Summary: You can include Captivate movies into Articulate Presenter. This may involve manually copying the Captivate files into the Articulate published files.
Difficulty: Medium
NOTE: THE PROCEDURE FOR INSERTING CAPTIVATE MOVIES IN PRESENTER ‘09 IS THE SAME AS DESCRIBED BELOW FOR PRESENTER 5. ONLY THE INTERFACE FOR ADDING FLASH MOVIES IN PRESENTER HAS CHANGED.
Articulate Presenter brings everything together
Many course designers don’t like to put all their eggs in one basket and use different tools to get what they are after. One of the great things about Articulate Presenter is that it allows you to put the vast majority of those productions into one shell whether they be created with Camtasia, Flash, Raptivity, Captivate or any other tool out there and this is indeed a unique feature of Presenter.
This post looks at Captivate and basically copies and expands on one of the posts I made on the Articulate forums recently. The demo from this post on the forums shows how you can add Captivate to Presenter and Engage.
It is hosted on Articulate Online showing that you can have embedded Captivate movies in Presenter and still send them to your LMS.
I am not a big user of Captivate but I do know that there are different versions and that most people are using Captivate 2 or Captivate 3. I also know that Captivate can create single SWF movies (ie. the whole movie is contained in a single SWF file) or multiple-file movies (the movie is composed of a player shell, a main SWF file and other files which are important for the interactivity of the movie). Captivate 3 often creates multiple-file movies, for example if you include FLV video in your presentation.
SINGLE-FILE SWF CAPTIVATE MOVIE
If you use a single-file SWF movie, then the process for adding it to Presenter is much the same as you would follow to add any Flash movie to Articulate Presenter: via the Import Flash Movie tool in the Articulate menu.
Depending on the nature of the movie, you may need to set it to play After the slide has begun. Another issue concerns the inbuilt buffer that you may have in your Captivate movie which might conflict with the default buffer settings in Presenter. You may need to change the buffer to 0 in Presenter via the Insert Flash Movie wizard, for the conflict to disappear.
MULTIPLE-FILE CAPTIVATE MOVIES
The ‘fun’ starts when you have a multiple-file Captivate movie on your hands. Actually the process is quite simple, but you do need to do some manual shifting of files.
Let us assume you have your Captivate movie. Here is our Captivate movie as it stands by itself. It is a simple movie containing an FLV video (slideshow).
And here are the multiple files that make up our Captivate movie:
The movie is being launched by the file hip.html in our browser.
Now we want to insert this movie into Presenter. How do we do it?
- 1 Go to PowerPoint and then Articulate -> Insert Flash Movie
Display in Slide, and choose to open the skin SWF file, in the case above hip_skin.swf. It should always contain the word skin in the title.
- 2 Keep the synchronization as default (Play Flash movie and slide in sync) but select Move to next slide when user clicks next. To avoid conflicts, set the buffer to 0 although this should not be an issue with the shell. Click Next and Finish and your Captivate shell is inserted into Presenter.
- 3 Now we just need to finish our Articulate Presenter presentation in PowerPoint and publish, either to the WEB or to an LMS or to Articulate Online as normal.
- 4 When you have published you need to go to the published files and locate the data folder. This image shows published files for loading on a regular web site:
Then open the SWF folder:
You’ll find files like those below.
This is where your remaining Captivate files need to go (with the exception of the skin file which has already been inserted and which we can see above called fm_hip_skin.swf and the hip.html file which was solely used to launch the Captivate movie directly in the browser and the standard.js file which is also superfluous).
- 5 Copy the appropriate Captivate files.
- 6 Paste the above files into the SWF folder in the Presenter published files. You’ll have something like this:
- 7 You are now ready to launch your Articulate presentation by double-clicking on the player.html file. DO NOT REPUBLISH.
Here is the same Captivate movie inserted into Presenter:
If you are publishing to Articulate Online or an LMS, please see this article on how best to manually move your files.
Great post, Dave – we’ve done this a lot in the past, but never documented it. This will be a great resource for a lot of people.
