Tag Archives: Captivate 4

Displaying the Slide Label on the Screen in Captivate 4

Posted on 11. Mar, 2010 by captivatehero.

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Time for some system variables in Captivate 4! Who’s ready?

You are going to use the System variable – cpInfoCurrentSlideLabel - to display the name of the Slide Label on each slide. This will save you a tremendous amount of time if you need to put a custom title on each screen.

  1. Create a blank .CP file
  2. In the Filmstrip – navigate to slide 1
  3. Double click slide 1 and add the Slide Label: Main Menu
  4. Click OK in the Slide Properties dialog box
  5. Create a new Text Caption in slide 1
  6. Double click the caption to edit it
  7. From the Text Edit toolbar above the work area – click on the Insert Variable button
  8. In the Variable Type drop down menu choose System
  9. In the View By menu select – MovieInformation
  10. From the Variables menu select the cpInfoCurrenSlideLabel variable
  11. Set the Maximum Length to 50. This will allow for really long slide titles
  12. Click the OK Button

You now see the Variable displayed in the Text Caption. To display the title on every screen you will need to change the properties of the Text Caption

  1. Right click the text caption
  2. Select Properties… in the contextual menu
  3. In the New Text Caption dialog box – select the Options Tab
  4. Set the Following:

  • Display for Rest of Project
  • Appear after 0.0 seconds
  • Effect – Fade In only

  1. Click the OK Button to set your text
  2. Test you work by Previewing the Project

You will now see the title “Main Menu” appear in you slide. Try duplicating this slide a few times and change each slide label. When you preview your project - the variable will now update with each slide’s label information.

The Captain loves these variables!

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Useful Captivate 4 Variables

Posted on 15. May, 2009 by captivatehero.

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The Captain noticed a great post today on the Adobe Captivate blog that lists all the Captivate 4 system variables, their default values, and a description. This is a great supplement to the Captivate 4 Help file - which only lists the older RoboDemo variables that begin with the prefix “rd”.  I think one of the challenges of using the variables is the time it takes to test them out to validate functionality. This list is going to help decipher what these variables are used for.

Here’s a list of some of the variables that I find interesting, and that will most likely be used in my Captivate 4 projects:

Variable

Description

Comments
cpCmndCC Enable/disable closed captioning (CC). Set value to 1 to display closed captions. Change the value to 0 to turn them off. This will really come in handy when you are trying to hide the Closed Caption area. For instance, when there are text captions that match the audio track. Having a closed caption would be redundant at that point.
cpCmndGotoSlide Assigns the slide number that the movie should move to before pausing. This is a little tricky - the Index begins with 0. What makes this different than just a plain old “Jump to Slide”? When you are building conditional statements, or trying to evaluate a slide number - you will take advantage of this VAR in your Captivate Actions.
cpCmndMute This will mute the audio. Set  the value to 1 to mute and 0 to un-mute the audio. This is going to be great to turn off any background audio that you may have playing through the course. Keep in mind that this will mute ALL the audio.
cpCmndShowPlaybar This will turn the visibility of the playbar on or off. The default value is 1 if the Playbar is turned on in the skin. Set the value to 0 to turn the playbar off. This variable is going pay off big time when you are trying to incorporate a Captivate skin and a demonstration/simulation.
cpLockTOC Enables/disables user interaction on TOC. If you want to lock the Table of Contents in place - set the value to 1. If your users need to go through all the slides - this will force the TOC to stay open so they can see their progress.
cpCmndVolume Control the movie’s volume. Values can range from 0 to 100. This will allow you to control the volume of your audio tracks in the course. This will come in handy if you have a section of your course where the audio levels don’t match.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more variables that allow you to:

  • Control the Captivate movie
  • Pull Captivate movie information
  • Grab Captivate movie metadata
  • Grab System information
  • Display Quiz information

In my next few posts, the Captain will be diving in deep with examples on how you can use Captivate 4 variables to extend the capabilites of your next course.

Until then - happy Captivating!

