Adobe Captivate 3
Using
Adobe® Captivate® 3
to create demonstration
and
simulation movies
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2008, WordSmith, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
No copy of this material may be made in any form without express written
permission of the copyright owner, WordSmith, LLC.
Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
Adobe, Captivate, Fireworks, MenuBuilder, RoboDemo, and RoboHelp are
registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the
United States and other countries. All other marks are property of their
respective owners and are used here for identification purposes only.
142 Main St. #304
Nashua, NH 03060
603.881.8606
info@wordsmith.net
www.wordsmith.net
rev. 08 v0.31
ii •
Using Captivate
About this workbook
This workbook is designed and written for use in a two-day hands-on
workshop class, led by an Adobe certified Captivate instructor.
It is not intended nor written as a self-help guide, for several reasons.
Captivate is a complex, multi-level piece of software—with a deceptively
simple and beguiling interface. It is possible for a reasonably competent
person to run the software and produce a movie, but a product built that way
will meet no serious standard. Learning to use a tool this complex and
interdependent requires the guidance of someone who uses it well and
knows how to share that skill.
In addition, Captivate movies do not exist in isolation. They serve the needs
of many different kinds of user audiences. To meet those needs successfully
requires more than pushing Captivate’s buttons. It demands skills—
understanding audiences; designing, preparing, and writing content—
shaped and deepened by experience. To help you understand not just the
tool’s functions but its place in the larger process requires a thoughtful,
experienced practitioner.
The book is idiosyncratic. The discussions and instructions incorporate a fair
amount of my prejudice and preference, about the design and and
production of movie files in general and the uses of Captivate in particular.
Expression of this order needs explication, or rebuttal, or both.
The best justification for this assertion is as true for Captivate as for
RoboHelp: in more than six years of working with this tool and teaching
others to use it, the happiest, most thoroughly satisfied people I meet in class
are the autodidacts—the self-taught—who punctuate three days of work with
a continuous string of “ah-hahs” and “wows,” “now I see what that thing’s
for,” and, almost invariably, some variant of “I only wish I’d had this class
sooner.”
David Locke
WordSmith LLC
Using
Captivate
iii
Contents
1 About the Seminar
1
Overview ............................................................................................................................ 1
Seminar basics .................................................................................................................. 2
Workbook Conventions ...................................................................................................... 3
Load the practice files ........................................................................................................ 4
Additional Resources ......................................................................................................... 4
2 All About Captivate
2-1
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 2-1
Captivate Description ...................................................................................................... 2-2
Good movies take work .................................................................................................. 2-3
Movie variations .............................................................................................................. 2-4
System Requirements..................................................................................................... 2-5
3 Planning & Design
3-1
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 3-1
Where Do I Start? ........................................................................................................... 3-2
Using movies in context .................................................................................................. 3-5
Conventions, conventions ............................................................................................... 3-6
4 The Captivate Interface
4-1
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 4-1
Viewing the demo movie ................................................................................................. 4-2
Captivate Overview ......................................................................................................... 4-3
5 Record a demo movie
5-1
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 5-1
Recording a new project—issues & options ................................................................... 5-2
Prepare the application to record .................................................................................... 5-5
Prepare Captivate to record ............................................................................................ 5-7
6 The filmstrip, slide labels, insert slides
6-1
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 6-1
The work movie .............................................................................................................. 6-2
Use the filmstrip .............................................................................................................. 6-3
Labels ............................................................................................................................. 6-4
Insert & move slides........................................................................................................ 6-6
Conventions slide ........................................................................................................... 6-8
7 Captions, cursors, timeline
7-1
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 7-1
Captions: properties, types, styles, ................................................................................. 7-2
Captivate’s automatic captions ....................................................................................... 7-5
Insert new captions ......................................................................................................... 7-7
Stack and sequence ....................................................................................................... 7-8
Add/edit more captions ................................................................................................. 7-21
Mouse (cursor) & mouse trails ...................................................................................... 7-22
About the Seminar
8 Images, the Library and alignment
8-1
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 8-1
Insert and use images .................................................................................................... 8-2
Library: usage and management .................................................................................... 8-5
Alignment tools ............................................................................................................... 8-9
9 Buttons and pacing controls
9-1
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 9-1
Buttons ............................................................................................................................ 9-2
Inserting and using buttons ............................................................................................. 9-3
10 Highlight boxes, zoom & fill, animations
10-1
Draw attention ............................................................................................................... 10-2
Highlight boxes ............................................................................................................. 10-2
Zoom and fill ................................................................................................................. 10-7
