Hey guys!
I think I know what's going on regarding the problem that
rizakag is experiencing. The version of the captivate swf files is
NOT the source of the problem (ex: 7,8, ect), although the
"_skin.swf", as suepha mentions, needs to be completely eliminated.
Having the option to go back to Captivate 2 wouldn't hurt either. I
don't have that option however.
So here's what I think is going on:
When capturing screens, Captivate "listens" to changes in the
Windows environment; mouse clicks, keypresses...and
unfortunately...
mouse movement!. The second you begin to click and drag with
your mouse, Captivate goes into "full motion recording" by default.
This is
critical because as a result, you end up with a bunch of
extra "_Fullmotion#.swf" files once you publish your session. The
problem, to make matters worse, is that when you add a flash file
using Presenter's Insert--Flash function, the inserted animation
can no longer "communicate" with the other swfs that were created
during Captivate's publishing process. That problem usually results
in "blank spots" during the playback of a Captivate movie where the
full motion recordings
should have appeared.
So here's where I'm at with all of this, and what I'm trying
to do to overcome the problem:
1. As soon as you publish your PowerPoint deck using the
Presenter plugin, go to the
data directory; from there, open up the
resourcesfolder. Within that folder, what you need to do is
copy/paste all the "_Fullmotion#.swf" files from the published
Captivate project.
Why? Because of the way that publishing works in Presenter.
Each swf file you employ using the Insert--Flash method ultimately
results in swfs that are stored in the resources directory of a
published deck. And since Captivate uses dynamic loading to launch
the FMR's at run-time, having
everything in the same location means that the "base" swf
file will be able to accurately call, and load, the FMR's
appropriately. As an example of this, I set up a real quick project
here:
http://www.robrode.com/Breeze_demos/FMR/
However, this assumes that you have the ability to publish
your Presenter content locally to your computer. And even IF you
had to publish to a Connect server, you could always publish
locally first, add the full motion recordings into the resources
directory, then zip the entire course and post on Connect or some
other LMS for deployment.
The drawback: every time you publish, you're going to need to
copy/paste the FMR's back into the resources directory.
2. After speaking with Silke Fleischer, Product Manager for
Captivate, what we were able to determine is that you can take the
full motion recordings and insert them into your Captivate project
as flash objects (afterall, they're swfs!!!)...but just make sure
that you insert the FMR swfs on new, blank slides. Then go back and
delete any slide that has the camera icon (which denotes where the
full motion recordings took place to begin with). If you republish,
again without borders, you'll end up with one swf that can be
incorporated into PowerPoint using the Presenter plugin.
The drawback: What I noticed after using this method is that
there was a very brief "flash" of white at the beginning of every
FMR. I recently attempted to use a static screen shot of the
interface, and used that screen shot as a background image for the
entire project. It looked better...only to the degree that I no
longer had flashes of white, BUT now the movie had more "jump cuts"
as the swf progressed from one slide to another in the Captivate
movie. Tolerable up to a point, but then again, it'll depend on
what kind of screen capturing you're doing and how much clicking
and dragging is necessary.
That said, a couple other things to keep in mind:
1. set up your environment as best you can to reduce the
amount of FMRs that would result from the recording process.
Pre-sizing windows as they are needed will go a long way to
controlling how much movement needs to happen.
2. Remember that Captivate records captures based on screen
changes. When it comes to things like scrollbars, an easy method to
reduce FMR's is to NOT scroll with the mouse, but rather click
inside the scrollbar's trackbar to force your window to scroll up
or down. Also in that same vein is to use keyboard strokes when
possible. Example: rather than click/drag to select a word (let's
say you need to change or edit text), try using Shift with your
Arrow keys, or hold down the Shift key and left click with the
mouse to select a word or words.
Rob
visit my new Presenter forum at:
http://www.robrode.com/yabb/
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