| Creating Captivate movies involves much more than simply doing a screen capture and adding stuff here and there. Whether it is demonstrating a software technique, a product demonstration, quiz, or tutorial, the key to success is that old business adage: Plan your work, work your plan.Although Captivate is an extremely powerful software tool with a myriad of applications, never forget there will be a human watching the presentation. In this case, the message that the movie conveys is far more important than the technology. Though you can add audio, animation, and other interactive media to your movie, always keep in mind that these features should add to the viewer's experience. The least successful presentations are those where the developer says, "Aren't I clever?" This chapter focuses on the movie creation process. This process starts with planningin many respects, the most time-consuming aspect of creating a Captivate movie. You'll learn how to record a movie, manage movies you have created, and create and use a Captivate template.Creating a movie in Captivate is both uncomplicated and fast. Still, there is a workflow that follows these general steps: 1. | Plan your movie using storyboards, scripts, and any other organizational material such as written notes or project planning software.
Storyboards are especially useful because they can show the frame-by-frame progression of a movie, including audio, animations, mouse movements, and so on that will appear in the frame. Story boards range from hand drawings on paper to PowerPoint presentations, for example, that lay out the content in the slide and its purpose.
| 2. | Determine the playback media.
Captivate movies can be played back from CDs, from hard drives, and through the Web. In each case, the final playback media will have a major role in determining the assets and recording of the movie.
| 3. | Gather your assets.
You can add images, sounds, animations, and even other Captivate movies to your movie. Make sure these assets are readily available to you.
| 4. | Open Captivate, set the recording options, and, if needed, set the movie preferences.
| 5. | Record your movie.
The flexibility of Captivate enables you to record a movie from scratch, utilize slides and animations from previously recorded movies, and even reorder the slides you have just recorded.
| 6. | Add the captions, images, sounds, and other assets called for in the storyboard.
| 7. | Generate and preview the movie.
| 8. | Save the movie as a Flash SWF file and export it in the format best suited to the media being used for playback.
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