What has been your experience with some of your typical file
sizes (when published) using Captivate? I'll confess that mine are
commonly 14-25 MB when published (minimal audio). This can be for
anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour of instruction, and are VERY
heavy in rollover captions, pictures, etc.
I know some of the tricks for reducing the file sizes (like
reducing the JPEG picture quality to 75%)....
But my question is, as developers (probably more experienced
than I) do your files commonly exceed these sizes? If so, by how
much?
And not to be nosey, but if you wouldn't mind, would you also
tell me how many minutes of instruction it's for, and whether it
includes audio? (Oh, and maybe how long you've been using
Captivate?)
Sorry for the questions - however, I'm fairly new, and would
like to compare notes. Thanks for all opinions!!!!NEED OPINIONS - Typical File Sizes?
I've been using Captivate since long before it was Captivate
... and even before that.
With that in mind, the below is not meant as a criticism of
anyone else's ideas or design principles ... it is the result of
much study of adult-learning and my own extensive personal
experience.
A great guy named Charles Jeter worked for eHelp Corporation
as a Support Analyst probably said it best (paraphrased): ''The
adult human being cannot remember more than 7 digits, nor perform a
task with more than two steps at a time. Note that U.S. telephone
numbers (without area code) are 7 digits long; that is not an
accident, but the result of careful studies by AT%26amp;T 50 years
ago.''
To put it more simply, never include more than a
single task in each self-contained movie. If you go beyond
that, use shorter movies and link them, rather than longer movies.
That means most individual movies should be between 10 and 40
slides long (shorter is better), and should not ask the end user to
concentrate for more than 7 minutes at a time.
Adult attention spans are not that much longer than
children's, and we wouldn't dream of creating a 20-30 minute
tutorial for children, would we? Most children cannot remember a
stranger's first
and last names ... so one or the other, but not both, are
commonly used for introductions. It's been that way forever.
In summation: Notice I never mentioned megabytes at all.
If your movies are
(1) designed (sized) to be viewed in most standard browsers
without requiring the user to scroll, and
(2) the above tips regarding attention spans and staying
''on-point'' are carefully observed as a part of the design, actual
file size of your movies (with or without audio) will take care of
itself.
Have a nice day, TrngChick!
.NEED OPINIONS - Typical File Sizes?
Hi CatBandit -
Thanks for the inputs!!!
Yeah - I knew about the task/movie relationship....... and
maybe you can help on something else that's posing an issue and
muddying the waters a bit.....?
Where I work, we don't really have a single place where CBTs
are loaded and ''available'' for an audience (long story). So, CBTs
are distributed to different ''customers'' in different ways,
depending on the available means of deployment.
Some movies go out as a link in quarterly emails (that
another group has pointed to the executable that we provide) - the
movie is about 8-14 minutes long in duration, but can frequently be
quite large.
Seriously, for something like this, would links to more
movies be stable in this kind of situation? I know you can use a
button within a movie to open up a URL or point to another movie,
however I'm curious about the stability of links in different
situations.
Your thoughts on this?
Thanks!
You mentioned that dreaded word ''executable''. I got the jerks
and twitches ... spilled Pepsi all over my shirt and the floor in
''the-room-that-others-dare-not-enter''. The commotion woke my dog
from a very deep sleep - that was a good thing because he hadn't
moved in months and I thought he was long deceased.
Seriously, I understand the need for various output formats.
I have had very good success by linking a series of small movies
together by using the:
Project %26gt; Preferences %26gt; Start and End %26gt; End Options
(drop-list)
... to auto start one when the current movie is completed.
I can see how that might be problematic if you are emailing
them (EXE files), as you would have to include instructions to
place all linked movies in the same folder, and which to click
first and so on.
All of which is why I pretend not to know about ''EXE'' output
when a contract employer asks ... I usually mumble something to the
effect that EXE is for short people, or only for female astronauts,
then I go on to explain how we are going to use HTM/SWF as our
published output, totally ignoring executable as an option.
I keep drifting in and out of my helpful mode - my apologies!
Yes, the linked movies might require a little thought as to the
best place to ''split'' from one to the next, but they are stable
once play begins, even for executables. A problem with EXE format
is that it (each one) contains its own copy of Flash Player, so
when you reach the end of one movie and want to auto-start the
next, there is always going to be a delay while Flash Player shuts
down on the first, then has to re-open for the next. There is no
way to leave the Player open and just begin the next movie,
unfortunately.
Hope there is some help or at least some amusement herein.
I'm getting tired and silly, but did try to address your question
in all that.
.
Well, at least we know that your dog is alive!!!!
Honestly, I hear ya - I don't know what your developin'
situation is.... however, I work for a large (50,000+ person)
company that has several other LARGE companies as clients, and
budgetary issues, as well as client firewall/web policies/e-mail
policies and just general agendas really dictate what we're able to
do.....
And then, we depend on other groups as web master, so they
tell US what they're willing to risk and/or deal with....
I'm very curious about your (and everybody else's) inputs and
experiences with regards to these sorts of issues, so if you or
anybody else has any insights, I'd very much like them.
Thanks for the assistance.... now go find a towel!!!!
If you're sending out a newsletter via email, then your
audience has an
internet connection...so why not provide the Captivate files
online so
folks don't have to download them? I would *much* rather play
a file in
my browser than download an .exe to my local machine for such
purposes.
So I guess it may depend on your web team. Are they willing
to put up a
section of your website that hosts these files?