Zoom an image ........................................................................................................... 10-15
Animation .................................................................................................................... 10-19
11 Audio: add and edit
11-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 11-1
Audio ............................................................................................................................. 11-2
Audio tips & cautions .................................................................................................... 11-3
Background track .......................................................................................................... 11-5
Import a voice audio track for a slide ............................................................................ 11-7
Record an audio track ................................................................................................. 11-18
Closed captioning ....................................................................................................... 11-21
12 Publishing 12-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 12-1
Bandwidth analysis ....................................................................................................... 12-2
Project properties .......................................................................................................... 12-3
Project Preferences ...................................................................................................... 12-4
Resizing projects .......................................................................................................... 12-6
Skins ............................................................................................................................. 12-7
Publishing ................................................................................................................... 12-11
13 Record a sim movie
13-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 13-1
About simulations ......................................................................................................... 13-2
14 Click & text entry boxes; Interactions
14-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 14-1
The work project ........................................................................................................... 14-2
Click boxes ................................................................................................................... 14-3
Text entry boxes ........................................................................................................... 14-6
Managing interaction objects ........................................................................................ 14-9
Practice ....................................................................................................................... 14-10
ii
© 2008 WordSmith LLC
15 Adding to a project
15-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 15-1
Importing PowerPoint slides ......................................................................................... 15-2
Inserting slides from another Captivate project ............................................................ 15-6
Recording new material ................................................................................................ 15-7
16 Rollovers & text animation
16-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 16-1
Rollovers ....................................................................................................................... 16-2
Text animation ............................................................................................................ 16-12
17 Branching 17-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 17-1
Branching ...................................................................................................................... 17-2
Branching editor ............................................................................................................ 17-9
Publish ........................................................................................................................ 17-10
18 Question slides, quizzes, and pools
18-1
Question slides ............................................................................................................. 18-2
Question pools .............................................................................................................. 18-7
19 Reporting and LMS Linking
19-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 19-1
Scoring Overview .......................................................................................................... 19-2
Quiz Manager ............................................................................................................... 19-7
LMS Linking .................................................................................................................. 19-9
20 Distribute movies
20-1
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 20-1
simple HTML ................................................................................................................. 20-2
MenuBuilder .................................................................................................................. 20-3
© WordSmith LLC
iii
About the
Seminar
Overview
This seminar is about designing, building, and maintaining Flash-based
movies using Adobe® Captivate® 3 as the capture and editing tool.
Captivate allows users to capture on-screen activity, then edit the captured
screens, and distribute the results in a variety of formats and packages.
© WordSmith LLC
1
About the Seminar
Seminar basics
Goals
Materials in this seminar allow you to learn how to:
• Design a useful online learning environment
• Set capture options in Captivate
• Capture slides in one of several modes
• Add and edit elements like images and captions
• Add and edit functions like click boxes, text boxes, rollovers
• Add and edit branching
• Add question and quizzing slides
• Publish and distribute movies in several formats
Assumptions
We assume a basic understanding of Microsoft Windows and components:
• Mouse
operations
• Windows/Internet
Explorer
• Basic functions (e.g., the Start Menu, the Clipboard)
• and—the use of WordPad and Paint, our target applications
2
© 2008 WordSmith LLC
Workbook Conventions
The workbook uses a fairly common set of conventions.
Bold items
Object names
Menu items
Dialog box names
Check box selections
Option buttons
Command buttons
User Actions
Keystrokes such as Enter, Space, etc.
Selections, including words in a topic
Occasional emphasis (for example, not)
Button
The outline format indicates a button, as, for example:
Click Open .
Menu selections
Bold Arial, as in File menu.
User entry and Pathways
Text you are to enter is styled in Courier New and indented on a separate
line, as shown below. Type the entry exactly as it appears.
Type
Captivate materials
The same style is used to indicate a drive path.
Paths to files
All paths to files assume that you have followed the instructions when
copying the files from the workshop CD. If you install the workshop files
elsewhere, you will need to modify the given path when selecting files in the
exercises.
© WordSmith LLC
3
About the Seminar
Load the practice files
The CD contains al the practice files and storage folders we need for this two-
day class.
To load the practice files:
1. Open Windows Explorer, and create a new folder:
C:\captivate_training
2. Insert the CD in the drive, and copy the contents to the new folder
created in step 1.
Additional Resources
At the end of each module, you’ll find additional resources listed for the
subject matter covered in that module.
Captivate community knowledge base articles
Knowledge base entries grow daily. The URLs change too frequently to list.
To visit the Knowledge Base:
Go to www.adobe.com/support/captivate.
To locate a Knowledge Base article:
Use the Search mechanism at the top of the page.