[...] LMS Also, this blog article from another Articulate "Dave", Dave Moxon, might be useful: How To Add A Captivate Movie To Articulate Presenter In any case, two great blogs to bookmark and visit often for Articulate tips and how-to. [...]
Hi All,
we have very nice information here. I am experiencing one issue, which I am not able to resolve. I have an animation that is build in Captivate, which is then embedded in Articulate. In this captivate animation, I have a user interaction in which learner has to type some thing. The moment user types some thing, the outline panel view changes to “Search” and the content outline is no more displayed until user click on the outline tab again. Has any one experience this issue? If yes, please advise how to resolve it.
Thanks in advance.
Anu
Hi Dave,
I’ve been searching for a resolution of a problem I’m finding with my Captivate file embedded in Presenter. I notice the same thing happening on your demo. I created a Question slide with a Matching Question. I publish to swf and embed the swf in my Presenter file. If I open the swf directly and answer the question, it “grades” it correctly (meaning it says I’m right when I’m right , etc.). However, when I complete the question from my published AP file, it says I’m wrong even if I answer correctly. I noticed the same thing happens on your demo with the matching question. It looks like it’s looking for captial letters, but I tried changing it so that you have to match numbers and it still doesn’t work.
Do you have any ideas?
Thanks,
Leslie
Hi Anu, it sounds like you still have the keyboard shortcuts switched on in the Articulate player. If you go to Articulate -> Player Template Builder -> Navigation, you’ll find Enable Keyboard Shortcuts which you can switch off and that will stop you having interference with the Captivate.
Leslie, thanks for pointing out that the quiz doesn’t work correctly. I saw this before in another case but hadn’t noticed the problem in my example and can’t remember how or if we resolved it. Give me a little more time to look into this.
Leslie, I finally got round to looking at this issue and I cannot reproduce. I tried in Firefox 3 and IE7 and each time the quiz works and gives me the correct results. Are the lines appearing when you enter the answers A, B, and C? I have seen an issue in the past when if you have an Engage interaction as a tab, this can cause problems with results in Captivate.
Hi Dave,
Yes, I get the lines when I enter in the answers. I do have a Glossary tab in my presentation – do you think this is what’s messing it up? If so, that’s very strange…
Hi Leslie, I have seen this issue before and yes, it is very strange. I am sure you have now tried removing the Glossary to see if it works and I am guessing you have seen that it does. There is not much of a solution or workaround here for the moment other than putting your Glossary as a slide (rather than a tab). There seem to be some conflicting instructions going on between the embedded Captivate and the Engage tabbed interaction. Perhaps you have found a solution?
[...] in Presenter or Engage? Are you using Studio ‘09 ? In the meantime, these articles might help: How To Add A Captivate Movie To Articulate Presenter How To Upload Presentations With Manually Modified Content To An LMS or Articulate Online Regards [...]
This is a great post, however I cannot seem to get this work when I am trying to launch the Captivate in a new browser.
When I do this, only the skin will show up, even though I have copied the regular swf file to the right place.
Any clues? I am tearing my hair out!
[...] one not. I tried to publish only with the skin and then add the other swf as suggested here — How To Add A Captivate Movie To Articulate Presenter but it did not work — only the controls showed up with no other swf. Any suggestions? I am [...]
[...] and Captivate See: Using Captivate content in Articulate Presenter at Dave Mozealous and How To Add A Captivate Movie To Articulate Presenter __________________ Justin Wilcox Sr. Customer Support Engineer Articulate – The Global Leader in [...]
Hi Sheryl. Is this a multiple file Captivate movie? Are you pointing to the skin SWF in Articulate and copying the other files to the SWF folder in the published files? How are you publishing or testing? I tested with a Captivate in a new window in Presenter ‘09 and found no problems. You can see what I did here: http://mediaenglishonline.com/daveperso/blogdemos/captivateinnewwindow/player.html
Great blog!
