Recording Modes in Captivate

There are four recording modes for Captivate, when you are doing an Automatic Recording. They are Demonstration, Assessment Simulation, Training Simulation and Custom. 

You must choose one of them just before starting your recording process. Each mode has some default settings about Captions, Mouse, Click Boxes and Text Entry Boxes. These default settings are based on the Captivate developers’ common sense and I must say, they really have a good sense. J

To see these settings for the different modes, there are two options:

1) If you are about to begin the recording and if you are in the window as shown in the above image, click on the Settings button below.

2) If you are inside the Captivate project, go to Edit – Preferences (Shift + F8), and from the Category box in the left, select Recording – Modes.

By default, the settings for Demonstration mode will be displayed*. You will be allowed to adjust the settings for Captions and Mouse. The Click Boxes and Text Entry Boxes settings will be disabled for editing. Because according to their common sense, in a demonstration video, you only show them the features; you don’t make them click on the interface and add text entries.

Similarly, they also have some default settings for Assessment Simulation and Training Simulation. In these two modes however, they fear that their common sense might be different from ours and they give us the option to change the settings. Apart from that, they also provide a Custom mode where you can define any other setting you require.

An important thing to note is that, whatever settings or mode you choose, you will be allowed to add / remove any of the elements (Captions, Mouse, Click Boxes & Text Entry Boxes) later after recording. The defaults option is only to make your work easier by automatically generating some of the items that you will require for sure.

To make the best utilization of this feature, take some time before starting your recording; and decide the elements you will need most commonly. Don’t think that it’s better to enable all the options first and later delete them if you find it irrelevant. Deleting each item from each slide also consumes a lot of time. Some people (like me) has the habit of highlighting the area you are about to make them click. For them, Add Highlight Boxes on Click is a good option. Enable it before starting the record so that you don’t have to add a highlight box manually in every other slide.

Anytime, if you wish to go back to the Captivate common sense settings, just click on the Restore Defaults option below after selecting the mode.

The Record – Defaults option and the Object Style Manager are also excellent time saving tools while using Captivate. We will look at this in a different article.

*Irrespective of the mode you have selected for recording, by default the settings shown will be for Demonstration mode, simply because it appears first in the drop menu. 

Captivate Backup File

Ever noticed a new file with the same name as that of your Captivate project file and an extension called .bak in the same folder as that of your project file? Well, there is nothing much to worry about it. That's an automatic backup file generated by Captivate for your project folder. Every time you save your Captivate project, the back up file also gets updated.

The main advantage of this file is that in case your project folder gets corrupted or is not opening, you can use the backup file to open original one in the last saved status. All you need to do is, change the extension of the backup file from .bak to .cp, and open the file in Captivate.

A Captivate project may get corrupted due to any of the following reasons:

• Using an older version of Adobe Captivate.
• Copied objects/slides into an older version of Adobe Captivate.
• The Captivate project is located in a network location.
• Using a system that does not meet the minimum system requirement for Captivate.
• You closed a Captivate project improperly (without saving, for example).

By default, the Generate Project Backup option is enabled in Captivate. But sometimes, if you working on large projects, it may take a little more time to save your files. Also, the size of the backup files might be larger than your main project file. So in case, you want to disable this option, go to Edit-Preferences (Shift+F8) and deselect the option from Global - General Settings.

If by any chance, you did not enable the Generate Project Backup option and your file fets corrupted, you may try the following methods:
- Open the project in the latest version of Adobe Captivate.
- Use the workaround mentioned in this article.

Change the Speed of Captivate Text to Speech

"Hey...the narrator is too fast. Can you ask him to read the script a bit slower?" Sounds familiar? Welcome to the club. The Text to Speech option in Captivate might not read the script in the best way you wanted it to. Atleast not always. That is why you should use the Visual Tool Markup Language or the VTML tags. Dont worry! You dont have to learn a whole new language to do this.

