Adobe Captivate was built with low bandwidth in mind. A typical project with sound (some narration) and a modest screen size of 512 x 384 streams at approximately 2–3 kilobytes per second. Your viewers can play this project using a 56 Kbps (or slower) dial-up modem without waiting more than a few seconds for the project to start. Additionally, there are no pauses during playback.
A project that streams well might have the following characteristics:
Note: File size depends on several factors. Larger files contain elements such as photos, images, sound tracks, large screen sizes, rapid screen transitions, and higher quality video and audio settings.
•One important factor is the kilobytes per second ratio. Check the bandwidth analysis to find this factor.[View demo] Don't despair if your project is large; it is possible for a large project to stream well over the Internet. For example, a 400 KB file might seem large, but if it plays for 5 minutes, it streams easily over a 28.8 Kbps modem. The first slide in a project always has a longer kilobytes per second ratio, because it is the first slide to load and additional project information must load with it.
•Consider your color settings and the images included in your project. Two quick tips for reducing file size are to avoid color gradients and to avoid photo images.
•If you are not going to upload your SWF files to Adobe® Connect™ Enterprise, you can turn off the Include Adobe Connect Metadata option in the project preferences. This option is on by default, and it adds data to your project that allows for better integration with Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional. If you do not use Acrobat Connect Professional, turn this option off to reduce project size.
I am not a fan of reduced resolution JPG files. They seem to be too grainy and pictures will get blothcy. Instead, set the First slide to NORMAL and then click the option on the slide editing scren (lower left) to replicate the changes to ALL other slides. This should set all to Normal and it will make the SWF smaller.
Kill off live motion video. Captivate records real motion as a movie if you want it to and that causes some bloat.
Use the same backround slides over and over. Just select one of the thumbnails that has a repeat background and select COPY BACKGROUND and then go to the next slide that needs it and select PASTE BACKGROUND. You can then purge the unused (old) slides from the Asset manager on the right side (select all unused and then select delete).
Sound seems to be the killer. for size. It seems that Captivate was optimistic and they repord all sound as WAV files. I'm not cutting CD quality here so we can cut-down on the sound quality to FM or less. I hav very good microphones and sound bariers, but I record at 16 bits and in Captivate I might use a sample rate of 0 or 1. You have to see where the quality actually drops off. Try recording the same passage at several settings and then compare the "best quality" to the "worst." Do this with headphones and home stereo speakers so that you can really give it a fair trial.
I have not tested and I have not seen a definitive post here, but maybe you can provide it... You could save your recording to MP3 at a low bitrate and see what that does in Captivate. Some people think that Captivate converts the MP3 to WAV for internal storage, but I don't think so. You can use an external recorder like Audacity (free GPL license and quite excellent). For MP3 with Audacity you need to download the LAME plugin. I even imported a "tube-amp" library to make my voice a bit warmer with Audacity, very cool. But I have not done any size comparisons of recording a short package in Captivate and saving that project and then doing the same project with an imported MP3 file? Would be interestig to see the results.
I record most of my files at 800 X 600 at this time, but here again it depends. If I am doing a PowerPoint presentation, then the slides have a lot of the same colors and the JPG conversion is efficient and 1024 X 768 is better. If I am recording software simulations or demos, then the slides are all different and the compression is all over the place so it makes bigger images and reducing the size to 800X 600 is better. I was using ONE background image and then adding the text in Captivate to make the files super small, but that has not worked well for larger presentations that require tons of editing and handouts. I like my PowerPoint handouts at 2 per page and the formatting is far better than Captivate for my time constraints.
In review:
Slides at Normal
No full motion recording
For sound, try MP3 at FM or Sub FM quality
Repeat backgrounds if possible
Save as a new name and then import into a blank presentation and save twice
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Last updated: 10 February 2010
© 2010 David J. Hark