Captivate 4, FLVs and the TOC

Posted on 23. Apr, 2009 by captivatehero in Captivate 4

First, the Captain would like to say - “I’m back”! I’ve been on hiatus for the first part of the year, but ready to start spreading knowledge once again on Adobe Captivate and all things related.

I want to mention an issue that popped up today when I was reviewing a client’s .CP file that used multiple FLV’s.

The .CP file was not complicated - one static slide with text and graphics and one slide with a FLV video - repeat that pattern 8 times. All the videos were set to progressive load, display until the end of the slide, and pause slide until the end of the video. There was a requirement for the FLV playback bar to be visible, and show the progress barmovement while the video was playing. No problem right?

The playback head was not moving!

The playback head was not moving!

Well some real strangeness started happening during testing. Some of the videos would trigger the FLV progress bar/playback head just fine, and then for others the playback head would just sit there. These videos would play just fine - but you had no control of scrubbing the video. When I tried to re-publish - different videos would work. Re-publish again - now a different set of videos worked.

Well, after much testing and gnashing of teeth - I’ve concluded that the new Table of Contents feature is messing with the FLV playback component. After removing the TOC - the FLV playback bar worked like a champ on every video! Unfortunately, the TOC is required by my client for this project.

The Captain is still trying to sort that one out.

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18 Responses to “Captivate 4, FLVs and the TOC”

  1. Amber Egea

    21. Sep, 2009

    I was wondering if you have any thoughts to my problem:

    We need our Captivate files to play as .swf progressive downloads (because we have clients with low bandwidth). However, when we converted our Captivate files to flv, uploaded to our server and played as streaming media , the Captivate navigation bar was converted into a non-playing graphic. :(

    Is there a way to produce the file as flv and have a working Captivate play bar?

  2. captivatehero

    08. Oct, 2009

    No. There’s no way to have an interactive playbackbar in an FLV.

    Try this:
    Remove the playbackbar from the original file and publish out as a SWF. Convert it to an FLV and re-import into a .CP with a playback bar the the new file.
    This will still give you the functionality that you need and the user can view the streaming content.

    I hope that works for you.

    The Captain

  3. Aarti

    08. Oct, 2009

    Hi Captain Captivate!

    Have you had any luck resolving this playback control issue? I’ve tried all different types of skins, different FLVs encoded at different rates, frame size etc to no avail. Then I read this post and I tried disabling the TOC … but the playback controls still don’t work the way they should. And I’ve found in my testing that the controls will work differently in Preview mode and differently when the project is actually published.

    I hope you can save my project Captain! Thanks!

  4. Jim

    04. Nov, 2009

    Good morning from chilly Ontario.
    I am evaluating Captivate 4 and love it so far.
    But my client requires that demonstration videos load quickly.
    Their current Camtasia environment allows them to publish videos as flv’s.
    Roaming the forums and now Captain Captivate, it appears that we may have problems publishing as flv’s.
    Has a solution appears since Aarti’s post on Oct 8?

  5. captivatehero

    27. Nov, 2009

    Jim-

    No updates on this end.
    Captivate can handle FLV’s just fine, but there has been documented problems with Captivate files with numerous FLV files.

    Remember that your client’s connection is going to impact how fast the videos load.
    Make sure that you prototype and test before developing the whole course.

    The Captain

  6. Aggravated in Texas

    05. Jan, 2010

    Intrepid Captain,

    I am developing a software demo in Captivate. It is fairly brief (30 slides) and includes two slides with FLV video along with a screen recording. I am struggling mightily with the videos cutting off the last second or so during playback. This is hosted on an intranet with T3 connection, and I am running Flash 10. I have tried optimizing and re-encoding my video files to reduce size and still it occurs. I have tried playing with the display length on the slide and video properties and still no luck. Any suggestions?

    Thanks,
    Andy

  7. Sue

    06. Jan, 2010

    I’m having problems with Streaming flash videos I can see the video fine if I put the address in an interenet explorer file but when I put the url in the captivate flash streaming video area and select a skin (or not) nothing shows up? Any ideas?

