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Gabe Anderson

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Publishing to CD

Monday, June 14th, 2004 by gabe

21 Comments


In most cases, you’ll publish presentations and e-learning courses to your Web server or LMS, but on some occasions, you may want to create autorun content for distribution on CD-ROM.

The CD-R publishing process is mostly self-explanatory, but pay attention to directory structure on your CD.

SNAG-0096.png

Here’s what to do:

  1. From the Articulate menu, select Publish.

  2. Choose the 2nd option, Presentation for CD-ROM Delivery.
  3. Complete the publish wizard as you would normally do.
  4. Open your output folder and drag the entire contents into your CD-R software.

The final point is the key one here: You’ll want to make sure that you don’t simply drag the folder to burn, and that your CD-R software doesn’t create a folder on the CD. You need to have the contents of the output directory at the root level of the CD in order for autorun to work correctly.

Note that the contents of your output directory will look similar to how it does when you publish using other methods, but you’ll see 3 additional files required for your CD to run automatically:

articon.ico, artpresenter.exe, autorun.inf

When the CD has finished burning, eject it from your computer and reinsert to test. If the above has been done correctly, your presentation should now run automatically.

Sit back and enjoy the ride.

(Note that if the CD does not play automatically on a computer, first check another CD with autorun — most software installation CDs will launch installer programs automatically. If it doesn’t run, then you may have autorun disabled in Windows. Consult the Microsoft Support site for how to change this setting in your version of Windows.)

Posted in Articulate Presenter

21 Responses to “Publishing to CD”

If you read this webpage you don’t know about the Flash Security problems that can arise, and the possible solution of installing server2go on the CD-ROM. Please make a link on this page to the server2go page.

Elka  |  Posted at 10:49 am on October 4th, 2007 |  #

Good idea, Elka. Thanks!

gabe  |  Posted at 12:58 pm on October 4th, 2007 |  #

I find your article overly simplistic and wrong. I have never struggled so much with a simple idea.

First, the autorun does not work. When I manually ruin launcher.html I get a error. I can only run player.html

I have attahcedments with natural do not work on local computer or cd. So I edit the player.html file as instructructed by the forum article. The attachment now work but auto run quit working.

I think Articulate is good for developing courses but has completely missed the boat for doing anything other than web based deployments. Publishing to cd should be be like building the Titantic. I have to read forum articles, try all kinds of things until something , hopefully, works. And then I need to get 3rd party software, learn how to use it just to get your software to work.

This is a ridiculous product.

Ramon  |  Posted at 11:26 pm on January 14th, 2008 |  #

I’m sorry you’re having problems with this Ramon, but we’re happy to help you out via a support case, which I submitted for you based on your email to me earlier this week. I see that we sent you a number of suggestions. Have you tried them? Are you still having issues?

gabe  |  Posted at 10:54 am on January 18th, 2008 |  #

I received a published presentation from one of our instructors, along with the powerpoint. The presentation plays fine, however, how do I upload it onto our company’s LMS? Would the instructor need to re-publish the presentation and create a zip file?

Michelle  |  Posted at 09:28 am on January 29th, 2008 |  #

Hi Michelle- Yes, your instructor needs to publish to LMS. You can also learn more about some basic LMS pointers.

gabe  |  Posted at 11:18 am on January 29th, 2008 |  #

HELP!!! I have published my presentation to CD, zipped it for e-mail, to the web, used server to go, etc. No matter how I publish the flash files they only work on my own computer. When I load the disk on other computers outside of my office it appears that the flash files are loading, but they just don’t play? The quizzes work fine everywhere. Any insight?

SUZANNE  |  Posted at 11:35 am on February 7th, 2008 |  #

Has anyone had an issue where if you select the zipped files AND the create CD autorun files, it does not produce the necessary autorun files? That has happened to me several times.

kim  |  Posted at 05:55 pm on March 4th, 2008 |  #

Hi Kim-

There is a known issue where if you publish your presentation for CD and check the Output Option Zip, then the autorun files will not be included in the zip file.

