Captivate CS4 on a Mac!
Author: Matthew Bibby | Filed under: General Ramblings, Mac, Promotion, eLearning***** Update 25/04/09 – Adobe are Listening! Captivate for Mac is Coming! *****
Michael Hanley recently wrote on The E-Learning Curve Blog about Macintosh Rapid E-Learning Authoring Software. In his post Michael shares his thoughts on running Captivate on a Mac using a Virtual Windows installation:
There are a number of choices. First, you could run the programs you’re evaluating (TechSmith Camtasia or Adobe Captivate) on a Mac with Windows / Boot Camp, but my view would be given the processing resources needed to generate content in a native Windows environment, running them via a virtual machine would be to enter a world of pain I’m not prepared to contemplate: there are too many links in the chain; it’s too risky. Murphy’s Law says that on a death march project with a deadline looming, the the authoring environment would not be up to the task, regardless of how well it behaved prior to to that.
I played around with a couple of native Mac options for screencasting (ScreenFlow & Jing, which are both reviewed in Michael’s article) however I quickly decided that while both applications were good, and each had strong points (e.g. ScreenFlow’s effects or Jing’s integrations with ScreenCast.com) – at the end of the day I can’t live without Captivate.
I had the foresight to order a copy of VMware Fusion when I bought my Macbook, so on day three of my Mac ownership I installed a trial of Windows Vista through Fusion and tried to use that virtual machine to run Captivate. It failed miserably. I was really dissapointed at how slowly programs loaded, files were saved and previews generated. It also caused issues with the performance of OSX, especially when using Spaces. My suspicion was that these performance issues were related to how much memory Vista uses, and the fact that I was only allowing Vista to access 1GB of RAM.
I quickly uninstalled the Vista installation, the whole experiment taking me just over an hour.
I then installed XP SP2. One of the great features of Fusion is that it installs all of the necessary drivers so when Windows is up and running you don’t need to spend hours getting the internet working, the sound card configured etc. You can also decided at the press of a button which devices Windows has access too, blocking or allowing access to all inbuilt and peripheral devices (bluetooth, external hard drive etc.)
XP ran like a dream, like I expected it should given the technology in this laptop. I installed Adobe Captivate CS4 and started on a major recording project for work.
I ran Captivate alongside native Mac applications for four days while I recorded demonstrations on how to use a web application. I found that while there where benefits for using Fusions Unity view (such as copy and paste between operating systems) that XP ran a little smoother when it was working in full screen.
One of the downsides of Captivate is that it only records within the Windows environment. To give you an idea of how quickly Captivate CS4 works in a Virtual Windows environment, I have recorded the following movie using ScreenFlow:
One thing that I tried to demonstrate in that video is how easy it is to share files between the operating systems. Simply drag them into a shared folder and they can be opened and edited in either XP or OSX.
The other feature that I find reassuring is the ability to take ‘Snapshots’ of your virtual operating system at any time (it takes about 30 seconds). This means that if you ever have a deadline looming and your virtual environment crashes (or gets a virus) then you can rollback to a known good version and continue working. This ‘rollback’ takes a couple of minutes, all of your original files will be intact (because they are stored outside of the virtual machine), it is certainly pain-free when compared to restoring a windows PC from scratch.
While using Captivate in a virtual environment is workable, it would obviously be preferable to have a native Mac version to use. Please let Adobe know how important it is to you that they develop Captivate for Mac.
Do you develop eLearning on a Mac?
What software do you use?
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Tags: adobe, captivate, development, eLearning, fusion, jing, Mac, screenflow, vimeo
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:35 am
Hi Matthew,
Interesting addendum to my E-Learning Curve blog post on this topic; if it’s OK by you, I’ll keep an eye on any feedback you receive on this topic, as well as your own insights into capturing and generating screencasting content via the Mac.
