I'll bow out and let him continue to help you. Before I go, however, I'll offer this:

The man is, like myself, a certified instructor and accustomed to successfully working with new users. My take is that you are approaching your project as a true beginner might (all wrong), and you really, really need the help of someone who is at "expert" level. If not myself, then by all means, Rick. All the best to you!!

P.S. He did not say he has only seen slides that are 10 - 12 seconds. He did express astonishment that you or anyone would set all slide timing at 10 minutes. I completely agree with his astonishment. Before anyone would do that, they would place a button or click-box on each slide (at 1 or 2 seconds) and allow the user to navigate by clicking that. Hmmmm, I've heard that somewhere before ...
.

[Learner_01]

wow... and here i thought this was a help forum. instead i get bashed and my instructional design abilities insulted. i'm sorry you're feeling threatened to the point where you have to throw around your 'certifications'. you're right, i am new at this. i've only been doing it successfully for 13 years in my little international company of over 100,000 learners, so you'll have to forgive my ignorance. i too will now bow out of this thread and try to find help in an environment where it is not so hostile. how very disappointing that one can't rely on the 'certified experts' for help. good luck to you both. i'm sure you're very successful at what you do and therefore probably barely have a second to spare answering these silly little questions anyways.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Learner 01

Gee, I offer my sincere apologies if what I said sounded in any way hostile to you. If so, it certainly wasn't intended to be that way. I was only curious as to the reasoning involved. My use of "fellow Community Expert" was only a courtesy to him. Much in the same way I would refer to my physician as Dr. so and so. It is a status that is normally earned, so I always feel I should address the person appropriately.

The point I believe we were both trying to make is that a Captivate movie will play merrily along unless something causes it to pause. You are looking for a way to cause the pause to occur. The only ways we are aware of have been offered up here. Click Boxes, Buttons or Text Entry boxes are the only way to pause the slide until the user is ready to proceed. I suppose I should also add the disclaimer here that these are the only ways using Captivate alone. I'm sure there are clever souls out there that can create Flash widgets that can be dropped into Captivate that will do that too. But that is way beyond the scope of normal Captivate use.

I do believe that if you use a Click Box object, it isn't visible and can be sized and placed in an obscure location. It pauses the slide and if your user clicks the play button in the playback control, the movie will behave as you wish.

I don't believe anyone was implying here that you didn't have good instructional design abilities. I know I certainly dont' claim to have any specific Instructional Design skills. I just know how Captivate behaves. I believe the only implication made was that you are new to Captivate. You know good and well what you want to achieve, but aren't quite sure about how to go about it using this particular application.

Sincerely... Rick

[Learner_01]

rick, thank your for your mature response and sincerity. i appreciate your insight about the click boxes. we have used that approach before and may use that if it becomes necessary. however, i love the 'out of the box' thinking that my team has come up with by programming the slides to run for 600 seconds. i think its very creative and had no issues with it. my only concern was that the slide timing was the reason for the audio issues that we are having. which is REALLY the problem that i desperately need help with. but after going back in and timing the slides 'normally', we're still having the audio issues. so, can you think of any reason why the audio may be skipping to the audio attached to the very last slide?

[Captiv8r]

Hi again Learner 01

I'm glad you are still here as I would hate to think we would chase anyone off. Most of us here feel Captivate is an amazing product and are excited about sharing it with others.

To be totally honest, I've seen all sorts of issues reported here when it comes to audio. Likewise, I've seen many different solutions offered. Unfortunately, there is no "one size fits all" answer for it. Just from what I've read in this thread, it seems entirely reasonable to me that the audio issue could indeed be totally related to the unusual slide timing. Just speculating out loud here with nothing really technical to back me up, but it would seem that indeed the audio could become very confused if timelines were that long.

I sincerely hope you manage to sort the issue. Please do keep us posted on what happens once you change those slide timings back to something shorter.

Cheers... Rick

[Learner_01]

hi rick. thanks again for your sincerity. i was feeling a little concerned as well b/c i'm the one who convinced our company that we NEEDED captivate in addition to the lectora and flash that we already had. believe me, that was not an easy sell. which is why i want this to work so badly. we did go back in and change the slide timing to simply coincide with the audio. yet we're still having the same issues. (i wish i could forward the cp file to you b/c i'm sure it's something we're doing or not doing, but of course the information is sales related and therefore confidential) we even tried deleting the animation on the slide preceeding the "corrupt slide" (for lack of a better term) b/c i know sometimes animated objects can throw a glitch in things. still the same results. several team members have looked at it and we're all still scratching our heads. the audio works perfectly in edit mode... so could it be something we're doing while publishing?

