A lot of legacy learning content is in PowerPoint format and it is natural that e-learning course authors want to leverage or re-use this content. The earlier versions of Captivate allowed users to import their PowerPoint content into their Captivate projects. Now Captivate 4 goes much further- Cp4 now supports full round-tripping with the PowerPoint content.
It supports collaborative authoring with the SME's who use PowerPoint. Detailed below are some key aspects of this powerful feature:

- You can import PowerPoint slides to Captivate, and then enhance these slides by adding audio, animations, video or other Captivate objects to each of the slides. In the meantime your co-author can keep editing the slides using MS PowerPoint. You can synch your Captivate project with the latest version of the PowerPoint slide deck using the ‘update’ feature (Window > Library and select the presentation, right-clik and do "update") . The Captivate objects which you added earlier on-top of the initial version of the PowerPoint slides remain intact (while Captivate updates to the changes your co-author made using PowerPoint). The workflow becomes even more powerful if you keep this PowerPoint file in a shared location, eliminating the need of sending back the file to Captivate user.

- Note that this feature works for both .ppt and .pptx files. This is being clarified here as I saw many articles describing this as possible only in PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) files. .ppt and .pptx are handled in the same manner in Captivate 4.

- These posts give some more insight into the feature: PowerPoint Linked vs Embedded Import, Best practices for handling PowerPoint audio in Captivate, Correct dimensions for Power Point Import, PowerPoint On-Click Animations

- Captivate help is also a good resource for the feature.

- This tutorial gives a lot of details.

Posted by Sony Kadavan at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

articulate engage,adobe captivate,migration,reuse elearning content,adobe elearning suite

In previous posts we have seen how we can reuse Articulate Presenter files by converting it to Adobe Presenter files. Adobe presenter is a part of Adobe eLearning suite. In this post we will see how you can use existing Articulate Engage or Quizmaker output files inside Adobe Captivate 4 project.

The rule is “Adobe Captivate movie plays the engage movie as long as engage movie can find the dependent files as it is expecting. Publishing as external files and copying the dependent files to same folder helps maintain this rule”.

Both of these Articulate products namely Engage and Quizmaker creates output files in such a way that there is a main file - let us say “engage.swf” - and a directory where all the dependent files are kept. The trick to use them inside Adobe Captivate 4 is to insert the “engage.swf” as animation and publish them as external files and copy the engage dependent files to the same place as “engage.swf”.

Below are the steps you can follow to import the articulate files to Adobe Captivate 4

1. Open a blank file in Adobe Captivate 4
2. Select Insert->Animation and select “engage.swf”.
3. Say OK to the animation dialog.
4. Select Edit->Preferences -> Project -> Publish Settings – Check “Animations” so that animations are externalized or they are published as a separate file.
5. Say OK to the dialog.
6. Publish the Captivate project to a swf. Let us say “CaptivateArticulateEngage.swf”
7. Notice you will get “engage.swf” alongwith “CaptivateArticulateEngage.swf” in the published folder.
8. Now you have to make a structure similar in relation to “engage.swf”. So either copy the dependent folder and files of engage here or to make matters simple copy captivate published file to the same place where the original engage file exists on your computer.

Click here or the image below to see a Adobe Captivate 4 demo on how to do it.

Posted by Rajeev Kumar at 6:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

adobe captivate 4,raptivity,reuse existing content

Adobe eLearning suite is a complete toolbox for authoring rich learning content and you won’t need any additional software to meet your eLearning authoring needs. But it doesn’t mean that you will lose your existing learning material that was created using another tool. In my previous post I discussed how you can reuse your old Articulate content when you migrate to the eLearning Suite. In this post we will see how you can reuse your old Raptivity files inside Adobe Captivate 4 which is a part of Adobe eLearning suite.