I´m about to insert some Captivate items into my Articulate presentation. What caption size in Captivate is optimal for this purpose?
/ Lotta
Hi Lotta, I am not overly familiar with Captivate. What I can tell you is that your optimum size in Presenter is the same as for other inserted media, 720 x 540 pixels in Standard view or about 920 x 540 pixels if you are viewing in No Sidebar view. (You can actually have wide Flash movies in the No Sidebar view which you couldn’t in the other two views). Please get back if I haven’t answered your question !
Hi David,
Quick question! Wondering if you could help:-
I have got a captivate movie (Captivate 3). I am trying to embed it into Articulate Engage.
So, I create a new engage interaction and where it asks me to upload the media, I go to the folder corresponding to my published captivate file and upload the .swf file to Engage (I am not uploading the file with the suffix _skin). Then, I publish the engage interaction.
All seems to work fine except that the captivate movie *does not have the toolbar at the bottom* – one where I can pause/stop the movie. That is something I badly need because I need the users to be able to stop the movie when they wish to. I just don’t know why I can’t see the Captivate toolbar.
Any thoughts?
Thanks a lot!
HI Shivam, if you want the Captivate toolbar to appear, then you need to insert the skin.swf and not the regular swf. The skin contains the player in Captivate. You’ll then need to copy the other files which make up the Captivate 3 movie into the engage_content folder.
Hi Dave, I’m working with Shivam and we’re still trying to get Captivate movies to play in Engage. We’ve follwed the instructions, however in the published e-learning all we get is the ’skin’ i.e. the white screen with the player controls, but no content appears. Any suggestions wlecom! Something we have noticed is that you reference .FLV files, however these do not seem to be created when we publish using Captivate. Are there some particualr settings we need to use in Captivate to ensure that we get these .FLV files created?
Hope you can help! Andrew
Can the Presenter playbar (pause, stop, etc.) work for the flash video or do you have to have the Captivate playbar on the page?
Hi Andrew The FLV files should not be important. They just happened to be included in the Captivate demo I did but they don’t have to have FLV video. It may just be that your Captivate movie does not include any FLV video like mine did. Are you copying over all the Captivate files into the engage_content folder? (I understand you are simply trying to place a Captivate movie into Engage and that you are not then embedding in Presenter). To test your Captivate movie, you should be able to double-click on the skin.swf which will now be referenced as swf0.swf in the engage_content folder and the Captivate movie should play. Are you embedding the movie, getting it to play in a new window or having it full size or are you using the Media Tour interaction type?
Hi Annette,
I think it depends on your movie but yes, you can sometimes get the movie to respond to the Articulate controls depending on the complexity of the Captivate move. Generally if you have just 2 or 3 files in the Captivate output, then you can do away with the skin.swf and run it through Articulate. You will not be referencing the skin.swf as explained in this article but just the main SWF file.
Hi Annette,
Thanks for your response.
Currently I am using the ‘add media’ functioanlity in Articulate Engage to add flash movies (which were previously generated with Adobe Eaptivate) to Engage interactions. I have simply been refering the .swf file after clicking the ‘add media’ button. I then have been adding these Engage interactions to a PowerPoint presentation and publishing the the presentation in presenter. When I view the resulting e-learning the movie plays without the pause / play controls, and unfortunately the presenter playbar controls dont seem to work whilst the movie is playing. Any other suggestions would be welcome!
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your repsonse. In response to your questions:
1. It’s good to know the .FLV files are not critical
2. Yes, I am copying all the Captivate files into the engage_content folder. The only exception to this is the ’skin’ file. I understand that I dont have to copy this one, because I have already referenced this when I use the ‘add media’ button in Engage.
3. The steps I am taking in building my e-learning are:
– Build flash movies using Adobe Captivate
– Embed these movies into Articulate Engage (primarily using the circle diagram, with up to 6 movies per interaction)
– Build a PowerPoint presentation with just one PowerPoint Slide followed by several Articulate Engage interactions and an Ariculate Quiz
– Publish the whole lot for web-based delivery.
