At the Training 2008 conference in Atlanta earlier this month, a number of prospective Articulate customers stopped by our booth to ask a common question: “Can I use Captivate with Articulate Presenter?”

My answer usually goes something like this: “Yes, most definitely. In fact, a number of our customers use Captivate to create screen recordings, publish them to Flash .SWF files, then insert them into Articulate Presenter via the Insert Flash Movie feature. That way your screen recording can be one element of your overall elearning course — a slide or two within the context of, say, a 20-slide course.”

You can get an idea of what screen recordings in Presenter courses look like if you browse some of our Articulate Online tutorials.

And that’s just the beginning. As long as you follow these tips, the sky’s really the limit when it comes to enhancing your Articulate Presenter course with 3rd-party Flash movies. If your file exists as .SWF or .FLV — be it a talking head, Captivate or Camtasia screen recording, animated character, or a simple introduction animation — you can pull it into your course.

And that’s going to be the topic of tomorrow’s monthly community chat. What’s your favorite way to leverage the feature? Do you have any burning questions? Running into some issues getting your Flash movie to work just right? Now’s your chance to share your expertise and/or get your questions answered!

• What: Monthly Articulate Community Chat
• When: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 @ 12:30pm Eastern Time (GMT -5)
• Where: Online at this URL
• Topic: Inserting Flash Movies in Presenter

I hope you’ll join us to share your experiences!

(And thanks, Sarah, for the great topic suggestion.)