by Kevin Siegel 
Over the past few weeks I've shown you how to trim portions of a Captivate Video Demo and how to Pan & Zoom. This week, I'm focusing on the Publishing process for Video Demos.
Publishing a Video Demo (cpvc) might seem like a no-brainer if you have past exerience working with standard Captivate project (cptx). I'd be surprised if any Captivate developers reading this article haven't published at least once via File > Publish.
Here's what the standard Publish dialog box looks like:
When publishing a cptx project, you can elect to publish as SWF, HTML, PDF, or all of the above. You can also select Media from the options at the left and publish as a video file. The bottom line is that you have choices... lots of choices.
Publishing a Video Demo is, to put it mildly, different. As with a cptx project, you still choose File > Publish. However, the Publish dialog box that appears couldn't be more spartan:
SWF? Gone. HTML5, PDF? Gone and gone! If you're working with a Video Demo and go to publish, the assumption is that you want to publish, well, a video. And that's exactly what you get should you click the Publish button--an MP4 file that will play nicely on YouTube and just about any computer or hand-held device that supports video playback.
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when customizing the settings in the Publish dialog box.
Profiles: There are three choices (Baseline, Main, and High). Use Baseline for mobile and video conferencing applications.Main is for standard-definition digital TV broadcasts. High is for high definition devices. While the High Profile leads to a longer publish time and more complex video, I've found that this option yields the best results for me.
Encoding: You've got two choices, Constant (CBR) and Variable (VBR). Constant is the default (and it's what I use 99.99% of the time). A Constant bit rate typically results in a smaller published video. Should you elect to specify a variable bit rate, Captivate decides when to use more bits to maintain quality. The file size increases when more bits are used.
FPS stands for Frames Per Second. The higher the value, the smoother your video will play, and the larger the published video will be. The standard FPS is 15.
Key Frame Interval: All videos contain key frames (milestones that represent every second of playtime for the video). The longer you set the Key Frame Interval, the smaller the published video file will be. However, if the video supports Search, the search time increases. If you set the interval short (less than 5 seconds), the size of the file increases but the search function works faster. The standard for videos intended for eLearning is 5 seconds.
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