November 11, 2010

Cp5 content with Text Animations not working with latest Flash Player version

There was an update to Flash Player on the 4th of November to version 10.1.102.64, which causes Captivate 5 SWFs with Text animations to either fail to run or show a black screen or show a white screen. We have been able to nail down the root cause for this issue. Meanwhile, couple of workarounds which can be used to overcome the issue are as follows:

1.       Remove Text animations in your project and republish the project.

  • You can find text animations easily using “Find And Replace” palette. Use Edit->Find And Replace to open “Find And Replace” palette.
  • Then in “Search In” Combo Box on that palette, you need to select “Text Animation” and hit “Find All” button.
  • The list box below will show all text animations. Selecting each element of list box will move you to the slide containing the text animation and select the text animation. You can then delete the text animations.

2.       Or roll back to the previous version of Flash player on the computer that is playing Cp swf -

Details about rolling back to an earlier version of Flash player -

Please follow the following steps:

On Windows:

1. Go to Settings, Control Panel.
2. Open Add/Remove Programs dialog.
3. Select Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX and click ‘Remove’ button.

If you have any difficulty with the above steps, then you try the following.

1. If you are not able to install this version of Flash Player then follow the link http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html in your browser.
2. Click on Windows: uninstall_flash_player.exe
3. Save this uninstaller on your machine and run it to do a clean un-install.
4. Try to run flashplayer10r45_2_winax.exe to install Flash Player ActiveX once again. (Beginning with Step 4 above.)

On Mac:

1. Go to http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/865/cpsid_86551.html.

2. Select “I want to uninstall Flash Player”.

3. Select the appropriate MAC OS and follow the Steps mentioned.

Installing an older version of flash player:

1. Open your browser and go to this link – http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/installers/archive/fp_10.1.85.3_and_9.0.283_archive.zip
2. Extract the zip file and then open “Flash Player 10.1.85.3” folder.
3. From this folder, select Flash Player for your platform and install it.

This issue is fixed and the fix is available here.

Posted by vikramp6:37 PM
  • http://professorchappell.com/ Henry Chappell

    Thanks. I mainly use Firefox. I uninstalled a flash plugin, reinstalled an old version plugin, and found that this produced a fix in both Firefox and IE. I did not uninstall or reinstall the active x version. Any comments? Are your instructions above meant to apply to all browsers, or just IE?

  • Everyone Outhere

    How much trouble would it be to create a robust test suite of Captivate gen’ed clips and run new Flash Player releases through them *before* each formal release?

    • http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/ Allen Partridge

      Thanks for the note Everyone. This issue slipped through the tests we use to check for potential inconsistencies. We are re-examining those protocols now to ensure that such issues don’t recur. We strive to eradicate the possibility of such events and we will continue to work toward solutions that ensure you of solid continuity whenever we have a technology update.

  • Sue M

    The installation instructions for the older version of Flash do NOT work. When I try to install the Flash version for IE it tells me it is not the most current version and directs me to the Adobe site to get the current version.

    Can you make the older version available, please – or fix the problem with a new update. I have over 100 tutorials that are now unable to be viewed due to this problem.

  • Pingback: Tweets that mention Cp5 content with Text Animations not working with latest Flash Player version « The Adobe Captivate Blog -- Topsy.com

  • http://adobe.com Suresh Jayaraman

    The fix is under test and will reach customers in a day or two

    • Sean

      I agree with Sue & Nick. The short term solution is NOT to rip apart every course and remove the text animations, I have too many modules. Likewise we cannot ask every user to revert back to a previous Flash version. It’s not practical, timely or cost effective.
      Suresh or Allen, can you please confirm an expected release date and time?
      Also will the solution be a patch/update to the Flash Player or to Cp5??

  • Nick Woollard

    Thanks for this – I removed all animations from one project yesterday because it is in constant use, but it is obviously not practical for everyone to rip apart every course: Do you have any idea of when this will be resolved with no intervention necessary (ie a debugged flash player)?

    Cheers

    Nick

  • Everyone Else

    It is not feasible to apply a patch to the CP5 product itself. Many customers will have to republish and redeploy *all* of their output to fix a deficiency introduced in the Flash Player update itself. It is the Flash Player that must be fixed in order to address this issue without Adobe’s customers impacted by the costs associated with addressing this issue. It’s bad enough that this occurred in the first place.