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Captivate 4, FLVs and the TOC

Posted on 23. Apr, 2009 by captivatehero.

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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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Captivate 4 Sneak Peak at the Adobe Learning Summit

Posted on 12. Nov, 2008 by captivatehero.

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The Captain was lucky enough to sit in on RJ Jacquez’s presentation on the upcoming features of Captivate 4 at the Adobe Learning Summit on Monday. He called it “Captivate Next” in the presentation, but it was apparent by the opening screen that it may be Captivate version 4.

The session was billed as a sneak peak on Adobe eLearning technologies, but it was primarily an overview of Captivate 4 - which was just fine by me. There were a few announcements around Adobe tools including an eLearning suite to be released sometime in 2009 that includes Photoshop CS4, Flash CS4, Acrobat Professional 9 and Adobe Device Central integration with Captivate. In addition, RJ mentioned that a Macintosh version of Captivate is in the works - no word on a release date.

Here are the new features that were revealed:

Captivate File Set Up

  • Create a new Mobile Captivate file in Adobe Device Central
    • Preview your Captivate application on devices that support FlashLite 3.0 and 3.1
    • Simulate lighting conditions for the mobile device in Adobe Device Central

Recording Features

  • Automatic panning that will follow your mouse
  • New recording interface
  • New “pre-recording” panel

Development Features

  • Inline text editing with captions! No text tool yet, but it’s close enough.
  • Call Captivate variables to control the environment
    • Turn the navigation bar on or off
    • Turn the visibility of elements on or off - like a caption
  • Use custom variables to store and display any information you want
    • Variable values are displayed visually by using $$variablename$$ in a caption. This can be used to capture a student’s $$firstname$$ or $$lastname$$ values
    • Static variables can also be used in a Captivate language RDL file. This will allow you to customize the automatic captions that are created during a recording
  • Captivate Widgets
    • Pre-built Flash components that can communicate with the Captivate development environment
    • ActionScript 3 code is provided so you can create you own Widgets
    • Widgets revealed include:
      • Text entry box that captures a variable value
      • Student certificate that has the course name, score and student name
      • Buttons that will display for rest of movie that will turn off the next and back buttons depending if you are on the first or last slide
    • Download widgets from Adobe.com
    • Use existing widget FLA files to modify or make your own custom widgets
    • Build a quiz widget that can get reported to an LMS
  • Create multiple Captivate Actions on one slide

Publishing

  • Export your SWF file as either ActionScript 2 or ActionScript 3 based code
  • Easier way for creating an Image Slide Show
  • Output directly to a PDF document - Acrobat 9 Reader only
  • Create one SWF file that embeds all the media including the skin, SWF videos, and quiz question elements
  • Create a Table of Contents - the Menu option is gone
    • Use the TOC for one or more Captivate movies
    • Multiple Captivate SWF movies will need to use the new Aggregator feature to “package” everything together
    • Search your Captivate movie through the TOC
  • Output to Flashplayer 7, 8, 9 and now 10

Tool Integration and Workflow

  • Captivate files and templates are now rendered in Adobe Bridge
  • Import Photoshop files into Captivate
    • You can either flatten the image or retain the individual layers
    • The PSD file will take each layer and convert it into a PNG
    • Each PSD layer becomes a separate Captivate layer on the timeline. This will make it really easy to build animations and screen builds in Captivate.
  • Create Captivate templates that use placeholders for graphics, captions, videos, and slide types like a quiz question, or recording slide.
  • Round trip editing with PowerPoint content in Captivate via a dynamic link
  • Adobe Air Review Application
    • Allows you to send a reviewer an Air application that will play the Captivate movie
    • Reviewer makes comments and e-mails them back to the Captivate developer, or uploads them to a development server
    • Comments import back into Captivate
    • Changes can be made, and comments sent back to the reviewer

Wow! What a list.

The Captivate development team has been busy. There are some real substantial changes to Captivate that will really speed up development time, and create an integrated workflow with other Adobe tools. This is going to really be a worthy upgrade to the product, and the Captain cannot wait to see more.

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