November 22, 2018
Ken Burns Effect on video in Captivate
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November 22, 2018
Ken Burns Effect on video in Captivate
 I am familiar with Articulate Storyline 3, PowerPoint (including iSpring Suite 9) and Captivate 7, although I am currently trailing CP2019, which we intend to move to imminently. I have also successfully integrated auto certificate generation to any design, with user name, passmark, percentage etc, in Storyline and iSpring Quiz and hope to do the same with CP2019 shortly. I'm also an ex-broadcast video editor with over 15 years experience in video and audio post production and proficient in the use of Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Audition as well as Encore for DVD authoring
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Is it possible to create a Ken Burns type effect on a video in Captivate. Here’s what I’m trying to achieve. I am trying to create a software simulation where I can zoom into a section of the screen, pan to another section of the screen, zoom in a little further before finally zooming out. I can’t find a way of doing this as every time you add a pan & zoom effect in Captivate, it resets the screen back to full size before enacting the effect.

Also I want to stay zoomed in to a section across several slides whilst the learner interacts with objects and, depending on their button interaction, would branch them off to a different slide, but still with the same background (although the video that plays would be different, e.g. a different drop down menu item).

Again this is not apparently possible as the next slide would reset to full screen before enacting any zoom. Is this possible? I know it can be done on another e-Learning package or possibly by taking the video into Premiere, but then I would have other issues to contend with.

8 Comments
2018-12-03 17:08:28
2018-12-03 17:08:28

OK, understanding that C2019 has a bug in the software, as detailed below, is part of the issue, but it still doesn’t resolve my initial enquiry.

Since I am trying to create a software simulation for the purposes of training, I require user interaction. I also need to be able to zoom into a section of the screen, pan to another section of the screen, zoom in a little further before finally zooming out, all this across multiple slides. Despite experimenting with a number of different features within C2019, I still cannot find a way of doing this.

I can’t use a .cpvc project as there is no user interaction that can be added to the timeline. Only passive objects can be added.

I tried importing the CPVC slide into a .cptx project using the Insert>CPVC Slide… function, but this doesn’t work as i) it puts the video on a single slide and ii) the project itself will be 1920×1080, to accommodate the monitors that are being used, but the screen capture of the software simulation will be smaller (currently 1110×534) which I intended to enlarge on the stage to just over 1.7x to give the working software area as 1920×923, giving a letterbox effect on the stage and therefore allowing for additional branding to be added to the top/bottom of the stage which is not part of the originally recorded software emulation; However, once the video is inserted as a .cpvc slide into the .cptx project, the image on screen is centred top and bottom at its original image resolution and cannot be resized  1.7x to fill out the screen.

I have exported the .cpvc project as an MP4 after applying the required zoom effects and imported that into a project across multiple slides using Media>Video>Slide Video>From your Computer and selecting ‘Distribute video across slides’, but this defaults the slide length to whatever the project default slide length is (not unexpected) and again the video is centred in the middle of the screen and set with its size back to 1110×534. This is probably the closest so far except i) the timing of every slide needs to be reset to the duration of the video interact, which can range from .1 sec to approx 6 secs, depending on what is going on, ii) every video on the slides has to be resized to 1920×923 and iii) most importantly, there is no interaction on these slides, so all the interaction has to be built manually…. no small undertaking!!!.

I have also tried the Ojects>Zoom Area, on a non-zoomed version of the video, so that I can first capture the interactions, then using the Zoom Area capability try and achieve the desired result. However, i) the image on the stage always shows the first frame of the recorded video, regardless of what frame it is on, so it is impossible to add interactions as you can’t tell where to put them (scrolling the Timeline also always shows the very first frame and the video is only active when the play button on the Timeline is pressed) and ii) the zoom function cannot be carried across multiple frames, so if you are zoomed in on the last frame of a slide, you can’t set the duration of the zoom on the next slide to be 0.0 secs, it always defaults to 0.1sec (note this is not the same as the bug in the video editing pan & zoom section of a .cpvc project in C2019 reported in this post).

