Adobe Captivate: Set a Master Movie

by Kevin Siegel

Last week I showed you how to remove the TOC from an Aggregated Captivate course. One reason that people elect to hide the TOC is that the TOC simply takes up too much space on the learner's screen.

One way to get around the space issue when it comes to the TOC is to create an overlay. Simply put, the overlay feature will keep the TOC hidden until the learner elects to expand (or show) it by clicking a button. If you've never used Captivate's Overlay feature, check out the TOC overlay article I wrote earlier this year.

While overlays are often desirable in a Captivate-published eLearning course, you may be surprised (bummed even) to learn that the feature simply does not exist within the Aggregator application. What's a developer to do?

1. Create an overlay TOC in at least one of the lessons you plan to add to the aggregated course.
2. Publish all of the Captivate lessons as SWFs.
3. Add the published modules (SWFs) to the Aggregator project. (Note: Only SWFs can be aggregated.)
   
   

And now for a bit of magic...

1. Select the module that contained the overlay TOC.
2. From the top left of the Aggregator application window, select Set as Master Movie.
   
   
   
   By setting the overlay TOC module as the Master Movie, the published Aggregator project will use the Skin (TOC overlay settings included) from the module. Nice!
   
   
3. Publish the Aggregator project and you'll see that the TOC is hidden until the learner elects to click the TOC button on the playbar.

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate 5 or 5.5? We offer Beginner and Advanced classes. Both Windows and Macintosh developers can attend these classes.

Comments

[Kathrin Kelly]

Hey buddy, I forgot to thank you for last week post. That post info is really helpful for me. It's another good post, lots of lessons I learn about adobe captivate. Good job and keep sharing.