[Captiv8r]

Hi again

Okay, you might try the following approaches and see if or how well it works. The second approach is a bit long, but if it works it could well be worth the time spent.

First, I would try a simple approach. In Captivate, click Edit > Preferences... > Project node and DE-select the "Compress compiled SWF file" option. Publish and see if the problem persists. If so, repeat the process and DE-select the "Advanced project compression" option. Publish and see if the problem persists. Try mixing the combinations. This is the quick way to check if it's a setting that may be affecting things.

Assuming the above process fails, you might export all your audio clips from each slide. When exporting, only export .MP3 format. (I suggest this because audio exists in Captivate in two formats. .WAV and .MP3. But only .MP3 is actually used when you publish. I'm trying to rule out any possibility of a conversion corrupting any audio.)

Now, open a second instance of Captivate and create a brand new project that is sized identically to the one giving you fits.
In the original project, remove any audio from slides.
Copy the slides from the errant project to the new one. This should give you a fresh Captivate project with no audio.
Now you may close the original errant project.
Import the audio clips into each slide.
Publish and test and if all goes well, you should be in business.

Hopefully this will help... Rick

[Learner_01]

hi rick, thanks for taking the time to offer some great suggestions. i really appreciate it. i had tried the 3rd suggestion, but imported wav files into the newly created project, so i will try it again and will import mp3s this time. i'll keep you posted. keep your fingers crossed!

[CatBandit]

Unlike Rick, I won't apologize. To ask for help, receive it from two persons (expert or not), and then challenge every word of it is wasteful of your time and ours. If you are half as smart as your 13 years and 100,000 users implies, you'll quit defending the wrong way to do it, and listen to Rick to learn the right way. If you are not willing to do that, you are right to get off the forums and save everyone a lot of stress.
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[JimAtANI · Accepted solution]

I'll address the problem of an audio file playing on the wrong slide or repeating the same audio clip on a number of slides when the Project is published. This has happened to me a lot and the solution was:

DO NOT USE WAV FILES! The only way I got the audio to work properly was to convert all my WAV files to MP3 (at a constant bit rate of 112 kps), delete all the WAV files I had previously imported into my Project file, then re-import the MP3 versions. That stopped the audio file problems. If you convert the WAV files to a variable bit rate MP3 file with a higher bit rate, you run the risk of the audio being slowed down by 1/2 or more, making female voices sound male, when you publish to Flash.

I know that Captivate converts the MP3 files to WAV files when they are imported and then converts them back to MP3 when they are pubished, but for some reason using WAV files directly has caused nothing but problems.

The Publish to Flash in Captivate 2 (and it sounds like Captivate 3 hasn't improved) is so buggy that I never know what my SWF files will look and act like despite everything working well in the Project file.

Best of luck!

Jim

[Captiv8r]

Hi Jim

You said:
I know that Captivate converts the MP3 files to WAV files when they are imported and then converts them back to MP3 when they are pubished, but for some reason using WAV files directly has caused nothing but problems.

Here is where I think confusion reigns. Yes, either format is converted to the other format when importing into the project. No way around that I'm afraid. I stand to be corrected on this next part, but it is my understanding that when Captivate creates the output, only the .MP3 is actually used. So here's the deal. If you import a .MP3 file, sure it gets converted to .WAV. But to my knowledge, it is left pretty much alone as a .MP3 file inside Captivate. So when you publish, no conversion is occurring that is modifying the .MP3 file. Unless, I suppose, you have modified the Captivate audio settings. In that case, I might see some monkey business going on. But I do believe that by and large, it simply uses what is there. Which is why you are seeing the behavior you are by importing only .MP3 files.

Cheers... Rick

[CatBandit]

A note of encouragement to "Jim" and others who read his post. If working only with the MP3 files was successful for Jim, it may be good for you too - go ahead and try it. Jim's workaround of converting all WAV files to a constant bit-rate (as MP3s) and importing only those MP3s might have value; it apparently did work for him.

The comments about what file format is converted to what - and when - are entirely beside the point, and IMO are just unnecessary nitpicking. In fact, Rick's statement that the MP3 is basically being left alone at publish time is, in my experience, incorrect; the MP3 is regenerated from the WAV file each time you publish.

