DE Oracle @ UMUC

Adding Flash Video to an Adobe Captivate Project - Part II

Towanda Jones

Instructional Support Specialist

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: November-December 2007

Category: » Tech-skills-software » Adobe-captivate

Published in a previous edition of DE Oracle, Part I of this tutorial discussed how to import Flash video into Adobe Captivate and saving it to your local computer." In Part II, we will cover how to publish an Adobe Captivate Flash video project to a remote server.

Once you have successfully imported flash video into Adobe Captivate, the final step is to upload the files associated of your Captivate project to a remote server. When you accomplish this you will be able to integrate the interactive project into your online and/or face-to-face classrooms.

This tutorial will cover:

• Step 1: Publishing the Captivate project to a remote sever
• Step 2: Changing the first letter in the skin file to lowercase
• Step 3: Viewing the Captivate project in the web browser
  

What to Do

Step 1: Publish the Captivate Project

Open the Captivate project you created in Part 1 (if you did not do this, you need to complete Part 1 first before proceeding).

Select Publish from the toolbar.

The Publish dialog box will appear. Select the FTP icon located on the left-hand side.

You will need to fill in the following information in order to publish the Captivate files to the server. 

Under the FTP options section fill in:

• Project Title: The name you want for your Captivate Project. (Do not use spaces in your file name. This will cause problems later on).
• Server: polaris.umuc.edu
• Directory: /users/faculty/yourpolarisloginame/www/
  • For the Directory if you have a faculty account, it would be /users/faculty. If you have a staff account it would be /users/staff.
  • Your Polaris login name would be the login name you use for Polaris.
  • You can also add a folder name at the end of the line. For example /users/faculty/yourpolarisloginame/www/projects (This folder will automatically created for you with the publishing of the files.
• User Name: Your Polaris login name
• Password: Your Polaris password
• Port: Leave at default
• File Type: SWF File
• You can check the Save Password if you would like. This will prevent you from retyping it should you need to re-upload this project.
• Click on the Test Setting button to ensure that you can connect to the server. If you are using a server other than Polaris, and are having trouble connecting, you may need to contact your service provider to obtain to correct server information. If you are using Polaris, you need to make sure you typed the above information in correctly. Some things to check are Polaris Login name, Polaris Password and whether you have a faculty or staff account.

Under Output options:

• Check the box next to "Export HTML". This will place your project within a nicely formatted web page. You can easily add the URL of the HTML document to your WebTycho classroom.

On the right hand side, click on the Publish button to publish the files to the server.

The Publish Progress dialog box will open and show you the progress of the files being transferred. The word "Completed" will alert you when all the files have been transferred. If you see anything other than this, you may need to try republishing again. Sometimes server interruptions will prevent files from being transferred.

Step 2: Change First Letter in Skin File to Lowercase

When Captivate saves the Flash player skin file (the skin is what determines how the Flash video player will look), it names the file starting with an upper case letter. There is, however, a technical glitch that prevents the player from loading the video properly in the browser when this particular file name begins with an upper case letter.

In order for your Flash video to play in a web browser you will need to change the first capital letter of the .swf skin file to lowercase.

To change the skin file name published to the server in Step 1, there are a few options to choose from. If you are using Microsoft Windows, a simple and easy way to change the file name would be to use Windows Explorer (see instructions below). If you are not using Microsoft Windows or encounter technical issues, you can use an alternative FTP tool such as WS-FTP or CoreFTP. Tutorials for these two FTP programs are available in the Tech Skills/Software section of the DE Oracle.

Using Windows Explorer to access server files:

1. Right-click on the Start button and select Explorer from the menu.

2. In the address line of Explorer type: ftp://polaris.umuc.edu and select the Go button (or simply hit Enter on keyboard).

3. When the Log On As dialog box opens, type in your Polaris login name and password.

4. When the FTP connection has been established you should see a the www folder. You will need to double-click on the www folder to open it.

5. Once you have opened the www folder, you will see a list of files/folder that you have published. You will need to navigate to the skin file. In this case, the skin file is located in a folder called captivate-proj.

6. Right-click on the skin file name, choose Rename from the menu and change the first letter to a lower case letter. (For example: ClearnSkin_1.swf would be changed to clearSkin_1.swf). You will know which file to change by finding the file with the word SKIN in the name.

Step 3: Viewing the Captivate Project in the Web Browser

It is important to always test your project to ensure the video is functioning properly in the browser.

Test your project by opening the browser of choice and typing the URL of the project into the URL box.

Troubleshooting Tips

1. If you cannot connect to Polaris using Windows Explorer, you may need to change the Internet Options settings in Internet Explorer browser to Enable FTP folder view (outside of Internet Explorer).
   
   
   
   
   
2. If the player isn't visible on the webpage, please go back and check that the first letter in the skin file was indeed changed to lower case.
3. If you encounter a 404 error when you type the URL of the HTML document, this is an indication that the URL is incorrect. A good rule to remember when trying to figure out the URL of any documents that are stored on Polaris:
   • The URL will always begin with http://polaris.umuc.edu/~yourloginname
   • If you have stored files in a folder or a subfolder of a folder, you add the names of these folders after the login name: http://polaris.umuc.edu/~yourloginname/foldername.
   • The last item you will add to the URL will be the file name: http://polaris.umuc.edu/~yourloginname/foldername/filename.htm