It would be pretty easy to setup a basic framed page with the
list of
Captivate files in one frame that, when clicked, load the
file in the
other frame. There are more elegant ways to do this, but that
would work
for your needs. When done with your file, just upload the
Captivates to
the space your web team provides then edit the 'table of
contents' frame
with the name and link to the related Captivate. In your
newsletter,
just note the 'demo page has been updated!'.
There's no risk to your webserver from these SWF files. The
only
downside might be bandwidth usage. But assuming folks are
downloading
the .exe's from that same server/connection anyway, the
bandwidth won't
be any greater (unless you get more hits)...and in fact may
be *lower*
since you're asking people to just load the .swf and not
download the
.swf + flash player executable.
Another option is to setup an LMS which would allow you to
manage your
users, potentially charge $$ for some of the lessons, and run
reports on
their usage (among other things). That would be a slick,
though more
pricey, way of implementing a web-based solution.
Overall, I strongly agree with Catbandit's assertions about
length and
learning strategies.
Erik
TrngChick wrote:
%26gt; Well, at least we know that your dog is alive!!!!
%26gt; shirt and the carpet...... !
%26gt;
%26gt; Honestly, I hear ya - I don't know what your developin'
situation is....
%26gt; however, I work for a large (50,000+ person) company
that has several other
%26gt; LARGE companies as clients, and budgetary issues, as
well as client
%26gt; firewall/web policies/e-mail policies and just general
agendas really dictate
%26gt; what we're able to do.....
%26gt;
%26gt; And then, we depend on other groups as web master, so
they tell US what
%26gt; they're willing to risk and/or deal with....
%26gt;
%26gt; I'm very curious about your (and everybody else's)
inputs and experiences with
%26gt; regards to these sorts of issues, so if you or anybody
else has any insights,
%26gt; I'd very much like them.
%26gt;
%26gt; Thanks for the assistance.... now go find a towel!!!!
%26gt;
--
Erik Lord
http://www.capemedia.net
Adobe Community Expert - Authorware
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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samples, tips, products, faqs, and links!
*Search the A'ware newsgroup archives*
http://groups.google.com/group/macromedia.authorware
Hi,
I have files that are that large, generally after I add
audio. We are told that our Flash files (after publishing) can not
exceed 2MB. They don't care how big the actual Captivate file is,
they only are worried about the Flash files. For my larger files,
I'm going to have to split them up and have them play back to back.
We're trying to get him to let us go to 3MB but he said that
if he gave us 3, we'd want 4. Totally true.
Hope that helps. It's not a fancy answer but it's what we're
told.
Hi,
Thanks for the response - yes, the responses help.
I'm really trying to get a handle on how to make things work
in the ''real world''. There would be NO WAY we could get a file down
to 3MB - and with audio!!!!! Our group uses an opening slide with
Flash bells/whistles, and that in and of itself drives stuff over
the edge.
Can I be really nosey and ask a question? What kinds of
things (generally) are you instructing? Do you use a lot of hover
boxes, user interaction, additional graphics, etc.? Do you find it
easy? What kinds of people/companies (again, generally speaking)
are your customers (small companies, private, public)? Why is it
3MB? Is there a specific reason for this particular size?
Seriously - we don't manage the website for our company
(which is large at 50k + people), and its diffficult to get things
done.
I'm a little worried about the size of my first Captivate
lesson, launched for testing just this afternoon. It's over 15 mb
for 15 minutes of slides with audio on each slide. I didn't think
that was too bad. A Camtasia movie can easily be over 1 mb for a
30-second bit with narration. My students have learned to live with
that.
In the corporate world, we put the lesson on a server and
we're sending around the URL. I wouldn't attach it to an email even
if it was 3 mb. This should work for us, though. Also, the quiz
results seem to be working when sent through e-mail -- except that
I can't tell which lesson the results are for. I mentioned this in
the e-learning forum, but it seems like we should be able to
provide different subject lines for each quiz we have output via
e-mail. Good luck.
Tim Prentiss
Everyone seems to be looking for a point of reference
size-wise. Here's one:
We produce a 20- to 40- minute lesson composed of a series of
Captivate movies we refer to as ''pages'' in the lesson. The movies
are primarily software simulations captured at 1024 x 768 and
reduced to 800 x 600.
When published, the average movie consists of 28 slides and
plays 2 1/2 minutes with full narration and closed captioning. Most
have 2-4 highlights and/or caption balloons on half the slides,
while the others contain interactions.
The published size of that average swf is 860KB. The SWFs are
published for Flash Player 8. No skins, backgrounds, or playback
controls.
To achieve that degree of compression, we:
1) Always use BMP (not JPG) images when we bring in other
artwork.
2) The video quality of all slides is set to Standard.
3) The audio quality is set to MP3, Custom Bitrate of 32Kbps,
22.050 KHz.
4) We merge artwork into the background when practical.
If you're especially frustrated by the size of your published
files, consider that the screen captures you're displaying might be
part of the problem. Simplify the color scheme of the application
you're recording if you can, and of course record only a small area
if that's workable for your situation. If you haven't much
experience with computer graphics and multimedia, try scouring the
web for some tutorials on graphic formats (BMP, TIF, TGA, PNG, JPG,
GIF, etc.) and compression schemes. You'll discover the strengths
and weaknesses of each format -- in particular, which formats
compress better than others, and in which circumstances they work
best.
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