    So again – since this has not yet been answered by anyone “out there”, will this be a fix for Flash Player, or CP5? Please confirm.

  • MM

    Like the posters below we have the same issue with over a 100 modules. It would be nonsense for me to change my courses. Additionally we are in the process of rolling out a county wide communication that is now broken thanks to this Flash update. We can’t tell thousands of customers to roll back their Flash Player. It would create a help desk insanity. Your last post on Nov 11 indicated that a fix will be available in a day or two. It is November 15th, would you please give us an update?

    • Vikram
      • MM

        So you are telling me that you are fixing Captivate 5 instead of fixing Adobe Flash? Repackaging over 100 courses developed in the past 6 months is just out of the question with an already tight deadline. You should be fully aware that repackaging means pretty much taking it back to development phase because once saved and packaged it needs to be reviewed for consistency before it can be published again. Are we waiting for a fix to Adobe Flash?

  • GA

    Fix Flash 10.1.102.64 as many courses have been created using Captivate 5 already and re-publishing all of these again with Captivate is a terrible solution.

  • GA

    Rolling back to an earlier version of Flash is another bad idea. How do you get millions of learners to roll back to an earlier version flash because Adobe decided not to properly support text animations in the latest version of Flash. Adobe made it very difficult to roll backword to an earlier version. Fix Flash, that is what has caused the problem!

    When will a fix be available as this has resulted in a mess!

  • DoctorNic

    It’s also happening on CP4. All typing animations.
    They work in flash player r54 just fine.

  • John

    This latest flash update problem seem to be not just with Captivate 5 but also with other flash related softwares. My tests also showed that this “bug” behaves differently on different browsers. It seems to affect IE the worst. My two cents is why Adobe doesn’t make the previous version as the lastest version update so that website owners won’t have to change their content, users won’t have to go through reverting back procedures and adobe personnel will have the time to fix this “bug”?

  • lisa

    I pulled my hair out about why my simple little course was not working. I have an ulcer now but glad to get it working. The revert worked for me.

  • http://www.sdn.ch dieter

    this is a very bad joke, as unprofessional you at? Both come from you, make a new flash version and hear this shit on safety, which brings nothing at all, then when the second half of the contents can not be used.

    and your solution is a single nerve, we can solve anything here, you’ll do it.

  • http://www.westerreserve.com Sam Frontera

    We are having the same issue, however when I tried to run the autorun.exe in flashplayer 9 the result was less than appealing, all the animation effects are very sluggish (ie: transitions, andimated tect, etc. . .) We are expected to get this to a distribution company to make 25,000 CD copies and the fact that it is not running ideally in 9 and cannot be rendered in for version 10 truly putds us in a serious bind. Has adobe created a patch for either Captivate 5 or Flashplayer 10 yet????!!!!

    Desparately needing a fix!

    Sam

  • Chad Evangelista

    So is Adobe NOT putting out a new flash update to fix this? Republishing all of the Captivate CBT’s I’ve created is pretty much out of the question! This would require additional review after publishing and reloading of CBT’s into an LMS that already has a backlog. I’ve got clients complaining and no extra funding to do the re-publishing and re-insertion onto servers. Adobe, will there be a FLASH UPDATE soon ???

  • Karen N

    We have just discovered this problem and are very discouraged that Adobe has not come up with a patch to Captivate 5 yet! The two workarounds noted at the beginning of this blog are not options for our company. We MUST have animation and we have TOO MANY clients that would have to roll back to a previous version of Adobe Flash Player.
    This “black screen” issue does not seem to be an issue with swf files generated using Captivate 4 (we are still testing). Therefore, why can’t a patch be created for Captivate 5???
    BTW – I’ve installed the beta version 10.2.151.49 for Adobe Flash Player and the black screen of death is still a problem!!!

    • http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/ Allen Partridge

      Hi Karen,

      We released the patch for Captivate a few weeks ago. You can run Help:Update in Captivate or read more about other install options here.
      http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/?p=1464
      We have several routes to fixing the problem with already published content – 1) the update from the prior link can be used if you don’t mind republishing, 2) There is also a converter available that will take already published content and fix it automatically and 3) a fix for the Flash plugin is expected early this year.

      • Steve Howard

        Allen, do you have a link to the converter you mention?

  • Robert

    Solution 2) There is also a converter available that will take already published content and fix it automatically…..

    Can someone please tell me where this converter is.

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