... so "Jim", don't be discouraged by what might appear to be nitpicking in response to your efforts to help. Keep making the effort to help others by offering to share your experiences. It really is appreciated!

[Learner_01]

Thank you, Jim for your suggestion. I will try that approach as we have identified that the problem definately lies within the addition of audio, specifically to the Quiz slides. After much investigating and trying everything under the sun, we finally resorted to recreating and publishing after each slide to see if there was a pattern with where the "corruption" began. Lo and behold.. it was the Quiz slides. Regardless of where the quiz slide resided in the presentation, adding audio to them affected the audio on most other slides as well. We haven't found consistency yet with what the cause is, however. At first we thought it was how the audio was attached to the slide (you can't just drag it from the audio library and attach it just anywhere on the slide), but that theory doesn't seem to hold up every time. Although it did work on some slides. Other slides we added audio the "proper" way, but still not a sure fix everytime. I'll keep you posted.

[Captiv8r]

Hi all

Maybe it's just the instructor in me that causes this, I'm not sure. However, I honestly feel that the worst possible thing one may do is to intentionally spread misinformation. Because of this, I decided to ask a "behind the scenes" Captivate resource at Adobe. Below is what I asked and the answer I received back.

Here is what I asked:
Hi [Adobe resource name]

I need a sanity check if you may.

I know that in Captivate, if I import a .WAV format file, Captivate converts said file to .MP3 upon importing. I also see that if I import a .MP3 format file, it converts it to .WAV when importing. I have always been told that when one Publishes the Captivate file, the .SWF or .EXE only contains the .MP3 version of the file. So here's my question.

If I import a .MP3 file into Captivate, it converts to .WAV. My gut tells me that this is probably because Captivate probably needs the file to be in .WAV format in order to properly edit it if I choose. So question number one is to ask if I am correct in my assumption.

Assume I import a .MP3 and make no changes whatsoever to the file in Captivate, other than to attach it to a slide or object. When I go to publish the Captivate file, is the .MP3 modified in any way going out?

Thanks for any information you may be able to provide.

And here is what I received in response:
It is little complicated but this is how it was designed from RoboDemo.
1. When a mp3 file is imported to CP, it remains as mp3 unless user edit them. In this case, Captivate will create a wav file of the same and editing is done on wav file only.
2. Whenever we publish or preview, mp3 file is created and added inside the SWF file. Thus we can safely say that the output audio is always mp3.
3. When a wav file is import to cp, it remains as WAV file. Editing is done as wav format. Publish/Export will create the mp3 from this wav.

So to answer you question, if you import a mp3 file and no edit is made (not even split into slides) and published, the same mp3 file will be used in the SWF or EXE. For visual indication, when you publish, you can notice the text mp3 creation if there is a need.

Regards,

[Adobe resource name]

Happy Tuesday all... Rick

[CatBandit]

I was going to send this privately, and would have, had you not libeled me publicly, Rick. But that requires a public defense, so here it is:

1) You wasted the time of a programmer (if you can be believed about your unnamed "resource"), to try to prove a point that wasn't even in dispute. Very uncool (reread my post on that subject - more carefully this time).

2) You openly and deliberately libeled me. Also uncool. Please don't do that again (look up the penalties for "libel").

3) And most impressive, you managed once more to ignore the real issue - which had nothing to do with audio files, and everything to do with disrespecting and belittling another member's efforts to contribute help to the community without your "helpful" corrections (read your response to "Jim").

If no one had given you the chance to post without trashing or "helpfully correcting" you, you wouldn't be a community volunteer today ... and I was the "someone" who shut up and encouraged you instead of nitpicking your every effort. How short can your memory be?

Do not tell me again what I already know about the WAV files (used for editing) and the MP3 files (used to conserve bandwidth). I've said before that isn't my point. Get it straight that my point is entirely about you never letting anyone offer anything without being nitpicked for the effort. Go back to the concept of helping others and quit trying to find something to "helpfully correct" in every freaking post. You'll be amazed at how many people will offer to help if left alone to do just that.

[Learner_01]

Well folks, looks like Jim (and Rick I believe you might have hit on this as well) was the winner. The solution in fact was to only use mp3 files. Any .wav files that we had edited in the original deck were, based upon Jim's idea, exported as mp3s and then reimported as mp3s. The audio for each slide now behaves as it should. Thank you all for all of your input!

[Learner_01]

Thanks Jim and Rick for your recommendations!