4. I have tried to double click on the ’swf0.swf’ file in the engage_content folder, but I just get a ‘windows cannot open this file’ message.
5. I’m not using the media tour interaction – hoepfully my description above provides sufficient information on what I am currently doing to build up the training module.
Thanks for your help. Any other suggestions would be gratefully received as I am very keen to get this bit of functionality working.
Dave (and Andrew) – Thanks for your replies! I don’t want the second set of controls so it seems you’re saying not to add the skin file.
But – sounds like the Presenter controls are not working in this scenario for Andrew (???).
Another issue – How do I get rid of the green captivate ‘loading’ image that appears before the video plays?
Dave (and Andrew) – Thanks for your replies! I don’t want the second set of controls so it seems you’re saying not to add the skin file.
But – sounds like the Presenter controls are not working in this scenario for Andrew (???).
Another issue – How do I get rid of the green captivate ‘loading’ image that appears before the video plays?
Dave, Andrew,
Sweet! Swaping the skin file for the regular swf file made the loading icon and player controls go away and the Presenter controls are working. The ‘pause’ takes two clicks to get it going, but then it works.
[...] not have been created with Captivate, the following blog article from daveperso may help you out: How To Add A Captivate Movie To Articulate Presenter [...]
[...] swf in engage and presenter Hi Astrid, Please see these articles: How To Add A Captivate Movie To Articulate Presenter How to Add Captivate to Engage ‘09 Regards __________________ Dave Moxon [...]
[...] more than one SWF. Can you create a single SWF in Captivate? You can also try the steps outlined here. __________________ Justin Wilcox Sr. Customer Support Engineer Articulate – The Global Leader [...]
[...] Captivate .swf in Presenter only plays audio Perhaps this blog article will help. __________________ Justin Wilcox Customer Support Manager Articulate – Empowering [...]
Dave,
This is really helpful, but I have not gotten my Presenter presentation exactly where I want it. I don’t really want a skin with controls, so when I publish in Captivate I choose to not show playback control. However, when show in Presenter, the Captivate movie won’t play until I right-click in the content window. And, the Presenter controls don’t seem to control the Captivate movie, even though I selected to “Play Flash movie and slide in synch.”
I’m going to try an idea Annette gives, to replace the “_skin” file with the main Captivate .swf, and see what happens.
Meanwhile, any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thanks!
Dave,
Just to follow up my previous post: I associated the main Captivate .swf with Articulate, and then manually inserted all the other .swfs, and it does indeed play! So, yay! that works.
A lingering problem is that the Captivate .swfs play very slowly and poorly, almost as if the frame rate of the Captivate is not compatible with that of the Articulate. These .swfs show scrolling and click-and-drag movements in what is essentially a screen-shot movie.
Any thoughts on this? Thank you.
Hi Hal, Glad to hear that the movies are now almost right. I would check the frame rate of your Captivate movies. From experience, I have seen strange things happen with embedded Captivate movies that are NOT encoded at the magic frame rate of 30 fps.
[...] Re: Articulate/Captivate playback problem Here’s an article I saw a while ago that might help. How To Add A Captivate Movie To Articulate Presenter [...]
[...] at these blog articles and posts: Using Captivate content in Articulate Presenter | Dave Mozealous andreas04: close to attraction Captivate 3: Captivate in Articulate Captivate in Articulate Captivate in Articulate Are you [...]
Dave, thansk for your help recently, I can now insert flash movies created in Adobe Captivate into my Engage interactinos, and they work fine, and look good when the e-learning module is published. The only trouble is, when I copy the e-leanirng folder to another drive, the flash movies stop working – the user clicks on the flash icon and nothing happens! can you help? To confirm – everything works fine on the original module, but the flash moveies stop working when I copy the folder!
I tried copying the .swf files into the data directory and it still is not embeding my movie. I only see the slide title (which I should not be) and the navigation from the skin.
Any other ideas?
Is there a publish option from Captivate to make it all 1 flash file?
