Captivate 3 freezing when publishing- help?

[SarahF1]

Hi,

I’ve reached the end of my tether and was hoping someone could help me out with some professional Captivate insight.

I have had a good look around this forum and tried several things

-          I have unchecked the advanced project compression option (still froze)

-          I have unchecked this AND the compress compiled SWF file (when I’ve done both it has published but published a blank presentation)

-          I have removed the borders on the slides

-      I have saved the audio and slides on to my C drive (and not on my network) and used them from there

I am using Captivate 3 to make a number of lectures available on my company’s website. This involves importing slides from Power Point, matching them with the audio recording of the lecture and publishing them on Flash 8.

I have a new pc with 132 GB of free space however recently any project I am attempting to publish freezes during the publishing stage- during the swf compression. In the past this has worked fine- although I was mostly publishing 2 hour lectures (but one or two 3 hour lectures published successfully) and now I am only publishing 3 hour ones.

To give an example currently I am attempting to publish a lecture with 57 slides. These are non animated slides, only containing text and bullet points. However they are on my company’s heavily branded template and therefore are 1.93 MB in size. Thinking this was the problem I put the slides on a blank template and just included a logo, cutting them down to 300 KB in size- still it froze when publishing. When beginning a project I will

-          Import slides from Power Point

-          Import them as Background Image

-          Advance slides automatically

Then I will import the audio, which admittedly is very large at just shy of 3 hours in length and 157 MB in size. I will then click the distribute audio over several slides option and do that manually in accordance with the lecture. When I publish I choose flash player 8 and the audio settings are MP3, 64 kpbs, 44.10 KHz

Is I just that the audio is too large or does anyone have any other ideas?

I would be very grateful for any help

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Wow, I would think 3 hours of audio would gag Captivate big time. Most of the Captivate movies I've ever seen or dealt with were perhaps five minutes long if that.

Are you able to perhaps slice and dice the audio? My thought here is that if you really need three hours of audio, perhaps you break the three hour clip in to smaller segments. This would reduce the size of each project and perhaps help you be more successful. Maybe slice a three hour audio clip into six segments of 30 minutes each. Then see if your publishing is more successful working with smaller segments. If so, you could then Daisy Chain the projects together to achieve a seamless transfer where as one segment finishes, the next loads up and plays.

Click here to view a demonstration of the Daisy Chaining process

Hopefully this was helpful to you... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcerStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[SarahF1]

Hi Rick,

You're great for getting back to me- thanks a million.

I actually never had a problem with an audio of 2 hours!

I'm going to give splitting it a try and let you know how I get on

I've been looking at the idea of daisy chaining however I worry as Captivate has never worked for me with opening new windows during a presentation- I presume it's a problem with my flash or security settings but if it doesnt work on my PC without tinkering with these settings then it most likely wont work with my target audiences PCs!

Thanks!

[Captiv8r]

Hi again

SarahF1 wrote:

...I've been looking at the idea of daisy chaining however I worry as Captivate has never worked for me with opening new windows during a presentation- I presume it's a problem with my flash or security settings but if it doesnt work on my PC without tinkering with these settings then it most likely wont work with my target audiences PCs!...

Yes, well that's the mystery of the Flash Security. Actually it boils down to where you are playing the preso. If from a server, worries are unfounded as security is already in place for that and no need for Flash to block it. So once on a server new windows should work dandy (as should linking).

Also you will want to ensure you have the service release installed. It corrects an issue with linking.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcerStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[SarahF1]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for all your help, the project works brilliantly for me now that I've split it into 6 and linked them all.

However, my colleague is the one who takes the html and puts it onto our website and the project is not working for her on her PC- it only shows the first 20 slides and wont link on to the next group.

Do you think this is just a problem with her PCs security settings and the link will work fine once it is an actual webpage on our website and not just a html on our network?

I know it's alot of guess work but any info would be great.

Thanks