  8. Rod

    07. Jan, 2010

    Captain

    I’m having similar problems with FLV’s. I have a small number of FLV’s in sucessive slides (I’m actually simulating the pausing of a video so the user has time to digest the fast-paced action shown on screen. The FLV’s all start OK, but mostly they don’t complete (Maybe 80% or so) However occasionally they work perfectly. I’ve noticed that this is if I insert a new piece of FLV.

    It’s frustrating. I guess that this is the same issue that others are having, so, you’re not the only ones guys.

  9. captivatehero

    10. Jan, 2010

    Try posting your work up to a web server and test it.
    That may do the trick.

    The Captain

  10. captivatehero

    10. Jan, 2010

    Andy-

    Are your videos longer than 2 minutes?

    Captivate has a problem with unloading the .FLV out of memory. My take on it is that Captivate wants to keep all the FLV’s in memory for efficient playback. Pro: Videos start right away when in memory. Con: You run out of memory leaving you with non video, cut off video, video that stops. If you have any long form video - I would open it up in another window and then have the user close the window.

    This is painful, but I have yet to come up with a better work around.

    - The Captain

  11. captivatehero

    10. Jan, 2010

    Rod-

    You may want to look at streaming video instead of progressive. I hope this problem is resolved with the next version of Captivate. Video is exploding in the eLearning space, and there needs to be a way to display tons of video in Captivate without having these memory issues.

    The Captain

  12. Kalani Bright

    01. Apr, 2010

    Aloha Captain et all,

    Its definitely buggy code in the video player. But I found this out. It usually almost always only affect the first one. Make a duplicate of the faulty video. Make sure both have a valid video path (don’t get rid of it)

    Whatever one it affects put that on the first slide, turn off autoplay and stick it behind an image which looks like your slide background. So its there but obviously the user can’t interact with it and it wont play.

    But when you publish the movie all the movies scrubbers work.

    I hate having to do workarounds like this…but it works.

  13. Wendy

    08. Apr, 2010

    I’m having an annoying problem and I’m hoping you can help. I just want one .flv in one slide to play to people I am training and it won’t play.

    The slide comes up, the text comes up, but the video doesn’t. I’m not sure where I’m going wrong. It works when I preview in Captivate but not when I test if from my browser.

    Help please!

  14. captivatehero

    21. Apr, 2010

    Wendy-

    Boy that is annoying.

    You should try publishing the .CP file and HTML file out and post it to the server you are deploying to. There could be an issue with the location of the temporary files.
    Make sure when you post the files to the server that the .FLV file is also posted and it is referenced properly in the .CP file.

    - The Captain

  15. Clode

    23. Apr, 2010

    hi captain

    I’m not able to export a Captivate project in flv format
    Can you help me?

    Tnx

  16. captivatehero

    03. May, 2010

    Clode-

    From Captivate 4 you can publish your movie as an uncompressed AVI file. Choose the “Media” publish option. There is a drop down selection for EXE or AVI. You then can use Adobe Media Encoder to convert the file to an FLV. This would be the easiest way.

    - The Captian

  17. Aaron

    01. Jun, 2010

    Hey Captain,
    I am using captivate 4 and streaming .flv in my project. The students taking my course cannot have the ability to fast forward the video. So i use the clear skin 1 skin in the flash video properties and this fixes this problem. But it creates another problem, the users cannot adjust the volume. For some reason the flash player skins start the video at half volume, even the ones that have the volume control. Is there a setting that i can have the video start at 100% volume? Is there a skin that doesnt have a scrub bar but does have the volume? Can i install more skins for the flash video player?

    Thanks,
    Aaron

  18. captivatehero

    07. Jun, 2010

    Aaron-

    Unfortunately, there are no skins that have no scrubber and audio control - you have to take both. As far as I know those skins are part of the Captivate complied application and there is no way to add skins.
    You could try using a Flash animation with a custom controller, but that going to lead to a massive amount of testing in Captivate.

    - The Captain

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