Raptivity is a tool which gives flash output files. Inside Raptivity to publish –

1. Select File -> Publish
2. You get Interactivity Publisher dialog with two radio buttons at top – “Publish as a single Flash file” and “Publish as a multiple file output”
3. Select ““Publish as a single Flash file”
4. Choose publish location and click on “Publish” button.
5. You will get a swf file let us say “monalisa.swf”

And below are the steps you can follow to insert it inside Adobe Captivate 4 project –

1. Select Insert -> Animation
2. Select the “monalisa.swf” you got from Raptivity.
3. You will get this error
4. Click Yes to proceed.
5. Download this swf file. Click here to download.
6. In same slide as your Raptivity swf- select Insert->Animation and select fix.swf you got from earlier step. This has some code which solves the problem which you see in dialog from step 3. Perform this step even if you don’t get the error message in step 3.
7. Select Edit->Preferences->Project->Publish Settings->Externalise Resources and check the box Animations.
8. Insert a button on the same slide so that the Captivate movie pauses at this slide, allowing the learner to interact with the Raptivity movie in the published file.
9. Now publish your movie. You will see the Raptivity file working perfectly inside Adobe Captivate project.
10. Click here to see how to do it or click the image below

Posted by Rajeev Kumar at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

adobe eLearning suite and articulate presenter,migrating old eLearning projects

Adobe eLearning suite consists of a set of products along with Adobe Captivate 4 and Adobe Presenter 7 using which you can create any kind of eLearning courses. With this you will not need any other eLearning tool in your arsenal. But when organizations decide to switch to a new product their foremost worry could be about existing content they have created using other tools. Well you need not worry about losing them. You can still use them inside Adobe Captivate and other products in eLearning suite.

For example - Files created in Articulate® Presenter can be opened and edited in Adobe Presenter. The original Articulate presentation is never modified; a copy of the presentation is converted and opened in Adobe Presenter. The Articulate assets folder should be available along with the Articulate presentation file. Without the asset folder and its contents, Articulate features cannot be imported into the presentation when it is opened in Adobe Presenter.

Adobe Presenter supports most Articulate Presenter data, including Flash, audio, and quiz information (as long as the Articulate Presenter assets folder is available).

What is not supported –

1. The following Articulate Presenter features are not supported: Learning Games, Engage Interactions, Insert Web Object.
2. Adobe Presenter does not support all Articulate Presenter question types. Unsupported questions are not imported during the conversion process. A detailed log report (ConversionLog.log) is generated at the end of the conversion process and provides details about the conversion, including an dropped questions.”

For complete details visit Adobe Presenter 7 help files. This is how you can do it -

In PowerPoint, open a presentation (PPT or PPTX file) created in Articulate Presenter.

1. In the conversion dialog box, click Yes.
2. Choose a name and save location for the converted presentation.
3. (Optional) To view information in the conversion log file, click View Log. (You can also use Windows Explorer at any time to view thelog file. Navigate to the location you specified in step 3, right-click the ConversionLog.log file, and select Open with > Notepad.)
4. After the conversion process finishes, click Close.
5. In Adobe Presenter, edit the new, converted file and add Adobe Presenter features as desired.

Click here or on the image below to see how to do it.It will open up Adobe Captivate 4 generated file.

Next post – We will see how you can use output files of Articulate inside Adobe Captivate 4.

Posted by Rajeev Kumar at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

PowerPoint and Captivate,PowerPoint and Flash,PowerPoint edit

Captivate 4 supports editing Powerpoint presentations once imported into Captivate. Captivate achieves this by maintaining the original powerpoint presentation within the Captivate project. Whenever you need to edit, this original presentation is edited and then the new powerpoint slides are used to replace the existing backgrounds in Captivate.  Captivate maintains this original presentation in two possible ways:

Embedded – User’s original presentation is copied into the captivate project (and visible in the library).

This increases the project size, but you no longer have to bother about any outside files when sending the project to someone. Note that, from here on, when you edit the slides from Captivate, it is Captivate’s copy being edited (not your original PowerPoint copy on the disk). If by any chance you need the edited PowerPoint version from Captivate, you can export the same from library

Linked – Here, Captivate just maintains the path to the original (See the 1kb size in library). Whenever you edit from Captivate, the original is also changed.  Unless you have a need to send your Captivate project to someone, this is the recommended mode (as project size is under control).

But this opens another possibility - you can edit the presentation outside captivate using Powerpoint. Here again, Captivate allows you to get the changes into your captivate project – Choose Update from the library – Yes, you need to explicitly tell Captivate to Update (we don’t do it automatically).

Captivate also allows you to change between these embedded and linked modes from the library – Change to embedded and Change to linked options are available.

