Captivating (e)Learnings

Adobe Captivate 5 supports voices from NeoSpeech™ and Loquendo™ for text-to-speech conversion. NeoSpeech provides US English voices and Loquendo provides British English, French, and German voices.

You can download these text-to-speech converters from the Adobe website or install them from the Adobe Captivate 5 installation DVD.

Downloading the text-to-speech converters from the web and installing them

1. Click one of the following links:
   • NeoSpeech: http://download.macromedia.com/captivate/Captivate_5_Neo_Content_LS12.dmg
   • Loquendo: http://download.macromedia.com/captivate/Captivate_5_Loquendo_Content_LS12.dmg

    After the .DMG file is successfully downloaded, the Add-ons folder is displayed to you.

2. Double-click the Add-ons folder.
   Depending on the text-to-speech converter you have downloaded, one of the following folders appears:
   • NeoSpeech Text To Speech Voices
   • Loquendo Text To Speech Voices
3. Double-click the NeoSpeech Text to Speech Voices folder or the Loquendo Text to Speech Voices folder.
4. Double-click CpExtrasCLI to start installing the voices.
   

   Contents of the NeoSpeech Text To Speech Voices Folder

   

   Contents of the Loquendo Text To Speech Voices Folder

5. Re-launch Adobe Captivate.

Installing the text-to-speech converters from the installation DVD

1. Insert the Adobe Captivate 5 installation DVD in the DVD-ROM drive.
   The Welcome screen appears.
   

   Welcome Screen on the Installation DVD

2. Click Add-ons.
3. Based on the text-to-speech converter you want to install, double-click one of the following folders:
   • NeoSpeech Text To Speech Voices
   • Loquendo Text To Speech Voices
4. Double-click the installer: CpExtrasCLI.
   The installation begins and a message is displayed to you when the installation is successfully completed.
5. Relaunch Adobe Captivate.

Verification

1. After relaunching Adobe Captivate, click Audio and then click Speech Management. The Speech Management dialog box appears.
2. Click the Speech Agent drop-down menu.
   • If you have installed NeoSpeech, you must see the following voices in this list:
     • Kate
     • Paul
   • If you have installed Loquendo, you must see the following voices in the list:
     • Juliette (French)
     • Simon (British English)
     • Stefan (German)

Troubleshooting tips
If you do not find the voices listed in the Speech Agent drop-down menu, check if the following folders exist on your system:

• VT folder in /Applications/Adobe Captivate 5 (for NeoSpeech)
• LoquendoTTS folder (for Loquendo). To see this folder, Control-click the Adobe Captivate app in the Adobe Captivate 5 folder, click Show Package Contents, and then expand the Contents node.
  

  Locating the Loquendo TTS folder

If these folders exist, but the voices are not showing up in the Speech Management dialog box, double-click the installer (CpExtrasCLI) again.
If these folders are not created on your system, repeat the entire installation procedure (right from downloading the text-to-speech converters from the web or inserting the installation DVD through double-clicking the installer: CpExtrasCLI).

The much awaited Adobe Captivate 5 and Adobe eLearning Suite 2.0 have been released. Here is a brief description of the new features in these releases.

New features of Adobe Captivate 5

Adobe® Captivate® 5 offers new features for rapidly authoring, enriching, publishing, and maintaining complex interactive e-learning content—without programming.

• Adobe Captivate now supported on Mac: Adobe Captivate 5 is available on Mac OS. Both Adobe Captivate on Mac and Adobe Captivate on Windows have identical features and homogeneous user interface.
  For Mac specific details and system requirements, see the product website www.adobe.com/go/learn_cp_macsysreqs_en.
• Optimized user interface (Video | Documentation): Improve the overall authoring experience with Property Inspector that provides an in-context list of attributes when objects are selected. Work simultaneously on multiple projects using the multiple-document interface. Personalize workspaces and switch between them as and when needed. Benefit from a user interface that is consistent with popular Adobe® applications such as Adobe® Flash®, Photoshop®, and Dreamweaver®.
• Rich animation effects (Video | Documentation): Create rich object animations within Adobe Captivate 5, by combining predefined effects such as straight-line motion, rotation, and glow. For added impact, seamlessly import custom animation effects from Adobe Flash® Professional.
• Master slides (Video | Documentation): Use Master Slides to easily create and maintain well formatted and consistent-looking content that meets corporate guidelines. Make project-wide formatting changes conveniently and consistently.
• Object styles (Video | Documentation): Quickly obtain a uniform and consistent formatting for objects by defining styles and applying them. Reuse the styles across multiple Adobe Captivate projects without having to recreate them.
• Multi-video support and synchronization (Video | Documentation): Include videos in your content without having to use another application. Import videos in a wide variety of popular formats (AVI, MOV, FLV, MPEG) and synchronize video with a project, slide, or a set of slides.
• Colloboration and review using Acrobat.com (Video | Documentation): Enable multiple authors to work simultaneously on a project by hosting and sharing projects on Acrobat.com. Also, host projects on Acrobat.com for shared reviews to enable authors obtain collective review comments from reviewers.
• Tracking and reporting without an LMS (Video | Documentation): Meet basic evaluation needs at no extra cost by tracking and reporting key performance metrics, such as average score and pass or fail, without having to invest in a Learning Management System.
• Expanded asset library (Video ): Get a larger set of prebuilt widgets, playbars, skins, stock animations, images, text captions, and buttons with superior aesthetics and usability.
• Enhanced Text-to-Speech feature (Documentation): Convert your slide notes to German, French, or British English voices using the Loquendo Text to Speech converter. Also, leverage the voices installed with your operating systems—Windows and Mac to convert text to speech in your Adobe Captivate projects.
• In-context learner collaboration using Twitter: Use the Twitter widget to create courses that let learners collaborate with each other as well as with the author using their Twitter account. The learners can ask questions, get answers, and access preexisting discussions.

  The Twitter widget will be made available soon on the Adobe website. So, stay tuned.

New features of Adobe eLearning Suite 2.0

• Round-tripping between Adobe Captivate 5 and Adobe Flash Professional CS5 (Video | Documentation): Instantly update Adobe Photoshop files imported in Adobe Captivate projects. Adobe Photoshop can be invoked from within Adobe Captivate. If source files are directly updated in Adobe Photoshop, synchronize the linked file in Adobe Captivate with its source using a single click.
• Capturing applications from within Adobe Flash Professional CS5 (Documentation): Record applications from within Flash without having to switch to the Adobe Captivate interface.
• Round-tripping between Adobe Captivate 5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended (Video | Documentation): Instantly update Adobe Photoshop files imported in Adobe Captivate projects. Adobe Photoshop can be invoked from within Adobe Captivate. If source files are directly updated in Adobe Photoshop, synchronize the linked file in Adobe Captivate with its source using a single click.
• Round-tripping between Adobe Captivate 5 and Adobe Soundbooth CS5 (Video | Documentation): Edit audio files in Adobe Captivate projects by invoking Adobe Soundbooth from within Adobe Captivate.
• Ready-to-use elearning templates in Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 (Documentation): Use the templates in Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 to rapidly create training and elearning courses.