Captivate 4 is awesome. It still has its warts, but considering all the new functionality I’m just amazed at this product and highly recommend it. I’ve now decided that it is going to be my primary elearning development tool. Of course I’ll still use Flash a lot for actual content, I think the packaging/TOC/aggregator features are worthwhile (though they have some serious shortcomings too) and just make the process so much simpler when working with Adobe Connect (or any other LMS I suppose).

Anyways…I plan on posting my opinions on a lot of the new features as I have time. First up: the new text-to-speech feature.

This feature is based on a 3rd-party product and it’s quite easy to use. You simply type in your slide notes (I *believe* that this new ‘text/notes’ area is new to Captivate 4 but I’m not sure) and then click a little button/checkmark next to the text, under the ‘Text to Speech’ column. Really simple. View a screenshot to see:

Captivate 4 Text-to-Speech Feature

It then converts your text to an audio file and adds it to the slide’s timeline, the same as if you recorded your voice into a microphone. No different, except much easier and better sound quality in terms of no noise, good volume level, etc.

There are two voices to choose from: one male voice, “Paul”, and one female, “Kate”.

So….the million-dollar question: do the voices sound like robots?

The male voice does. The female voice, while I haven’t used it much yet, sounds much better. But don’t take my word for it. Listen for yourself:

As you can hear, this guy doesn’t really work too well.

But “Kate” sounds much better:

So, after I’ve bashed “Paul” to smithereens, you probably think I don’t think much of this feature. But in fact I do like it. During development, I usually have to take the time to do a rough, quick voiceover recording for all my slides so I can confirm that my design is ‘flowing’ and my voiceover script is good. I can only tell if I hear it, in synch with the onscreen visuals. So this is a great time-saver in that regard. Hopefully it will prove more useful in future projects.

What do you think? Will you be using this feature? Am I being too picky?

As for the Elearning Suite. I have not played with it other than a prerelease version where I took a quick peek and nothing made sense at the time, but that was early in the process. I am very interested in seeing the new learning interactions included in Flash CS4. I just upgraded the the CS4 Web Developer Edition at work so I’m kind of bummed at the timing of this release, as by now most serious elearning designers/developers have moved to CS4 and certainly won’t be able to expense another upgrade this soon. I guess instead of CS5 we’ll go with the Elearning Suite : )

The trial downloads are available on Adobe’s site. Have at em and let me know what you think of these new tools. I’m very interested in hearing how people leverage these new tools!

Based on the features included in Captivate 4, I am amazed at what Adobe is able to do in one release cycle. It seems like just yesterday Captivate 3 was released (along with the groans that came with that release).

While I’m sure there will be plenty of kinks/bugs to work out in Captivate 4 due to the sheer number of major changes/enhancements, it is definitely one step closer to being a real primary elearning development solution. Do I think it is the only tool that a professional elearning designer/developer should know how to use? No. In my opinion you still need to know flash/actionscript. But Captivate 4 is a HUGE upgrade over Captivate 3. It seems to me that, within a few more major releases, they could actually approach the capabilities of AuthorWare with this thing **(see below for my side-comments on AuthorWare).

And, both fortunately and unfortunately for me, I will lose a lot of my freelancing work/revenue once Captivate 4 is out in the wild.

Why? Becuase 90% of my Captivate-related freelance work (which was roughly 20% of my total freelance work) was focused on things like working with the variables, and also with creating custom UI wrappers/Menu systems to load in those bloated Captivate swf files. People would buy a license, slap together one long recording, publish, and then couldn’t figure out why their 300mb Captivate swf would crash and/or take a year to load. And then when they’d get wise and realize they needed to break up the long movie into smaller chunked swf’s, they’d learn that there was no way outside of Flash to create a usable UI that could load in all of these swf’s (unless you wanted pop-up windows galore). Allegedly Captivate 4 will have an aggregator function that finally allows people to create content in chunks and load them when needed (and don’t even comment on that garbage ‘MenuBuilder’ crap they’ve had). I also did a lot of work keeping data persistent across slides/CP swfs. CP4 has this capability built-in now.

