How to add new recordings to an already scaled-down project

[mickeymammoth]

I know how to rescale the entire project. But  how would I come back later to add recordings to an existing, already  scaled down project? My workaround was to create a new project at the  original big size, to my recording, scale it down, and then copy these  into the master project. But that's frankly pretty kludgy. I'm also  interested in making a template that can be used for various application  captures, so I can't make assumptions about the starting size of  people's recordings, but I would like the ending size to be consistent  so we can all use the same sized captions etc. I'm kind of perplexed at  how to make this rescaling work...

Any hope that Captivate 5 has a better solution for this??

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

When I will have to downscale a project, mostly I try to keep the original file too for cases as you described. It is a bit of a reflex, because downscaling is mostly done on behalf of the user to avoid him to have to scroll. The original file has a better quality; there was certainly a reason to choose the original bigger resolution, perhaps because of a complex screen to be captured. I do not know what you really want to be changed about this: if you want to capture new slides, you'll need the same big resolution? In Captivate you are dealing with bitmap images, just like in Photoshop. When I have to downscale a photo, I will never throw away the original big one... That is what I call 'my reflex'

Could you try to explain which workflow would seem better?

Lilybiri

[mickeymammoth]

I usually have a mixture of text slides and screencapture videos. It would be ideal to have the text slides, font sizes, as well as the callouts on the screencaptures be a fixed size for all my group's projects in the FINAL output. The problem I'm having is I want to capture the application at its normal big size, and then shrink it down in the final video to avoid scrolling in a video embedded in a browser window. There is degradation of course; but I'm not sure what the alternative is. Should I use panning instead? (I know that Camtasia has a sweet auto-zoom capability so you can zoom in on detailed action, but I otherwise prefer Captivate for its other features. But in this case, Camtasia is a lot smarter about recognizing this particular problem.)

Since we will be capturing various applications that might default to different sizes, I can't just tell people to start the project at one size and then rescale to another size. The starting size will vary; the end size will stay the same. Does that make sense?

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Yes, I understand your problem.  Camtasia has features in which it excels, but the concept is just different from that of Captivate. Camtasia concentrates on 'video', Captivate is more on 'photos' and interactivity, branching.

For text slides you could have the fixed resolution, even make a template. For the screen captures: just one recommendation, try to have the same width-height ratio as the one you will use in the final project. When you import them into the CP-file with the text slides, you will be asked if you want to downscale, which you could allow. Is this not a possible workflow? Personally I do not like the panning feature, perhaps because I never took a lot of time to 'tame' it

Lilybiri

[mickeymammoth]

Yes, I think the best workflow is how you describe it. I seriously considered Camtasia since I'm not as interested in interactivity, but I grew very frustrated with the lack of control over the overall timing of the screencapture. Captivate is sooo much better at micro managing the timing of mousing and actions on the screen. I'll have to play around with panning, but I can see how it would need taming. Thanks!!

Ramona