I’ve used TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio for several years, and I like it a lot, but IU’s agreement with Adobe makes Captivate 6 the more attractive option because I can get it for free. Camtasia used to be the obvious choice for making full motion video recordings of your screen. That’s what Camtasia is designed to do, and it does it well. Full motion recording in previous versions of Captivate was not the greatest. Full motion is better in Captivate 6, not perfect, but better. By the way, Captivate 6 doesn’t refer to full motion recording as full motion. It’s called Video Demo mode. You can begin your project by choosing the Video Demo option, or choose Video Demo when it’s time to start recording your screen.  The interface changes a little when you start the project in this mode. You can learn more about it in this  Adobe TV video.  Skip to 02:06 on the timeline.

Choose Video Demo when starting your project.

When you record the action that’s happening on your screen it needs to be smooth and easy to follow. You have to know exactly what you’re doing, so before your record, take a practice run. For example, when demonstrating how to align shapes in PowerPoint, make sure you have the shapes selected so the Format tab will be available. Of course, practice doesn’t guarantee perfection. That’s where editing comes in.  You can simply trim the parts of the video that you don’t want.

Once you stop recording and return to the Captivate interface you’ll enter the editor by double clicking the clip in the timeline, and choosing Edit Video Demo in the Properties Panel.

Click Edit Video Demo in the properties panel.

The editor opens and you get a nice big view of your clip. You’d probably like to edit the clip to match its accompanying audio, but you can’t.  Maybe Adobe will add that functionality in the next release, but for now I recommend adding audio after the video is edited.

When the editor opens you’ll see your clip and a timeline beneath it. The Split  button allows you to split the clip into smaller segments. The Pan and Zoom button allows you to zoom in on and pan to different parts of the clip. When I tried using this function it seemed to cause problems when playing the produced video. Pan and zoom at your own risk.

To trim your clip, start by moving the playhead to somewhere in the middle of the clip before clicking the Trim button. If you click Trim first, you’ll have difficulty finding the In Point Marker. Use the Playhead to find your in and out points, and then place the markers accordingly. When you’re ready to complete the trim, click the Trim button again. It’s not very intuitive, but that’s how it works. You can edit other places in the clip. Just follow the same steps.

Timeline in editor view.

When you’re finished click Exit and save the changes.

Click Exit to save your edits.

If you like learning by watching, click the image below to see a short tutorial. Captivate 6 is a very useful tool. I encourage you to download it from IUware (IU students, faculty, and staff only), and give it a try.

Click this image to watch the video.

Below is a list of  5 simple tips that can be used with any of these programs.

Audio is key to the success of your project, and in most cases, your audio will sound better when recorded with a program that is designed especially for recording and editing audio. Not only is the quality of the audio extremely important, but the audio clips that you have to work with will determine how much time you’re going to have to spend tweaking your movie. If the timing is good in your audio and each individual audio clip contains the amount of content that you intend to include on the corresponding slide, then the majority of the work is already done.

Either record the audio for each slide separately, or record the whole script and then use the audio editing application you prefer to split the file into individual clips that can be matched up with the slides in your project.

Make sure the audio clips are ready to go before you import them into Captivate, Camtasia, Articulate, or Presenter. This means that they should sound crisp and clean, and they should have about 1 second of silence at the beginning and at the end. They should all be approximately the same volume.

For example, the default resolution in PowerPoint is 720×540. Therefore if you set the resolution of  a Captivate project to 720×540, you will be able to use PowerPoint slides and images in your project without experiencing any image distortion. (You can also use a resolution with the same aspect ratio.) In most cases, using a resolution that is fairly close will also work, but it will depend on the shape and size of the images you are using.

If you are recording a series of steps, and you make a mistake on one small section and need to tweak it later, it can be very difficult to make it match the other slides in the series. If the recording box is even a fraction of an inch to the left or to the right of where it was in the other screen captures, you will see a noticeable jump when you reach a certain point in the movie. Bottom line? When working with these tools, do it right the first time around, or you will find yourself spending a huge amount of time “fiddling” with things later, trying to get them to look just right.

While these are supposed to be rapid development tools, it is not unusual for newbies, especially those with a creative flair, to get caught up in the details of the design work and to spend hours and hours and hours tweaking backgrounds and animations and text. If more than one person is working on a movie, the creators are far less likely to become too fond of a certain version. If a client or project manager requests change, it is easier for the developer to grant the request, since they have not spent every waking moment of their time “perfecting” the presentation.