But I’m kind of happy they added these features. I was up-to-my-ears with freelance work and with a new promotion at my day job I don’t need the extra work anymore. At least not boring Captivate work : )

Another feature that Camtasia has had forever (though they somehow managed to botch it up in the latest release!) and now CP4 will have is auto-panning for the recording. We can finally record large screens with and keep the clarity. If you’re not sure what auto-panning is want an idea of what auto-panning can do,  just check out Lee Brimelow’s awesome Flash tutorials over at gotoandlearn.com. He’s been using Camtasia for years to record those (and he still recommends Camtasia for screen recordings, even though he’s an Adobe employee…). I was at a conference a couple of years ago and an Adobe CP developer sat next to me and asked me what I’d like to see included in Captivate and I told him auto-panning. He was kind enough to send me an email after the conference saying that they looked into it but the resulting filesize would be too large so they scrapped the idea. I guess they revisited it.

Regardless of my cynical posts on Captivate over the years and today…honestly – my hats off to the Adobe Captivate developers on this release.

What do you think about these features? What else still sucks about the product?

** Re: AuthorWare: I got into the elearning development field about 6 years ago. At the time, it seemed that everyone knew, except for the die-hard Authorware fanboys, that Authorware was going to be ditched by Adobe (then Macromedia) soon. It took a few years longer than anticipated, but it happened. Back when I started I was fortunate enough to be told some good advice from some good elearning developers, mainly this: learn actionscript right away. Focus on flash. Forget about Authorware. I heeded their advice. I’m a  member of the Authorware ‘AWARE’ listserv (or whatever they call listservs nowadays). It’s still active and not at all focused on Authorware, which is good. Often though people still post questions asking for help/workaround for their new development using Authorware, which makes me cringe today more than it did 4 years ago : ) But, my be-labored point is – Authorware did rock. I never used it, but based on the features and capabilities of it, and the type of things that the folks on the AWARE list were/are able to do with it, I don’t see why Adobe ditched it and now are packing more advanced features into Captivate. Would have been better had they just kept it, updated it, and most impotantly made it *usable* by ditching the shitwave (er, I mean shockwave) plugin that made it unusable then and unusable now, and added an Authorware to SWF option. I know there are technical limitations there that would need to be contended with (Authorware had activeX capabilities), but they could have gotten real close. It just seems now that it will take another 4 or 5 releases but then we might get an Authorware equivalent in Captivate…

After implementing the fullscreen feature, I’m thrilled. I’m convinced that every elearning app like this should include it as a feature. And I wondered why I hadn’t seen it used before…so I thought, “Perhaps SCORM/AICC calls can’t be made when it is in fullscreen mode?” While I haven’t taken the time to actually test that theory, I did put together a quick html/swf to test whether the ExternalInterface class is usable when the swf is in fullscreen mode. And it works! Here is the example (warning – it opens in a new window). To test for yourself, first put it in fullscreen by clicking the button (it’s a toggle). Then, click the ‘Call ExternalInterface’ button to call a simple function in the html page named ’showAlert’, which shows an alert box.

So, here’s the code:

In Flash:

/*************************
* External Interface – work in fullscreen mode? YES!
*************************/
function checkInterface(e:MouseEvent):void
{
if (ExternalInterface.available)
{
status_txt.text=”ExternalInterface available!”;
ExternalInterface.call(”showAlert”, “It works!”);
}
else
{
status_txt.text=”ExternalInterface Unavailable!”;
}
}
myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, checkInterface);

// fullscreen
function goFullScreen():void
{
if (stage.displayState==StageDisplayState.NORMAL)
{
stage.displayState=StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN;
}
else
{
stage.displayState=StageDisplayState.NORMAL;
}
}
fullscreenBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, _handleClick);

function _handleClick(event:MouseEvent):void
{
goFullScreen();
}

——————————–

Function I added to the html page published from Flash (with ‘allowFullscreen’ param set to true):

function showAlert(text)
{
alert(text);
}

So, theoretically, going fullscreen shouldn’t cause any issues with communications with an LMS. As you noticed if you tried the example, calling the showAlert function in the html page forces the swf out of fullscreen mode. I’m assuming (too many assumptions here?) that this won’t happen for behind-the-scenes calls.