To workaround this issue, uncheck the option to Zip, publish for CD, open the folder that contains your published output, and manually zip the contents of the folder (using Windows or a 3rd-party zip application).

gabe  |  Posted at 03:08 pm on March 6th, 2008 |  #

Does the CD need to be a CD-R? I am trying with a CD-RW and am having problems.

Janet  |  Posted at 09:32 am on May 16th, 2008 |  #

[...] you leverage Presenter’s Publish to CD feature, burn your published output to CD, and start shipping your [...]

Bypass Flash Security & Attachment Download Issues in CD Playback - Articulate - Word of Mouth Blog  |  Posted at 08:33 am on June 6th, 2008 |  #

We upgraded to the entire 09 Suite. We have a class that consists of many individual lessons, each in its own folder with corresponding player.html, data folder, etc. I read that CD publishing with Articulate can only handle a flat directory with all the files at the same level.

Do publish a multi-lesson presentation to CD, is Server2Go required in order for the links to work properly, etc?

Diana  |  Posted at 06:20 pm on February 9th, 2009 |  #

Related question: We will publish a finished program to the web. In the meantime, my client wants to distribute limited numbers of the program on thumb drives. So that people don’t have to navigate all the way down to the player.html file, can I use the Publish to CD feature and set it up to auto-run off the thumb drive?

After hearing of some difficulties, I’m thinking a better alternative might be to create a shortcut at the root level of the program files, and just do it that way. Any thoughts on this? Thank you…

Django  |  Posted at 10:59 am on February 25th, 2009 |  #

Hi Django- What version of Presenter are you using? Note that Presenter ‘09 includes a revamped Publish to CD feature, which creates an EXE version of the course for your users.

gabe  |  Posted at 11:26 am on February 25th, 2009 |  #

Hi Gabe,
That sounds like a good, new feature. I’m only on Presenter 5.2, however. Since the thumb-drive thing is just an interim solution anyway, I’ve decided to just go with putting a shortcut to the player.html file at the root level of the thumb drive and simply renaming it to something like “Click here to launch tutorial.”

Django  |  Posted at 11:30 am on February 25th, 2009 |  #

i am having difficulty publishig an auto run on a cd. i read the comments but i am still having problems can you please help?

Dori  |  Posted at 03:19 pm on August 30th, 2009 |  #

Hi Dori- I’d encourage you to submit a support case with complete details of the issue you’re having.

gabe  |  Posted at 04:45 pm on August 31st, 2009 |  #

Could someone explain how i get my cds to autorun (simply) – from what i have seen on the blogs it sounds complicated by making sure i save files onto a “root” directory (how do i save on a “root” directory ? / when do i do this – after I publish or another time ?) Sorry to sound simple about this. I have built my courses on articulate but cannot to publish to cd and get this to autorun – therefore my customers are not going to navigate the folders to get to the launch file. If anyone could spell this out in simple steps it will be much appreciated ! Thankyou,

gopal  |  Posted at 11:54 am on January 13th, 2010 |  #

I want to use software protection for my courses on CD that I intend to retail. “multimedia protector” or something similar is what I am thinking of – is this easy for me to do and linked to my question above on publishing to CD, when do I add the protection software – during publishing or do I have to modify any files ? – Your help is greatly appreciated.

gopal  |  Posted at 11:58 am on January 13th, 2010 |  #

Hi Gopal,

The “root level” refers to default location of your files. For example, if you burn a CD and then open it up in the Windows Explorer, the root level is the first location that will open up.

If you have additional questions, please refer to the links below:

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=155

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330135/en-us

In regards to protecting your output, I used to use a program called ProtectionPlus whenever I worked in the field. Essentially, the software “wraps” its own code around the EXE file. When someone try to run the EXE file, they will see a screen that requires the user to enter a License ID and a Password. Once they have entered that information, they will be able to use the software. For more information, please see the link below:

http://www.softwarekey.com/

(Articulate does not support the above link)

Brian Batt  |  Posted at 04:39 pm on January 13th, 2010 |  #

Thankyou Brian, so what “files” do you move to the root menu and how is it done ? Have you got any screenshots ? Gopal

gopal  |  Posted at 05:21 am on January 14th, 2010 |  #

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