The language uses some tags and allows you to change the attributes like speed, volume, pitch, etc. of the Text to Speech narration. Given below is the syntax:

<vtml_speed value="value"> Narration Text </vtml_speed>

Here, the value you give in quotes is the variable value given to adjust the speed. By default, it is 100. If you want to make it slower, give a number less than 100. And if you want the narrator to read it faster, give a number above 100. For example, let us say, our script reads - "The term is not very widely used.". If we need a speed which is lower than the usual speed, do the following: in the slide notes section, where we enter the script for Text to Speech, type in as shown below:

<vtml_speed value="90">The term, is not very widely used.</vtml_speed>

I have given a comma (,) after the word 'term' to insert a small pause before the next part of the sentence. If you need to change the duration of pause, you may again use a VTML tag. (Of course, you may also use the edit option and insert some silence.) There are many other similar tags which can be used in the Text to Speech interface. They are listed in this document.

Note: This works for Captivate 4 for sure. However, I am not sure it works in Captivate 5. If anyone knows more about this, please share in the comments section.

Extra Tips:

Changing the pitch of your narration can give you very interesting results. For example, one of my colleagues changed the pitch of her voice over to make it sound like that of a small kid. You might want to have some fun using this option. Enjoy..!!!

Enable / Disable Captivate Welcome Screen

Most likely, when you open Captivate, you will see the welcome screen.

Although there is no reason for this to be disabled, there is an option Dont Show Again at the bottom of this window. So those who do not want the welcome screen (do not really really want), can use this option to disable the welcome screen.

Now what if you want to enable it again? Or what if you clicked it by mistake and want it back when you open Captivate? Go to Edit menu and select Preferences (or use the shortcut Shift+F8). Under the Global category (or the Global -> General Settings category), use the Show Welcome Screen option to enable it again.

How to Create Custom Image Buttons in Captivate?

Summary: This article will teach you to create custom Image Buttons in Captivate. This is helpful when you want to have bigger buttons than given by Adobe. Although its possible to create Text Buttons and increase it to any size, it will not have any color or graphics.

In Captivate 5, its possible to resize image buttons also, but it wont look good if extended beyond a certain limit.

So given below are a few simple steps to create Custom Image Buttons in Captivate.

Step 1: Have a look at the existing buttons in Captivate

• Go to this folder in your system - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 4\Gallery\Buttons

• You will notice that there are three images for each button with similar filenames.

                    filename_down
                    filename_over
                    filename_up

• Down, Over and Up defines the state of the button. If the filename of a button is 'Continue', it will have three images: Continue_down, Continue_over, Continue_up.

When the mouse is down on the button, i.e. when you have clicked on the button but dint release the mouse, it will display the image with the name Continue_down.
When the mouse is over the button, it will display the image with the name Continue_over.
When the mouse is away from the button, it will display the image with the name Continue_up.

Step 2: Create three similar images

• You may use any software to create these images: Photoshop, PowerPoint, CorelDraw or even Paint.
• PowerPoint gives you some custom styles with different colour styles. (Read the Extra Tips at the end of this article to learn how to create the images from PowerPoint.)

                           
Step 3: Save your images

• Save your images with the terminology mentioned in Step 1.
• Do NOT give names of existing Captivate buttons.

Step 4: Copy to Captivate's official folder

• Copy and paste the three files into Adobe Captivate's official buttons folder - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 4\Gallery\Buttons

Thats it!!! You are ready to go. In case, you have a Captivate file already open, close it and open it again to see the new buttons created by you inside the Image Buttons selection drop menu.

Extra Tips:

(Note: the below mentioned steps are for PowerPoint 2007 & 2010.)

To create the button images from PowerPoint, open a new document and draw a rounded rectangle.

Modify the border curves to make it look like a button.

Right click, select Edit Text to insert the text you want to display inside the button.

When you double-click the shape, the Format menu on top will be enabled automatically. Here you can select from one of the many default styles for the shape that you have drawn. Just hover your mouse over the shapes to see a preview and click on one to finalize.

Duplicate the shape using the shortcut CTRL+D. With the new shape selected, go to Shape Fill - Gradient. Under the Variations section, you will see that the direction of the gradient you have selected for the shape is highlighted. Select a different variation for the new shape. (This is for the 'over' button image i.e., when the mouse is over the button, a slight variation of the same shape will be shown.)

