CP3: Adobe Learning Summit 2008 Documents

Posted on 10. Nov, 2008 by captivatehero.

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Thanks for everyone who attended my session at the Adobe Learning Summit 2008 in San Jose, CA.

Adobe Captivate Workflow Strategies

Adobe Captivate Workflow Strategies

At the bottom of this post is a PDF that will walk you through the steps of creating your own Captivate 3 templates. I’ve also included a link to a Zip file that contains four sample templates and student files to walk through the exercises.

And to top it off - I just added a white .BMP file that you can use for a custom caption when creating body text for your template. It’s in the student files Zip.

Enjoy!

Captivate 3 Templates

Student Files (18MB - ZIP)

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Adobe Learning Summit Activities

Posted on 10. Nov, 2008 by captivatehero.

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It’s not all work for the Captain.

After practicing our presentations at the Adobe Learning Summit the speakers made our way over to Gorden Biersch for some food, drinks and fun. It was nice to meet the marketing power behind Connect and other Adobe learning products.

The files from my presentation can be found here:
Captivate 3 Work Flow Presentation Files

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Captivate 3 and FLV Video - Part 2

Posted on 21. Oct, 2008 by captivatehero.

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Why are you a problem in Captivate 3?

Why are you a problem in Captivate 3?

This is in response to an earlier post about .FLV video in Captivate 3. I wanted to share with you a post that was made up on a private Captivate board by Jonathan Turkle, VP at Envisiontel. I think this confirms my suspicions about large amounts of Flash video.

I have had several occasions where customers have asked me to take a series of  20 .flv videos and turn it into DVD style on-line experience with a menu of various chapters or video modules that the user can be selected form different slides in a non-linear random access manner. When the video slide is finished playing the viewer is taken back to a main menu or home screen

After a great deal of time exploring this issue in Captivate 3, I learned that Captivate is designed to cache embedded movies in slides in a linear fashion in the order or the slides in the project. This means that beyond slide four or five the user must wait an interminable time for the video to load because it must cache the previous slide videos first. Is it not possible to have Captivate call an .flv slide videos without waiting for all the other slide videos to cache first?

The only work around to eliminate the extremely long video caching process has been to break up what should have been one Captivate project in to four Captivate projects with no more than 5 video slides in the project.

As I dig deeper into this topic it seems that large amounts of video in Captivate is a problem - hopefully this is addressed with any future versions of Captivate.

There have also been comments by many people about not even being able to play back .FLV video at all. This might be a server MIME type issue, but I’m looking for confirmation on that.

So it looks like if you are doing a video intensive project - stream your video. This looks like the only solution a this point. Now I have yet to speak with anyone who has implemented streaming video in Captivate 3, so if you have tested these waters please comment.

The Captain will continue to investigate this problem!

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Captivate On-Site Class: Flextronics

Posted on 18. Oct, 2008 by captivatehero.

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I just returned from a fantastic two day Captivate on-site class with Flextronics corporation in Denver, CO. There were students in from all over the country - Washington, Ohio, New Jersey and Illinois.

Denver is such an beautiful place - I can see why so many people migrate to the area. I was able to see the Rockies from the training room - now that’s what i call a view.

Here are some pictures from the training.

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Captivate Masters Week in Charlotte

Posted on 14. Oct, 2008 by captivatehero.

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This past Friday was the last day of the Captivate Masters Week in Charlotte, NC. What an amazing class! There were students in from as far as Sweden, and India - and a great mix of corporations and higher education institutions. I want to thank all of my Captivate Masters for a great week, and I wish you all the best.

The next Captivate Masters week is scheduled for April 2009 in NYC. There are no firm dates yet, but I will post them when they become available. Here are a few pictures from last week:

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CP3: Building Captivate 3 Templates - Part 3

Posted on 30. Sep, 2008 by captivatehero.

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Building Templates

To create a Captivate template you will follow these steps:

  1. Create a new blank Captivate File.
    • Click the Record or create new project link in the center column.
    • In the New project option dialog box - select the Other option.
    • In the Project types section choose the Blank Project radio button.
    • Click the OK button.
    • In the blank project window select the Preset size of 790 x 545 Browser.
    • Click the OK button.
    • Save your file as Softskill.cp.
  2. This is the start of a Captivate file with generic slides that serve a specific function like soft skill training or a quiz. Detailed assets like custom buttons, background artwork, and interactions are then added to complete the file.

  3. Convert the Captivate (.CP) file to a Captivate template (.CPTL).
    Captivate 3 Template Workflow

    Captivate 3 Template Workflow

    • From the File menu select Save as…
    • Save the template as Softskill.cptl.
    • Note: Make sure you change the file type to .CPTL in the save as file type drown down option.

    • Close the template file for now. File > Close.
  4. You have taken your .CP file and converted it into a .CPTL file from within Captivate. The new template can reside in the My Adobe Captivate Projects/Templates directory, or in another location on your system.

  5. Create a new project from a Captivate Template.
    • From the Captivate opening screen, click the Record or create new project link in the center column.
    • In Captivate you have a few choices as far as the type of movie that we want to create. You want to create a new file from an existing template.

    • In the New project options dialog box - select the Other option.
    • In the Project Type section choose the Create Project From Template radio button.
    • Click the OK button.
    Create Project From Template

    Create Project From Template

    • In the Open dialog box - navigate to the location you saved your .CPTL file.
    • Double click the Softskill.cptl file.
  6. You have just created a new untitled.cp file from an existing .CPTL by using the New project options dialog box, and selecting Other – Create Project From Template.

  7. Save the untitled.cp file.
    • Click the Save button in the Main Toolbar and save your file as myFile.cp in the root of the My Captivate Projects directory.

    The existing template closes and remains intact with no changes. You now have experienced a condensed version of the Captivate template workflow.

    A Captivate template is nothing more than a converted .CP file. You can also open up .CPTL files in Captivate, make edits, and then save the CPTL file out. From here you can open the Softskill.cptl file back up and continue editing the template.

In part four, you will start adding adding content to your new .CPTL template file.

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