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Adobe Captivate: Slide count limit & chaining projects together

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    • CommentAuthorphilip
    • CommentTimeMay 8th 2008
     
    Lila writes:


    I use Captivate to record software simulations at work.

    Something totally bizarre happened yesterday. I was recording a video and had reached about 175 slides. Captivate occasionally crashes during recording so I often record some, stop, save, and record some more to work around that. So, I was recording new slides to insert around slide 150. Captivate crashed and when I reopened the file, slides 151 - 175 were gone. They were previously saved but after the crash they were just gone. I could see a few of them in the library,
    but otherwise the majority were missing.

    This happened about 4 times yesterday. The slides that got deleted were always from the end of the project; I think right after the point at which I was trying to insert new slides.

    Have you ever heard of this happening?

    Thanks,
    Lila


    Hi Lila

    Yup, it happens all the time. The general consensus regarding Captivate is to never use more than around 60 slides in one project. I've heard people say the limit is 99, but either way, Captivate definitely starts to choke as the slide count gets higher.

    The alternative is to create smaller Captivate SWFs, then chain them together. Follow these steps to chain them together:


    1. Create all of your Captivate projects (first.cp, second.cp, third.cp, etc.)

    2. Open the first project (first.cp)

    3. Go to the project's preferences (Edit > Preferences)

    4. Choose Project > Start and End from the navigation tree on the left

    5. Under "Project End" options, select Action > Open other project. A second drop-down box will appear.

    6. Find your second project (second.cp) in the drop-down menu. If it isn't in the menu, click the button with the ellipsis [...] to locate your file.

    7. Un-check "Fade out on last slide" (unless you want to keep it on).

    8. Click OK

    9. Publish the first project. Captivate will auto-publish all chained projects, too.



    - philip
    • CommentAuthorLila Meyer
    • CommentTimeMay 12th 2008
     
    Waaah! I've lost my work three times now. :(

    I'm using Captivate 2 and I followed the steps Phil outlines above. It didn't work - the second file's worth of slides did not get added to the published video. And the icing on the cake is when I opened the original second file (second.cp in the example above) all of the slides but one were missing.

    It seems no matter which features I use to insert additional slides into first.cp, I end up losing my work.
    • CommentAuthorLila Meyer
    • CommentTimeMay 12th 2008
     
    Maybe some good news... I think most of the deleted slides from my second.cp file are still stored in the project library. Does anyone know how to insert slides from the library back into the active project?
    • CommentAuthorphilip
    • CommentTimeMay 12th 2008
     
    Haven't tried it myself.

    Sounds like you're having some bad luck!

    Tip: If you're doing a lot of full-motion capture and/or audio narration when recording, you should change your "working folder" to be on a second hard drive.

    Preferences > Full Motion Recording > Working Folder

    Any time someone does real-time recording, whether video, audio or animation, they should always use a different hard drive (Photoshop calls it a "scratch disk"). This is because the primary hard drive can only do so much at once; when a program is trying to record the media to the hard drive, the operating system and other programs are also trying to use the disk for other tasks, such as virtual memory ("paging") and background tasks. That means the head on the drive has to jump around a lot, which not only affects performance, but can lead to data loss.

    If your projects keep crashing when trying to record (whether it's Captivate, Camtasia, Garageband, etc.), it wouldn't hurt to get an extra hard drive... if you don't have one already.

    Also, the speed of the drive makes a big difference; laptops have slow hard drives (4500 to 5400 RPM). Budget desktops (such as entry-level and business-class Dells) also use slow hard drives (usually 5400 RPM). In both cases, getting a Firewire or USB 2.0 external 7200RPM hard drive should give your system a noticeable bump in performance (assuming you set the programs to use the external drive as I mentioned above).

    Extra RAM also helps a bunch. I recommend at least 1GB, preferably 2GB.

    But regardless, Captivate has developed a reputation for having unexpected breakdowns like yours, so who knows... it could just be the software. :tongue:

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