Captivate developer community
It’s changing constantly with Adobe, but for now:
www.adobe.com/devnet/captivate
Other Captivate resources
These change constantly, so you’ll find a relatively current set of resources in
materials coped from the CD, at:
C:\Captivate training\resources
4
© 2008 WordSmith LLC
All About
Captivate
Overview
In this section we explore:
• Captivate
description
• Other tools and a tool chart
• Variations-sim and demo
• System
requirements
© WordSmith LLC
2-1
All About Captivate
Captivate Description
Adobe Captivate is a software tool that allows you to create movies from on-screen
events which you can publish in Flash format. The movies can be run on any
computer which has a copy of Flash player installed—which currently includes
about 98% of Windows machines.
Chief functions
Captivates chief functions include:
• Capture on-screen events manually and automatically
• Add captions, buttons, click boxes, images, and more
• Add quizzes and branching
• Publish and distribute small Flash format movie files
Captivate’s place
Captivate is one among many in the larger category of such tools.
The chart below lists other tools in order of increasing cost, top to bottom.
Most of the more expensive tools offer an increasing range of sophisticated user
interaction, feature simulation, quizzing, and judging.
In addition, the more expensive tools (like Firefly) are only sold on an annual
licensing basis, which typically starts at five figures and escalates quickly.
InstantDemo
instant-demo.com (NetPlay Software)
Viewlet Builder
qarbon.com
Camtasia techsmith.com
Captivate adobe.com
TurboDemo turbodemo.com
(de)
RapidBuilder xstreamsoftware.com
(ca)
ToolBook sumtotalsystems.com
(Asymetrix-Click2Learn)
Authorware adobe.com
OnDemand
ondemandgk.com (Global Knowledge)
Firefly
kimpact.com (Knowledge Impact)
2-2
© 2008 WordSmith LLC
Good movies take work
Serious editing of the raw capture from a Captivate record session is necessary to
create a successful movie. In other words, throw a skeptical filter over the cheerful
marketing predictions from any company (including Adobe) that promise “you can
easily and quickly create great movies with Captivate.”
At a minimum, every single slide you capture will require some kind of editing.
In addition, you will add slides for titling, for introductions and conventions, for
quizzing and branching, and more.
Then there’s audio. To design, prepare, create, and modify a good audio track takes
serious additional time.
Estimates—time and cost
Ask five professionals how to figure time to create e-learning experiences like
Captivate movies—and you’ll get five different answers.
A rough middle-ground rule of thumb for creating e-learning materials is on the
order of:
1 hour of finished material = 300 hours work
The more proficient you become with the editing tools that Captivate provides, the
better your movies will be and the more quickly you can crank them out.
But they still take thought and work.
And time.
© WordSmith LLC
2-3
All About Captivate
Movie variations
Captivate allows you to generate movies that range along a spectrum of user
involvement, from demo(demonstration) to sim (simulation).
Common elements
All the movie variations listed below include a sequence of images with overlay
items like captions, cursor, and click boxes, arranged to run as a movie.
Each of the variants can also include quizzes and branching, linking to other
executables or movies or files external to the movie itself.
The usage sections are intentionally brief, more suggestive than prescriptive.
Demo
Includes description captions, mouse movements, audio.
Usage: to demonstrate software or other screen activity.
Sim
Includes click boxes, text entry fields, clickable button areas.
Usage: to allow users to replicate the action of the software.
Although not cast in concrete, the spectrum below may help clarify the functions that
distinguish a demonstration from a simulation.
Scenario
Uses all the above techniques, and others, like avatars, to generate a range of
learning and instructi9onal materials.
Usage: soft skills training, as in role-based learning for sales or CSR.
2-4
© 2008 WordSmith LLC
Image movie (in a category of its own)
A group of mages combined into a slide-show-like movie.
How these images are combined and presented can vary enormously. The category
of image movie encompasses a range limited only by imagination. An image movie
could be used to show a new vacuum cleaner or display the advantages of non-stick
peanut butter, showcase new home construction or the virtues of non-invasive root
canal procedures.
We touch on one variation of image movies in our work with zooms, on page 10-15.
(Example: “Men and women in need of supervision.”)
Usage: to present a sequence of images.
System Requirements
Captivate is a visual tool, working with visual materials and files. Although these are
not movies in the traditional sense that requires a Movieola to edit, they nonetheless
require a fair amount of processor speed, memory, and a decent graphics card to run
effectively.
You may see lower system requirements published in “official” materials from
Adobe than what you see below. Trust us. These requirements are real world, drawn
from experience.
If other items are at the norm, the graphics processor memory can be the most crucial
factor in determining how responsive Captivate’s editor is to your changes.
Processor: Pentium III or better
Memory: 512 MB or better (1 GB better)
Graphics card: Mobility Radeon group or better; 128MB or better
Hard drive: at least 20% free.
© WordSmith LLC
2-5
