Animation/Audio Sync Issues

[johnathon_mcalister]

From time to time, I need to do screen captures as full-motion (need the smooth real-time timing). As I narrate while doing the demo, everything records fine - the animation slide contains the full motion and the associated narration.

However, as the animation plays, the audio starts to play behind the animation - and this gets worse the longer the animation plays. My research indicates that this is because the resulting mp3 plays at a slightly different speed than the animation, and it only syncs at the beginning. I also saw that Flash can export audio with "streaming" turned on to enable sync with video key frames to solve this - but I cannot find anything similar for Captivate 2.

Experimentation with the FPS revealed that this impacts the animation playback and leaves the audio alone - but I suspect that this will not prove to be a valid solution on other machines, as they may play the audio at a different rate. I did see someone mention mp3 uses 26 FPS - but was not able to confirm this, and suspect it varies across machines. Is there a good sync solution in Captivate 2?

[CatBandit]

Hi johnathon_mcalister. You said:

quote:

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I did see someone mention mp3 uses 26 FPS - but was not able to confirm this, and suspect it varies across machines. Is there a good sync solution in Captivate 2?

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I'm not an expert at audio but am fascinated that someone would state that an audio file can even be measured in frames-per-second (fps is more a video term than audio). I don't believe this is possible but admit I could be uninformed. If "full-motion" is being used, I would think that the audio, whle on a separate layer (track) would be digitally "tied" to the video as it is recorded. I'm interested in reading anything our community AVI experts can offer on this.

In the meantime, for the milllionth time I'll remind everyone that full-motion in Captivate was designed for very short - repeat, very short dynamic captures; " very short" meaning actions measured in single-digit seconds (1-9), and if it is used as intended, the likelihood of this happening is close to nil.

Have a nice day!
.

[llstewart]

1) A slide is a sequence of frames. An audio file "bridges" many frames.

2) Take a close look at your Timelines on each slide. Make sure that your slides are set to match the length of the audio file. If the slide is not set to match the length of the audio file, this could produce the lagging that you are mentioning. You might need to move things around on the timeline for each slide to synch up with mouse movements.

When you export these to flash, the animations have a separate band on the timeline, and the audio has a separate band on the timeline. So, that tells me that Captivate treats these as two separate items and they can be triggered at different times. By matching the slide length to the audio file, it tells Captivate to keep these two items together.