Since you will want all of the movies in a series to be consistent, document everything. Write down the main fonts, styles, and colors that you plan to use. Record what grid size you will use each time you set up the design elements on the slide, and whether or not your images will fade in/out. Show examples of the captions, buttons, highlight boxes, rollover areas, bullets, etc.

While there can always be exceptions in your project, documenting the guidelines will help to keep you on track and save you time, since you won’t need to constantly look back to see what font or style or color you used for a design element. Yes, I know… You think you can remember the design elements that you have used. The fact is, there are a huge amount of design elements to choose from in these applications, and it can be very difficult to remember every little detail. Therefore, write things down. As you make changes to the design, update the documentation. Make the guide available to anyone working on the project.

While these five tips are fairly simple, they are also extremely important. I hope they will help you to save time as you create screencasts in the future.

Look for more specific blog articles on each of the rapid development e-Learning tools coming up in the next few months.

So, back to Captivate 6. IU students, faculty, and staff can download it from IUware free of charge. You can’t beat that! Captivate 6 gives you features like:

• Rapid eLearning content development
• More effective collaboration
• Interactive eLearning experiences
• Rich multimedia to attract learners
• Easy quizzing
• Delivery virtually anywhere
• Scoring, tracking, and reporting

You’re itching to learn all about this cool tool aren’t you? Luckily, IT Training has a Captivate 6: The Basics workshop planned.  It’s an online workshop (imagine that), scheduled for Tuesday, December 4th from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. In the meantime, go ahead and download Captivate 6 and start playing around with it. You can also find Captivate 6 training on lynda.com.

If you’re an educator you may be called upon to create some online learning content, so learn how to do it and impress your boss.  If you’re a student you can surely use Captivate to put together some pretty nifty class projects. There’s something for everyone, so start learning today.

Captivate 6 opening screen

Hyperlinks work in PowerPoint. You can create links to Internet pages, files on your computer, and even slides within your presentation. The latter is what we’ll be doing to make our quiz.

Before you start designing your quiz, you’ll need to have an idea of who your users are and what you want them to get out of their experience with your application. Will they learn something? Will they have fun? Maybe both.

If you’re an instructor, you might consider making this type of quiz creation an assignment for your students.

Once you have some goals in mind, you’ll need some questions and answers. I created a short true or false quiz about geography so I could write this post. These are my quest ions.

True or False

1. Helena is the capital of Montana.
2. The Nile is a river in South America.
3. This flag is the flag of Botswana. (Image of flag appears on slide.)
4. Alaska became a state in 1922.
5. The clock “Big Ben” is located in Toronto.

So there’s a slide for each question, and a  “Correct” and “Incorrect” result slide for each question. That’s 15 slides. There is also a title slide to start the quiz.

There’s a bit of logic you have to work out to make your quiz run successfully. Try making a flow chart of how things should go. Here’s a sample:

This one was simple, but yours can be as complex as you like.

Here’s a run-down of my process.

1. I made a first slide with the name of the quiz and a Click Here to Start Quiz button.
2. The second slide had the first question and a True and False button.
3. If the user clicks True for this question he gets the Correct! Helena is the capital of Montana slide. This slide also has a  Go to question 2 button.
4. If the user clicks False for this question, he gets the Wrong answer! slide. This slide also has a Go to question 2 button.

All the buttons are simply hyperlinks to another slide in the presentation. To add a hyperlink, right-click the object you’re using as the button (text boxes in this case), and select hyperlink.

Right-click the object and select hyperlink.

Selecting a slide to link to.

Then choose the slide you want to link to.

My last Correct and Wrong answer! slides give the user an option to start the quiz again or to  exit. You can use an Action Button to allow the user to exit the slide show with a click.  Action Buttons are at the bottom of the Shape Tools menu. Select Action Button: Custom, draw a button, select the hyperlink radio button, and choose a link option.

Shapes and Actions

Test your quiz to make sure it does what it’s superposed to do and keep tweaking until it does.

If you want to deliver your quiz online, you’ll need to convert it to a interactive Flash video. I suggest using Adobe Captivate.  Just open Captivate and choose From Microsoft PowerPoint>>.

Publish your Captivate file as a .swf with and export to .html.

Captivate publish dialog box

That’s how I do it. You may prefer a different method. To find more ways, do an Internet search on “PowerPoint interactive quiz”.  Happy quiz making!