Hi Dave,
There are some valuable comments in here. However, I do follow the steps mentioned here for running my captivate files in Articulate. Only difference is I am trying to view the Captivate files in a new window as they are big than the Articulate mentioned size.
Can someone help please?
Thanks,
Jalpa
To my post above, a new window however does open with the Captivate toolbar, but no sound and visual.
Please assist.
Hi Joanna, There is a publish option in Captivate 4 to make one single SWF file but it will only work in Presenter if you make it play independently of the slide ie. not in sync, so you won’t be able to use the Articulate player controls to stop and start the slide. Otherwise, I am guessing you might have missed a step somewhere. I have never not been able to publish a multiple Captivate file in Articulate though I guess there is always a first time. If you can’t figure it out, please submit a case to Articulate Support marking it for my attention and I’ll take a look.
Hi Jalpa, You should be able to play the Captivate in a new window with audio and video although there may be new features in Captivate 4 that are stopping this. My tests worked fine though. Are you following all the steps? Are you sure that you didn’t republish the file after copying over the Captivate files? If you can’t figure it out, please submit a case to Articulate Support for my attention and I’ll take a look.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your response. I am using Captivate 3. Anyways, i tried doing everything again and it worked. So now I can play the Captivate movie in Articulate or in a new browser. But i lose the captivate tooldbar.
It didnot seem to work for me by adding the skin. I jsut added the swf files and it worked – audio and video except for the toolbar.
Any recomendations??
One thing to check is that you are able to play the Captivate file (skin and video) from within the Articulate published files. If you look at the picture in step 6, you should be able to directly launch the fm_skin.swf file (your file will have a different name of course) and you should see your Captivate movie playing in its skin. If you can’t, then it would probably mean that you haven’t pulled the right files in, or perhaps that you have republished again (which you shouldn’t do).
Hi all,
I use Captivate 4 and Presenter 09.
How can I publish to a single swf to avoid this mess?
All I want is for a guided practice Captivate interaction (where the learner clicks buttons – click boxes that trigger next screenshot in Captivate – to simulate interaction with the actual software I am teaching) to work within a PPT slide via imprt flash movie on Articulate.
Has this manual import of multiple files “problem” been solved with Captivate 4?
Thanks.
Hi Enzo, As far as I understand, Captivate 4 does allow you to publish most (all?) projects to a single SWF file which therefore means you don’t have to concern yourself with copying over extra files into Articulate. However, a new incompatibility between single Captivate 4 SWFs and the Articulate player (both Presenter 5 and Presenter ‘09) has emerged which makes it impossible to play these movies in sync with the slide in Presenter. If you play your movies independently of the slide, there are no issues but you won’t be able to control the movie with the Articulate player controls. You would need to make your users use the Captivate skin controls. Single SWFs created with Captivate 3 do not have this problem.
Hi Dave,
I have a quick question.
I have inserted a Captivate(V4) video into Presenter(V8). When I published it for the web, the video worked fine. Now I have published it to Articulate Online and the video does not seem to be working.When it reaches the video slide, it says loading and the screen seems to be frozen at 0%. I’ve had the screen on for about 30 minutes now but the captivate video is not playing. Any tips on what I can do to get this working?
Thanks,
Shivani
Sorry I also forgot to mention that when I insert the flash movie in presenter,it seems to go off the slide..it is displaying on the top left side of the slide instead of the center…the size of the movie is 680 x 435..will really appreciate your help :)
Shivani
SWF files can slide off the center when you try and resize them in Presenter/PowerPoint. Although resizing of SWFs does sometimes work in Presenter ‘09, it is not to be encouraged.
Well I have taken time to get back to you so maybe you’ve resolved this. Special characters cause problems when viewing online but somehow don’t cause a big deal when viewed locally. I’d make sure there are no apostrophes, or accents in the video file. The other cause can be a very large video which is taking so long to download that it looks like it is paused. So you need to check that your Captivate movie is no more than 10 MB per minute of video, ideally around about 5 Mb.