Now duplicate the shape once more and add a different style to the third button. We can use this for the 'down' state of the button.

The last step is to save the button images. Right click on the first shape and select Save as Picture option.

In order to use these images as Captivate buttons, be careful to adhere to the naming conventions mentioned in the above article. Repeat this for the other two shapes. You have thus successfully created the button images.

How to Choose the Screen Size in Captivate Projects?

What is the optimum size that should be chosen while creating / recording a captivate project? It is one of the most confusing concepts for most instructional designers and e-learning developers. Not anymore! In this article, we will see how to choose the right screen size for any type of project that you are involved in.

There are three things to consider before fixing on a screen size:

• End-user monitor / display settings
• Final output taken from Captivate: swf, html, exe, etc
• The smallest screen size to which you can shrink the application you are demonstrating.

Let us review each of them in detail now.

End-User Monitor / Display Settings

“How do I know the monitor settings of a nerd sitting in some corner of the universe?” If this is what you are thinking now, then you are right. It is not always possible get so much of information about your learners. For those who know, great!!! Lucky you!!! For the others, never mind!!! We can work on the most common lowest setting principle and some guess work. Until some years before, 800 by 600 resolution was the smallest and the most common. But now, most of them have at least 1024 by 768 screen resolution. So let us consider that as the most common setting. (And in case, there is someone who is still clinging on to the 800 by 600 size monitor, let’s give him a chance to change his monitor to a better one.)

So both the lucky ones and the not so lucky ones, either finds out the monitor display settings of the learners or comes to a conclusion on the least common setting. Let us assume this resolution is 1024 wide and 768 high. In such a case, the record size you select in Captivate must always be smaller than 1024 by 768. You will find out the reason when you read the next two criteria. But you will also find out, why it is not always necessary to select a smaller size in captivate. Confused? Don’t worry, just read on.

Final Output Taken From Captivate: .swf, .html, .exe, etc.

Imagine the record size or the project size you have chosen is x pixels wide and y pixels high. For swf and exe output formats, the screen size utilized by the entire output will be as shown in the below figure.

As you can see the output requires, some additional pixels for the player controls and flash player interface. So if you have chosen a screen size of 1024 by 768 in Captivate, there are chances that the player controls may go below the viewable screen area of a 1024 by 768 size desktop resolution. This is OK if the swf or application window is resizable. But there are some portals in which, pop-up files are not resizable. Moreover, there are users who do not know how to resize an open window (yes, there are!!!).

For an HTML output, it is even worse. You need to keep space for the browser interface, which ends up in horizontal and vertical scrollbars. Like in this screenshot:

When your monitor resolution is 1024 by 768 and the project screen size is also 1024 by 768, this is what you will get when you open the html output.

This is why you should always select a record size in captivate which is less than the desktop resolution of the learners. But in case you are taking an swf output and the window is resizable, you can go for a higher screen size. The reason is, when the swf file is extending beyond the screen size, the learners can double click on anywhere on the blue bar on top of the adobe flash flayer to fit it to the screen size.

Thus, try to understand the behavior of the portal in which you will upload the Captivate output. Will it display in as an html file? Or if it is an swf, can the window be resized, moved etc.

Some of you might be thinking now, that it is then best to select a very small recording size in Captivate. All the learners will be able to view the output then. But before doing that, you might want to read the last criteria too. J

The smallest screen size to which you can shrink the application you are demonstrating.

Let us imagine you have taken a 640 by 480 record screen size in Captivate. Ask yourself (or your client) on whether you would want to use the panning feature in Captivate. Because, if the application you are demonstrating demands more screen size than the one selected, then you will have to either use the pan feature, or pan the application within the limited record screen size. There is nothing wrong in using the panning feature but not all are quite comfortable with this option. New learners might find it a bit confusing.

So at the end, you have to arrive at a decision based on the above three points. Whatever size you choose, it is advised to do a test run using a few slides in the portal you are going to host the video. You might find it confusing in the first few attempts. But you will get the trick of it as you do more and more videos. All the best!!!