Have you tried this? What has your experience with using fullscreen flash for your elearning?

http://elearninglive.com/wordpress/tutorials/

Hopefully, they will be of some use to others. I, admittedly, need some way of pushing myself towards learning more about ActionScript 3 and I figured this would be a great way to do it. So, somewhat selfishly, the tutorials are really about my own learning : ) That said, I would think that some folks new to Flash/ActionScript would get some value out them. I’m specifically targeting someone like myself about 5 years back – having jumped into the elearning development role with absolutely zero development experience, with the exception of a couple of intro to programming courses in C which were horrible.

The first tutorial offered is titled, “Creating a Drag and Drop Learning Interaction Using ActionScript 3.0″. In actuality, the focus isn’t on AS3 in terms of the OOP aspect, as this tutorial’s code resides in a single frame on the timeline.

I do plan on following up this simple drag and drop tutorial with a dynamic, XML-based version as that is always a better way to go. Before that, I expect to add a tutorial on some of the real basics – how to create a simple button that controls the timeline, for example. But *all* with an elearning focus, with practical examples. To my knowledge there is nothing of its kind out there presently (not for free!) that has the beginning instructional/elearning developer in mind.

My inspiration for this endeavor is Lee Brimelow’s excellent (and that’s an understatement) tutorials at gotoandlearn.com. Lee started his tutorials a number of years ago before he was hired by Adobe and they have always been top-notch. The first tutorial’s audio is horrible (this logitech headset’s mic is really ‘creaky’), and I should have spent more time polishing it, but what the heck.

PLEASE provide feedback on the tutorials. What you liked, what you didn’t, whether they were valuable to you. Right now I need to redo the way I’m delivering this/these videos as the current cheesy-looking html page that is serving them (adsense and all…I could use the dough) is awkward. After I get a decent number of these videos online I’ll re-think the approach to make it look/work better.

Anyways…enjoy! I hope people learn from these things. I know I will. All my tutorials will come with downloadable source. No licensing – they are free to use in any way you wish. Hopefully someone will come along and improve on them and send me the improvements so that I can post and we all gain from the experience of sharing.

This is part three of the testing, where I’ll focus on the encoding speed setting and its effect on filesize and audio quality, in reference to voiceover audio.

Published SWF Files

Filesize Comparison

Comparison Details

While I’m no scientist, I think I adhered to a logical way of approaching this. I of course used the same machine to publish each clip, I used the same exact .cp file for each file (I simply went into the Publish window’s Audio settings and decreased the encoding bitrate, then double-clicked on the single text caption in the movie (residing on the first slide (of two) and set to display throughout project), and then published.

For the audio file, I used the same audio clip that I got from a public domain audio book website. I simply downloaded the full clip, in .ogg format, from the page above and then opened in Audacity to export the first 8 to 10 seconds of it. I exported to .wav format. I of course used the same exact audio file for each published output (again – I used the same exact .cp file repeatedly for each test).

Here are the results for you to compare with your ears:

And, the file sizes:

Captivate Audio Settings File Size Comparison

No, the 16 and 24 bit version filesizes being higher than the higher-quality ones is not a typo. At first I was so surprised that I went and re-checked and re-published. So basically from what I can see there is no point in ever going below 32kbps as you’re gaining filesize and losing quality.

Where I’ll Go From Here

Obviously encoding bitrate is just one of the 3 parameters that can be configured, with the other two being encoding frequency and encoding speed. I will be following this post with some new tests that compare those settings. Eventually, I hope to compile a definitive table and a final recommendation for exactly what settings in Captivate deliver the absolute best ‘value’ in terms of filesize-to-quality ratio. Keep in mind that I am concerned strictly with voiceover audio. I would assume that is what anyone else would care about when it comes to Captivate as well.

