Creating an Image Movie


There will be occasions where images are far more effective than an interactive screen capture. A typical scenario for this is when a client wishes to include a series of product shots for the user to view or a series of images used for eLearning purposes that include click boxes, captions, and text input. The solution here is an Image movie.

Though Macromedia is positioning this feature as a form of slide show, seeing an Image movie in this rather myopic way would be a mistake. The images in an Image movie are embedded into the background of each slide. This means they can't be moved around on the slide or otherwise manipulated. If you need this flexibility, plan to import each image manually into a separate slide.

Still, the ability to quickly create a movie from a series of images and then adding the interactive elements or eLearning features is well worth exploring.

To create an Image movie

1.

Open Captivate and select "Record or create a new movie" on the Start screen.

The New movie options dialog box opens (Figure 2.40).

Figure 2.40. Creating an Image movie.


2.

Select Image movie from the "Create other movie type" section of the dialog box.

3.

Click OK.

The Image movie dialog box opens (Figure 2.41).

Figure 2.41. The Image movie dialog box enables you to set a custom size or choose from a number of preset sizes.


4.

If you are creating a movie requiring a custom screen dimension, select "User defined (custom)."

5.

Enter the screen dimensions into the text input area, or use the up and down arrows beside the Width and Height input boxes to increase or decrease the screen dimensions in one-pixel increments.

6.

When you're finished, click OK.

7.

Select Preset Size and select a slide size from the list in the pop-down menu (Figure 2.42).

Figure 2.42. The Image movie presets are quite varied.


8.

Click OK. The Storyboard View panel and the Open dialog box will both open.

9.

Navigate, in the "Open" dialog box to the folder containing the images to be used in the Image movie.

10.

Hold down the Shift key, select the images to be used in the Image movie, and click OK.

11.

If some of the selected images are too large for the screen, the Import Image dialog box may open (Figure 2.43), asking how you want to deal with this situation. In this case, determine whether images will be cropped or scaled, and click the appropriate button. If there are a number of images that need to be cropped or scaled, select "Apply to all images" and then make your choice.

Figure 2.43. If you need to crop or resize images before they appear in an Image movie, you can do this in the Import Image dialog box.


The images are imported, and each imported image appears on a separate slide in the Filmstrip of the Edit View panel or as a series of slides in the Storyboard View panel (Figure 2.44).

Figure 2.44. An Image movie shown in the Storyboard View panel.


Tip

  • Though using the Crop or Rescale buttons in the Import Image dialog box can be a real time-saver, you have absolutely no control over the final size. If this a major issue, consider using the batch-processing features of an imaging application such as Fireworks MX 2004 or Photoshop prior to importing the images into the Image movie.




Macromedia Captivate for Windows. Visual QuickStart Guide
Macromedia Captivate for Windows. Visual QuickStart Guide
ISBN: 321294173
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 130

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net