Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is one of the leading ‘Screen casting’ software and is useful for capture
screen/software simulations, quizzes, presentations, etc. This Adobe program offers tools for creating,
tracking and managing projects all in the same software package. Captivate is user-friendly and has
intuitive controls. This gives a complete solution to creators of all kinds and at all levels of expertise.
Captivates has an ability to create interactive training simulations, demonstrations and assessments.
As you record, Captivate automatically creates success, failure and hint captions; click boxes
(hotspots) and text entry fields to make learning as interactive as possible for the user.

It interacts nicely with other programs likes PowerPoint with the extensions .ppt, .pptx, .ppx and .ppsx.
Existing PowerPoint presentations can be easily imported to Captivate for further augmentation whilst
still maintaining all the slide transitions and animations. The ‘Edit in PowerPoint’ tool allows you swiftly
jump back and forth between the two programs. When Adobe Captivate project is linked to
PowerPoint, Adobe Captivate creates a reference to the source presentation. The slides can be easily
edited within Adobe Captivate or in PowerPoint.

Following steps will help to link existing PowerPoint presentation with Adobe Captivate and edit the
new project.

Create a new Adobe Captivate project from an existing PowerPoint presentation:

 Open Adobe Captivate
 Click ‘From MS PowerPoint’ on the Start page (You can also click on File > New Project > From
MS PowerPoint)
 Browse and select the PowerPoint presentation and click ‘Open’
 Give a title to the Adobe Captivate project. It is easy to change the size of the new project
 All slides are selected for import b default. To omit a slide, deselect its check box
 Select the ‘Linked box’ to maintain a link between the two programs
 Click ‘OK’. A progress bar will appear that shows the conversion of PowerPoint presentation
 The slides will be added in Adobe Captivate and will have a Storyboard view
 Save a name the Adobe Captivate project

Linking PowerPoint slides from within Adobe Captivate

 Open the Adobe Captivate project and change to Edit view.
 Select the slide you want to edit, and click the Edit PPT button. Adobe Captivate opens the
PowerPoint file within Adobe Captivate so you can edit slides and maintain the link. You can edit
the selected slide or the entire presentation.
 Click Edit Slide The selected slide or presentation opens in Adobe Captivate.
 You have access to the entire set of PowerPoint commands and features for editing the slide.
 Edit the slide as needed and click Save PPT to save your changes in Adobe Captivate.
 Click Cancel Edit if you do not wish to save the changes you made. The changes are saved in
both the Adobe Captivate project and the source PowerPoint document. You return to Adobe
Captivate Edit view.
 Save the Adobe Captivate project.

Edit linked PowerPoint presentation from within PowerPoint:

 Start Microsoft PowerPoint.
 Open the original PowerPoint document to which the Captivate project is linked.
 Edit the slides, save the changes, and exit PowerPoint.
 Open Adobe Captivate project and change to Edit view. Update the Adobe Captivate project file to
synchronize the files and see the changes.
 Click Window and click Library to display the Library panel
 In the Library panel, right-click the linked PowerPoint presentation, and click Update. The Update
Library Items dialog box will appear.
 Select the presentation or slides to update and click Update.
 Click OK to close the message. The changes that were made in the original PowerPoint
document are updated in the Adobe Captivate project.
 Save the Adobe Captivate project.
Inserting PowerPoint slides into existing Adobe Captivate project:
 Open the Adobe Captivate project you want to edit.
 Click Insert, click Other Slide(s), and click PowerPoint Slide. The Open dialog box appears.
 Browse and select the PowerPoint presentation that contains the slides, and then click Open. The
PowerPoint Slide Options dialog box appears.
 You can import the slides directly after any other slide in the project or at the end of the Adobe
Captivate project.
 Select a location to insert the slides, and click OK. The Convert PowerPoint Presentations dialog
box appears. You can import individual slides or every slide in the presentation.
 To insert individual slides, click Clear All, and then select the slides that you want to import.
 You can either link or embed the imported slides. To link the slides, leave the Linked check box
selected. To embed them, deselect the Linked check box.
 Click OK to import the selected slides.

You can publish your Adobe Captivate project in several ways:

 As a Flash (SWF) file, including placing the SWF in a PDF document
 As an EXE file
 In print format (Microsoft Word file)
 To a Connect Pro server
 As an e-mail attachment (SWF)
 To the web by using FTP
 To a shared folder for review
 Adobe Captivate is one of the leading ‘Screen casting’ software and is useful for capture
screen/software simulations, quizzes, presentations, etc. When Captivate first appeared, as
RoboDemo, it was mainly a software simulation capture tool. As such, it proved easy to use
and very effective. But now Captivate is considered as a software simulation tool and it
continues to do this very well, with new features and improvements added over the years.
This Adobe program offers tools for creating, tracking and managing projects all in the same
software package. Captivate is user-friendly and has intuitive controls. This gives a complete
solution to creators of all kinds and at all levels of expertise.

Uses and features of Adobe Captivate:

 Captivates has an ability to create interactive training simulations, demonstrations and
assessments. As you record, Captivate automatically creates success, failure and hint captions;
click boxes (hotspots) and text entry fields to make learning as interactive as possible for the user.
 By using Captivate, you can build up an interactive quiz with a wide range of question types (8 in
all) that cover everything from multiple choices to sequencing and even a rating scale for creating
student evaluations. At the end, a results/summary slide is created by default. This results slide
automatically captures user’s results. Auto generated buttons let the user progress through the
quiz optionally and provides feedback as they go.
 Captivate provides an audio recording and editing utility. The audio recording and editing tool also
allows for microphone calibration (both manually and automatic), as well as normalization (setting
an even volume) for audio on all slides. It also automatically compresses the audio recorded for a
presentation and makes it smaller and portable.
 It interacts nicely with other programs likes PowerPoint 03 and 07. Existing PowerPoint
presentations can be easily imported to Captivate for further augmentation whilst still maintaining
all the slide transitions and animations. The ‘Edit in PowerPoint’ tool allows you swiftly jump back
and forth between the two programs.
 Captivate depends on "objects" to create presentation slides. These objects can be text, picture,
audio, video, etc. They are placed on a timeline, so you can manually adjust when they fade in or
out of the slide. Everything Captivate captures and creates is fully editable including mouse paths
and narration.
 It is easy and flexible to publish your learning modules. Everything you create can be uploaded to
a Learning (Course) Management System (LMS), saved as a SWF file (for the internet or
Intranet), packaged to a CD, emailed, saved as a HTML page or PDF.
 Captivate generates content that is compatible with Adobe Flash without requiring the user to
have any prior knowledge of Flash, and publishes the courses as .swf or .avi files that can be
uploaded to sites with video hosting.