Please leave a comment if you have suggestions, or know of an unbiased, definitive comparison that perhaps I missed in my search, or if you have any tips for how I should approach the next batch of tests.

UPDATE: I’ve continued on with the testing. Here is a link to Part Two.

With the proliferation of Learning Management Systems at all price points (from what I’ve seen Moodle is the best and it’s free!) and with the need to track progress (ie, bookmarking, testing, etc) you’ll certainly want to expand on this for the tracking and such. But for new elearning developers this may be a good jumping off point.

As always, feel free to email me with any questions or leave a comment. Particularly if you like it and get use out of it : )

Simple Reusable XML/Flash-based Course Architecture Example

UPDATE: I’ve had some folks email me over the past few months asking me how to get started learning how to leverage XML for their courses. Well, in order to do it you have to get a decent understanding of Flash ActionScript. ActionScript is the programming language of Flash. A new version of ActionScript, version 3.0, was debuted with flash player 9 and it is wonderful and extremely powerful. And in some cases, way better and to some easier (particularly for traversing XML). In my opinion (for what it’s worth…not much), ActionScript 3.0 is *way* more difficult for a beginner to just pick up and learn. Why? Well, I learned to program with ActionScript 2 (with only minimal use of classes), so mostly procedural programming. In anticipation of the then forthcoming ActionScript 3, I signed up and completed 2 Java courses at my local college. ActionScript 3.0 is as close to Java as you can get without it actually being Java. Yes, there are a lot of syntax differences (though not as many as you might think), and the libraries/api is completely different. But if you know Java you can pick up AS3 very quickly. And undoubtedly Adobe targetted that crowd as a quick browse of Java Developers Journal will yield a ton of Adobe Flex articles. Anyways…if you’re a beginner and want to learn ActionScript 3.0 the right way, I *highly* recommend this book:

Learning ActionScript 3.0: A Beginner’s Guide

The author of that book did an awesome job and in my opinion it is by far the best for new programmers, and even those with extensive AS1/2 experience but not a lot of OOP experience.

A couple of years ago I developed a storyboard template in Microsoft Word that has since been used by a lot of folks. It has even been used (with my permission) as the starting point for a commercial storyboard product that does XML export and much much much more.

After speaking with a number of folks who have been looking for a starting point for their elearning designs and who have expressed interest in an easy-to-use tool that is based on Microsoft Word so that it can be used by teams, I’ve decided to make my original version available free for anyone who might find it useful.

I think the tool is especially useful for those using “Rapid Elearning” tools. As you’ll see in the screenshot below, there is an added dropdown menu in which a bunch of pre-formatted objects can be inserted into the document quickly and easily. If you are comfortable with Word’s advanced features (adding/editing menus, macros, etc.) then feel free to add and/or edit this template. My only requirement is that you send me a copy so that I may share it with others here on my site. Too many folks in the elearning field are just too protective of their “intellectual property”. C’mon folks, this is a Word template that took me maybe a day to develop. So hopefully this is some inspiration for others to share their work, too.

Here are screenshots of the available menu items. Note I have one specifically for Captivate objects. If enough folks ask for it I’d be happy to update this to add the new features from Captivate 2.0 to this template, or any other tool (Articulate, Raptivity, etc.).

Enjoy, and please leave comments or shoot me an email with any questions.

To use this template just click the link below to download and do a Save As… to your PC. Note: if you just do an Open With Microsoft Word directly from the server it may not attach the template portion properly and you won’t get the eStroyboard menu showing in the upper-right of the menu bar. Email me if you have problems with it.  I asked someone to open this template using Word 2007 and it appears to work with Word 2007, as the eStoryboard shows up under the “Add-Ins” menu in that version of Word. So it looks like it is Word 2007 compatible in addition to 2000/XP. Enjoy!

Download eStoryboard Template v0.9