Artifacts trailing cursor in Flash movies

[Dbreck]

Sorry Spectre, what I mean is recording at a smaller size doesn't work in the sense that if in Camtasia I uncheck "Allow Resizing" the resulting SWF still resizes the Articulate player. I thought from your original post that you were saying recording at a smaller size and unchecking Allow Resize would prevent the AP Player from resizing, so that did not work.

My final decision on the matter: record screen at 720x540, uncheck Allow Resizing, require users to have a minimum resolution of 1024x768 to view the presentation.

[Dbreck]

Brian, good looking presentation. You are launching that in a pop up window, not a full screen window. If I was able to expand that popup to fullscreen, you would be experiencing the same issues I am. Our Learning Management System requires us to launch our courses fullscreen. I think this may be part of the SCORM standard... well, now that i think about it, maybe the SCORM standard is that you have to launch the courses in a popup, not a full screen pop up. I'll have to look into that.

Well what i'm going to do is launch the full screen window, but make my AP Player a static size, and my slides/movies a static size by not checking the "Allow Resizing" box in Camtasia.

[brianosmi]

Our LMS will allow us to choose from a list of different sized pop ups, including full screen, and I go with a default 800x600 on that setting.

What I have found is that by launching using the "index_lms.html" as a start page for the LMS and setting my browser window settings in AP to the settings that I specified in an earlier post, the Articulate presentation will automatically resize dependant upon the users screen resolution, even when launching from the LMS.

We are publishing using SCORM 2004 settings, so I'm not sure if this would work differently if published for AICC content.

[Dbreck]

I just tested your file at 800x600 resolution and see that the videos do get corrupted as mine do, but going from bigger to smaller makes the artifacting much less noticeable. The real trouble is going from smaller to bigger, in which case you would see the terrible trails. I think that using the yellow highlight around the mouse actually helps matters though, as the artifacts that are left behind are a bright yellow and not very noticeable. When I use an oversized cursor arrow with a heavy black outline as my pointer, the artifacts are heavy black lines.

[gabe]

Originally Posted by Dbreck

It would be great if someone at Articulate could get with Techsmith to get them to change this small piece of code.

I just reached out to TechSmith to see if they might have any insight here. I'll let you know what they say, but, as you said, it seems like it may simply be an issue with the enable resize option in Camtasia combined with being embedded in AP.

Originally Posted by Dbreck

Oh, and Kudos to Articulate and vBulletin for creating the nicest message board I've ever used.

Thanks for the kind words! After a lengthy evaluation period of message boards, all signs pointed to VB as being the best, and I'm very happy with our decision to use VB. It's incredibly customizable and powerful. As for the implementation, that was all us, so I'm glad you like it as much as we do.

[Dbreck]

Cool, thanks Gabe. I'll be very curious to know if Techsmith could update with this small change that would make a huge impact on my work.

[gabe]

Here's the reply I got from TechSmith on this issue:

Typically, the only time we see artifacting in the playback of Camtasia Studio created SWF files is if they are playing at dimensions other than their original size. The HTML page that Camtasia Studio generates contains code that references the configuration and controller files that set the size that the video will display. By playing at a size other than the original size, such as playing the SWF on its own without using the HTML page and supporting files that we create, the video will most often show artrifacts unless you constrain it to play at the original size.

I've not used Articulate so I don't know what kind of controls it offers, but if you can use the same dimensions that are used in our HTML/XML code you should not see any artifacting when played back at those dimensions.

[Dbreck]

Thanks for the update Gabe. Two things come to mind: First, it seems that Articulate should develop some sort of relationship with Techsmith as your products have great synergy, and are often used in conjunction with one another. I assume that open communication at the development level would only benefit both user bases.

And second, I don't think they understood the question. We know why there is artifacting when the file is played back at a size other than the original, but what we'd like is a change to their "allow resize" option when publishing the file. If the "allow resize" code would simply not target the _root of the Flash file, it would work much better for Articulate, as it would not resize the Articulate Player. Thanks again

[gabe]

I'll see if I can get any other input from TechSmith... or at least get support to pass along the feedback to their dev team since the issue is clearly on the Camtasia side.

[gabe]

Here's the latest from TechSmith:

I will pass the information along to our development team for review. If the problem does not occur if the "Allow Resize" is not enabled is there a specific reason they need to have that option enabled?

It would be nice to have the flexibility to resize in AP, of course.