Posted by Sony Kadavan at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

PowerPoint Animations,On-Click Animations,Powerpoint and Captivate

On-Click animations can be added in Powerpoint - animations start when users click the mouse. These clicks were totally ignored in Captivate 3 - The animation used to start automatically and the click part was ignored. Now, Captivate 4 honours these on-click behaviour. Movies pause for user click when it encounters the on-click animations.

In this context, I noticed some confusion faced by users (reported on user forum). When importing PowerPoint presentations, there is an “Advance Slide” option - Automatically or on mouse click. This option is a way to tell Captivate how to proceed on completion of one powerpoint slide.The behaviour remains same as in Captivate 3 - Advance Slide "Automatically" tells Captivate to proceed to next slide without waiting for the user click, while the other one waits for  the user click.

Many users thought, once you select “Automatically”, it even disables the on-click behaviour of the click animations. I would like to clarify here that this option is *not* related to the above on-click animation support and neither of the options affect the click behavior of the animations. If you have on-click animations in powerpoint, they are always honoured by Captivate. The only way to get them out is to remove from PowerPoint. Since We allow editing Powerpoint slides from within Captivate, you can easily do it.

Posted by Sony Kadavan at 10:10 AM | Permalink

Adobe Captivate,PowerPoint Audio,Captivate Audio

This post will give you all the details on how Captivate handles audio in imported PowerPoint slides. PowerPoint presentations usually have two kinds of sound support - Narration and Object Sounds. Narration is the voice-over which you record with the slide (say, reading out bullet points). Object sounds are the event sounds (say, an applause sound when user does a correct action).

Captivate 4 handles these sounds differently:

• Narrations - are extracted from PowerPoint slides and then added in Captivate as "Slide Audio". Once imported, these sounds can as well be edited in Captivate just like any other audio.
• Object  sounds - are made integral part of the animation when imported, and not visible as separate objects in captivate (you will have to go back to PowerPoint to edit them).

Another important thing to notice about Narration. Consider the following workflow:

• Import a PowerPoint slide with narration. (Notice the narration now present as slide audio in Captivate)
• Later, edit this PowerPoint slide (from captivate using edit with PowerPoint options). In the PowerPoint, make changes to the narration as well. Then save and bring the changes to Captivate.
• You will notice that your slide audio is still the old one !

This is designed to work this way to prevent any loss of sound edits, which you might have done in Captivate. So, after initial import, if you wish to make changes to narration, remember to do it from Captivate and not from PowerPoint.

[ However, in any case, if you need to bring the new narration in PowerPoint to Captivate, extract the same from PowerPoint and then add to Captivate just like any other audio ]

Posted by Sony Kadavan at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Captivate 3 (and now 4) supports importing a Microsoft Power Point file.

Captivate slide dimensions are defined in pixels, while Power Point defines slide size in inches. Many of you might have faced problems with stretched / shrunken objects because of a mismatch in the dimensions of the imported Power Point slides and your Captivate project. Below are a couple of tips that will help you avoid this issue in future.

You can create a new project “From MS Power Point” – Here you don’t have to worry about the dimensions, as Captivate creates a project of same dimension as your Power Point (yes it calculates correctly!). You can see this dimension while importing.

You might need to just consider whether this is the required dimension for your target audience.

No problems so far !

You might also want to Import a Power Point presentation to an existing project. Captivate’s behavior in such a scenario is to resize the Power Point presentation to the dimension of your project. In many cases this resizing is undesirable due to (possible but not always) loss of quality. So, Captivate gives a warning (which you can of course ignore).

One option is to resize the original Power Point presentation, so that it matches your existing Captivate project dimensions.

Now, how you do it ...

Firstly, you need to convert pixels to inches. You might consider using some of the free tools available on the web and avoid the number crunching. I used this tool with the DPI value of 96. I will list down some popular values as well here:

Second, you need to change your Power Point presentation to this dimension. For Power Point 2003, this is possible in “File > Page Setup” and in 2007, you can do this in “Design > Page Setup”. Key in your custom values here. It would be a good idea to check whether your font sizes, objects etc are appropriate for the new dimension.

Now, you can Import this into your Captivate project without any dimension warning.

OK... Go ahead and Captivate your Power Points !

Posted by Sony Kadavan at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)