Slide videos

You can insert video files of all popular formats to the slides in your project. After importing a pre-recorded video, you can decide the part of the video that must be played on each slide in sync with the contents.

You can insert the same video to another slide or a group of slides in the same project. When a synchronized video is imported into multiple slides, the association between the video and the slides (synchronized video group) is retained internally. Any edits that are made to the video timing are updated in all the slides of the synchronized video group.

Adobe Captivate supports insertion of FLV/F4V files directly as synchronized videos. But to insert non-Flash video formats, you need Adobe Media Encoder (AME) to convert the files to FLV/F4V.

The Edit Video dialog box (Video > Edit Video Timing) lets you edit the video timing:

• Edit and preview: Use the edit tab to edit the timing and preview the synchronized video while editing. You can decide the part of video that must play in each slide. When you edit the timing, it applies only to that particular synchronized video group.

  Play the preview, pause at the point where you want to adjust the video, and then adjust the marker (drag left or right). Zooming the timeline makes the editing of the video easier. To help you synchronize the slide and the video, the slide and video duration are displayed below the timeline.

  When you move the marker, a mismatch can occur between the video and the slide duration (for the slide with the reduced video duration). You can synchronize the duration using the Timeline. Unused video portions outside the start and end markers can be assigned to adjacent slides (if any in the project). To do this, use and .

  You can also preview the synchronized video from library and on stage (using the Edit Video Timing dialog box).On stage preview helps you decide the sequence of appearance of various objects as the video plays.

• Add a beginning slide and an end slide: For effective control over video distribution, you can, if necessary add slides before the first slide or after the last slide in your project. This is useful if unused video is present in the beginning or end. The synchronized video is distributed across these slides also.

  To do this, use the ( and ).

• Closed Captioning: If your video has audio content, use the Closed Captioning tab to enter captions for hearing-impaired users. The text is displayed along with the audio when the slide is played.

Using the Timeline, play the video, pause it where you want the object to appear, and move the object to the playhead position or insert a new one.

You cannot change the proportion of the video, so that the quality is intact.

The Video Management dialog box (Video > Video Management) provides the following details:

• the synchronized videos that you have inserted

• the slide and slide groups to which they belong

• the video type

• URL of the hosted video file

• the placement (if on TOC or stage)

Use this dialog box to:

• Specify video type: The type of video that you insert. For the description of the video types, see the General section in Properties of video files.

• Specify placement: If TOC or Stage. Depending on the placement, an icon appears at the lower-right corner of the slide on Filmstrip and on the Timeline:

  • if on TOC

  • if on stage

  You might place the video on TOC in talking heads scenarios where the focus is on objects in the slide (such as text or a Flash video). Placing video on TOC, helps you avoid the distraction that playing a synchronized video on stage can cause and viewers losing focus.

  When you have the synchronized video play on TOC, ensure that you select Show TOC (Project > Table of Contents) so that the TOC also is visible while you play the project.

• Launch Edit Video timing dialog box: Click to edit video timing. For more information on editing the video timing, see Edit video timing.

• Delete: Click to delete synchronized video.

The changes reflect on all slides that use the video.

You cannot associate additional audio to a synchronized video. Therefore, Adobe recommends that you use audio in file and not audio as object ensure proper synchronization.

• Use synchronized videos when you want the video to play in synchronization with the slide contents. For other purposes, use the FLV file or F4V object, where the user gets to control the video (for example, play or pause the video).

• Ensure that the videos have sufficient keyframes. The recommended keyframe interval is at least one keyframe in every 2 secs.

  You can use Adobe Media Encoder (AME) to increase the keyframe interval if necessary. For a 30-fps video, configure the keyframe-distance to be 60 (frames) in AME (or any other tool of your preference).

• Ensure that the videos have optimal bit-rates so that viewers’ experience is good. Else, many ‘loading...’ messages are displayed to the users.

  Decide the bit-rates based on the server’s as well as your target users’ bandwidth.

• Import video from your local machine rather than from a shared network location. Large videos imported directly from network locations cause excessive delays and occasional system instability.

• Ensure that the minimum duration of a portion of the video on a slide (per synchronized video) is 3 seconds. This duration is necessary to ensure that at least a couple of keyframes are assigned per slide.

• Ensure that the maximum duration of a synchronized video is 999 seconds (maximum slide duration). If the video is longer than this duration, distribute it among multiple slides. Videos longer than 999 seconds can cause system instability.

• Video dimensions:

  • Ensure that the video object dimension is the same as that of the original video for optimal quality.

  • Do not change the aspect ratio of the video even if you cannot maintain equal dimensions for the video object and original video. Otherwise, the video loses quality.

  • Keep the dimensions of a video that you want to include in the TOC as Height 144 and Width 196.

By default, the published SWF files with synchronized videos are optimized for progressive downloads of videos. You can host the publish folder with the SWF file on a web server without changing any settings.

To host the videos on a server other than the one on which the SWF file exists (for example, a video server) or if you want to use streaming or Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS):

1. Upload the videos to the server.

2. In the Video Management dialog box (Video > Video Management), specify the path of the video on the server.