Is there a way to record all the screen interactions that would occur if I used a simulation project, but where I could zoom in and out like you can with the video editing aspect of a .cpvc project???

This should be a simple function to implement, but it does not appear to be a feature of Captivate.

 

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DSC_Chris
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2018-12-03 17:47:19
2018-12-03 17:47:19
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DSC_Chris
's comment

You must have misunderstood at least part of my recommentations. I am not inserting an existing CPVC as a CPVC-slide but stop the software simulation recording when I need a video demo slide and record that slide with the Slides button, Video Demo. Of course all slides need to have the same resolution and that will be the case when you do the recording that way. It is a tedious process. On the video demo slides you will not be able to have direct interactivity, except the ones you can add using the interactive video feature which are limited.

There is bug with the zoom out speed at this moment in the Video Demo (logged that bug). If – as you tell – it was such a ‘simple function’ why hasn’t all the eLearning tools that functionality? Did you ever find a tool which makes it so easy to have interactivity in a software simulation as Captivate? Please, tell me ASAP which tool can do that! I am looking for it since 15 years. You will have either a lot of enhancements to a video (like with Camtasia) and no interactivity, or a very time consuming process with snapshots where you have to add everything manually and will never see real ‘video’ features.

 

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2018-12-03 10:11:03
2018-12-03 10:11:03

Further update: If you create a recording in C2017 then open it is 2019, it will work perfectly, even adding in extra trim points and making them 0-sec duration, they can still be moved right up to the cut point. So the issue appears to be only with recordings created and edited in C2019, not with the editing function themselves if used with recordings from earlier versions.

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2018-12-03 09:52:30
2018-12-03 09:52:30

Update: Decided to try to see if the same issue existed in C2017. It does not and works exactly as I expected it to. Conclusion….it is a bug in 2019!!!! Be warned (applies to 64 bit Ver 11.0.1.266)

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2018-11-30 15:23:57
2018-11-30 15:23:57

Hi Lieve

I have been following a lot of your posts with great interest and have learned much….thanks.

I’m relatively new to Captivate and assumed, by the way things are titles within Captivate that Video Demo is just to show the users what they should be doing whilst software simulation actually then takes them through the process of learning by doing or by assessment, although I am coming to the conclusion that I can probably just record a screen demo then add any interactions I wish post the recording. I have also watched and tried to emulate the video posted by Paul Wilson https://youtu.be/ojKCzvnv3Ug but have been unable to replicate what he achieved as C2019 doesn’t let you drag the Pan & Zoom point back to any cut you may have made using the trim function, instead, when you release the mouse, the marker always jumps 1 frame forward, thereby causing an abrupt zoom out for one frame and then back in again (the duration of the Pan & zoom having been set to 0 seconds). I have included a video of the issue in case you are interested. 

I would welcome any suggestions as to why I can’t get this to work, even though I followed Paul’s video to the letter.

Regards

DCS-Chris

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DSC_Chris
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2018-11-30 16:58:07
2018-11-30 16:58:07
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DSC_Chris
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I understood you only wanted a demo. Of course, if you need the (much better) training or assessment simulation, you have to use the simulation tool.  Pan and zoom during the capture is to me pretty useless, it never  leads to a good result.  I wonder if such an effect would really lead to a better result. Why not combine the simulation with in between Video Slides which do what you want?  I do that now all the time to replace the FMR slides, but at the same time you could take advantage of the Video Demo editor which allows nice pan/zoom effect. Beware: there is a bug in CP2019, zooming out smoothly is not possible. Hope they fix that soon.

Wilson doesn’t use Captivate but Video XPress AFAIK.

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2018-11-23 09:38:42
2018-11-23 09:38:42

Why do you use a software simulation instead of a Video Demo? Video Demo has a lot more functionality for pan and zoom. Unless you talk about a software training or assessment?

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Lieve Weymeis
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2018-11-30 15:25:21
2018-11-30 15:25:21
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Lieve Weymeis
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Sorry Lieve, the order of this post is now somewhat confused. Please see my reply above.

 

DCS-Chris

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