Blinking/flashing mouse pointer

[Guest]

I'm working with the demo version of Adobe Captivate 3, and so far I'm liking it a lot. The problem I'm having, though, is that in full-motion capture mode, the mouse cursor blinks constantly at a high rate. It makes it hard to see where I'm clicking.

The pointer theme is Windows' default, and I tried disabling hardware accelleration.

What is going on here?

Josh

[CatBandit]

I don't use full-motion capture mode, Josh, so I may be no help (Captivate really isn't designed to be used as a full-motion capture device - IMHO). But obviously there is a problem, so let's try to troubleshoot it.

Have you tried a totally different mouse scheme (Windows Control Panel > Mouse)? To see if it is an issue with the colors in the OS, try changing to 16 bit color mode (Control Panel > Display > Settings). If that is no help, I think the next thing I might look at is the color scheme of your desktop ... as in switching to Windows Classic color scheme. That will eliminate a few millions of colors from each slide (screen capture). Any help yet? I am just throwing out what suggests itself, and as you can see, I am treating it as a color or display adapter issue ... could be entirely wrong, but we gotta start somewhere.

~regards
Larry

P.S. Welcome to the "posting" end of the Captivate User2User Community!!

[Guest]

I have tried changing my mouse theme, which is currently the Windows default set. Hard to imagine that causing issues.

The problem is occuring in the 16 bit recording mode as well. I'll have to try to change the color scheme, but it's pretty much at Windows default also.

I'm trying to convince the boss that full motion video isn't the way to go; I think he'll be OK with Captivate's animated version.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Josh

[Guest]

Changing the display settings didn't fix the issue, either. It's possible that it's a resource issue, as I do notice a slowdown on my computer when I start the capture.

We'll try to use animated screen captures instead; that will be a lot more labor-efficient, anyway.

Thanks again!
Josh

[CatBandit]

I think you'll find that Captivate, when used as it was originally intended, (background images with mouse movement to give realism to application-captures) will WOW your boss and all viewers. Glad you are giving it a try that way.

If "full-motion" capture, which is closer to a AVI movie, is the only thing that your boss will accept, he is cheating himself out of Captivate's greatest strengths ... the ability to "show" realistic movement through the menus and links of an application with the least use of PC resources on the development end as well as on the end-users machinery.

Best of luck to you - if you have other questions, just let us know.

Larry