Director

Now that Captivate has been on the street for a few months and I have been out there "yacking it up," the product has moved from novelty to production tool in rather short order. Once that happens, there are the subsequent, "How do I...?" questions that inevitably crop up. This article deals with a five of the more common ones that I have encountered and shows you how to deal with them.

They are:

1. Fitting the application interface to be captured into a defined capture area.
2. Adding a Voiceover script to a Captivate movie
3. Moving the Control bar off of the captured interface
4. Creating a custom Control bar
5. Adding streaming video to Captivate.

Here, then, is a collection of Captivate Tips, Tricks and Techniques.

#1: How Do I Fit an Application's Interface into that Red Capture Area?
This is one of more common questions I am asked. Inevitably, you want to capture to a size that won't result in a huge file. The easiest way of managing file size it to keep the physical capture area to a size that is smaller than the interface that is currently open. Here's how:

1. When Captivate opens, select Custom Size from the New Movie options dialog box.
2. As you can see in Figure 1 there is a lot more Fireworks interface than there is capture area. You can change the size of the capture area by either selecting a preset from the pop down menu or moving the handles in or out to decrease or increase the capture area.
3. Select the application you will be capturing from the list in the Record dialog box, In Figure 2, I select Fireworks.
4. Click the "Snap window to fit inside the red recording area" button and the Fireworks interface will shrink to fit the dimensions of the recording area.

#2: I Can't "WingIt" with Audio. How Can I Create a Script That I Can Read While I Record the Audio?
Very few of us have the talent that allows us to record a "voiceover" narration when we click the "Record" button in the Audio section of Captivate. In this case you have a couple of choices. The first is to break out your word processor and simply type out the script for each slide. But there is another method:

1. Open your Captivate movie.
2. It doesn't me slide thumbnail to open the slide's context menu.
3. Select "Properties" from the pop down to open the Slide Properties dialog box. Click the Notes button to open the Slide Notes input window.
4. Enter the text you will be using for the narration, Figure 4, and click OK to close the Slide Notes window. Don't close the Slide properties. Dialog box just yet.
5. Connect your microphone and click the Audio tab in the slide properties dialog box to open the slide's Audio properties.
6. Click the "Record New" button to open the "Record Audio" dialog box.
7. Select "View Script" and click the Notes radio button. Your narration will now appear in the script area, as shown in Figure 5, and you can read the narration. Clicking the "Captions" button will simply place the caption text in the script area.

#3: The Stupid Control Bar Always Covers Areas of the Interface in the Movie. Is There a Way to Get it Out of the Way?
Absolutely. It can be frustrating to have the control bar cover critical buttons or information in the slide. Though you can move it to various areas of the screen, the chances of it covering something important are almost 100%. Here's how to contend with this one:

1. Select Movie> Resize movie to open the "Movie Resize" dialog box.
2. Deselect Maintain Aspect Ratio. If you leave this selected the movie will distort.
3. Enter a new height value. I have found most of the controllers are 30 pixels high. In this case I will add 40 pixels to the height value. This will light up the "If movie size is larger..." area.
4. Select "Keep movie the same size and fill background with color".
5. Select a background color if you don't want to go with the white default.
6. Select "Top Left" from the "Position Movie" pop down menu.
7. Deselect "Rescale captions, highlight boxes and other objects." Though not necessary, I always do this as a sort of insurance.
8. If your values match those shown in Figure 6, click the "Finish" button and preview your movie. The controller will be sitting under the capture area.

#4: I Love All the Controllers That Ship with Captivate But I Have a Problem: My Client Wants to Use a Custom Controller. Can I Do This?
Though the process is a bit complicated, the answer is a resounding "Yes." What you will need to do is to create all of the pieces for the controller in an image editing application, such as Fireworks and also a composite image that Captivate will use to construct the controller. Before you get going, keep in mind the rules are rather rigorous:

• All buttons must be the same width and height.
• All buttons can only have an up and down state. There is no "over" state in Captivate.
• All elements, including the composite image, must be saved as 8-bit BMP graphics.
• Playback controllers can only have the following buttons:
  • Play
  • Back
  • Forward
  • Pause
  • Exit
  • Rewind
  • Info
• Playback controllers have two copies of all of the elements in the controller plus a composite, flattened image of the controller.
• All buttons must use the following naming convention: controlstylename-buttonnamebuttonstate.fileextension. For example, if I create a style named MXDJGray then the play button for this controller would have two buttons named MXDJGray-playbuttonup.bmp and MXDJGray-playbuttondown.bmp. The composite image, showing the controller with the buttons would be named MXDJGray-preview.bmp.
• To remove the solid background stage color for the buttons or other pieces, add the word "trans" to the file name. For example, the Play button in the above example is circular. This means there will be a bit of the stage color showing when the image is saved as a BMP. In this case the image would be named, MXDJGray-playtransbuttonup.bmp

Here's how:

1. Use the layers in Fireworks MX 2004 or other image editor create the buttons and other pieces for the controller.
2. Select each of the pieces- two button states for each button and the base for the controller- and copy and paste them into separate documents.
3. Save each element of the controller using the naming conventions outlined above.
4. Open the folder where all of the button elements just created are stored and copy all of the files in the folder.
5. Navigate to C: \Programs\Macromedia\Captivate\Gallery\Playback Controls. When you have the folder open, paste the files into the folder as shown in .
6. Open the Captivate movie that will use the new controller.
7. Select Movie>Preferences to open the Movie Preferences dialog box.
8. Select the Playback Controls tab and select the controller from the Styles pop down as shown in Figure 8.
9. Click OK and the new controller will appear in the Preview window when you test the movie.