Best regards,
Michael
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Michael Hanley’s last blog post..Mobile Learning 6: Effective Learning on Portable Devices
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
[...] So, xtranormal is a great tool to have in the toolkit. It is part of the puzzle for the branching scenario idea discussed at the beginning of this post . . . next time I have a spare hour or two </laugh> I will show how to bring it all together in Adobe Captivate CS4 (yes, on a Mac!). [...]
April 16th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
When we’re screencasting we use ScreenFlow. But we generally use Keynote for create the content we host on slideshare.
We also use Garage Band, Amadeus II (not a fan on Pro), and Adobe Photoshop/Flash.
Talia’s last blog post..Plush Mushy!
April 16th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
ScreenFlow is great, I use it whenever I am creating screencast from my Mac – I love it’s workflow!
That being said, I use Captivate professionally for developing interactive application simulations and have found there is no comparable application native to Mac (however Tech Smith are currently asking for beta testers for Camtasia!)
Keynote is my favorite and I am currently working on a project in which I created kinetic typography in Keynote, then exported to ScreenFlow to add more depth to the transitions – the two work beautifully together!
April 25th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
***** Update 25/04/09 – Adobe are Listening! Captivate for Mac is Coming! ***** See here: http://tr.im/jGus
May 11th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Yeah it is
http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/05/the_beta_for_captivate_on_mac.html
May 11th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Thanks Gonzalo, this is an old post that was written before the beta was announced.
You will notice an update at the top of this page
Are you participating in the beta for CS5 Captivate on Mac?
Matthew Bibby’s last blog post..Adobe are listening! Captivate for Mac is coming!
May 14th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Interesting – really helpful! Wish I had read this before purchasing Vista for this reason –
I’m an Intel Mac user, and have Captivate 3 on Vista via Fusion. Not so impressed with what I’ve had to work on so far – everything is rather slow.
That said, I’d be very keen to know how you have approached the Exporting problem to date – I have Flash CS4 installed on my Mac.
In Captivate, the Export option to Flash is greyed out, indicating Vista is not recognizing that I have Flash installed.
How have you worked around this?
Cheers,
May 14th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Hi Sonic,
Do you have the Mac version of Flash CS4 installed? This would explain why the option is greyed out as Captivate must be looking for a valid Windows installation of Flash . . . I publish my Captivate files rather than export to Flash so have not come across this before. Was there a particular reason why you wanted to edit the file in Flash? Could you download a trial of Flash for Windows to solve the immediate dilemma? Let me know how you go . . .
Sorry to hear that you bought Vista! It doesn’t play very nice on Fusion, it is too resource hungry. I am currently using XP, however have heard that Windows 7 works quite well via Fusion! Windows 7 is in the Release Candidate phase (so not perfect) but can be used for free until Windows 7 is released – it might be a Vista alternative for you? I am going to try Windows 7 in Fusion over the next few days and see how it runs . . .
May 15th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Yep, I’ve got a Mac version of Flash CS4 installed. The reason for wanting to export to Flash was I had this project being edited in Final Cut Pro on my Mac. The plan was to export a stimulation from Captivate into FCP as part of the clip being edited. Here’s where I came across the exporting roadblock…
That said, be aware that FCP does not accept .swf files. Hence my puzzlement that it could not be exported to Flash from Captivate when theoretically, it is on my computer as a Mac version. I suppose I could always work around this by searching for an .swf – .avi converter (FCP will accept .avi files).
I’d be very keen to know how you go with Windows 7.
Bring on Captivate 5!
May 15th, 2009 at 11:35 am
The are lots of .swf to .avi converters round however I have found when using them in the past that they can degrade the video quality and lead to bloated file sizes . . . is the CP project something that you could just record straight of your Windows screen using a Mac screencasting tool?
Hopefully I will get around to trying Windows 7 today . . . will let you know how it goes via Fusion
Matthew Bibby’s last blog post..Internal Revolution
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 am
Hi Matthew,
Just thought I’s check in with you to see how you’re getting on with Cap 4 on the Mac via VM? I’m especially interested in how the VMware handles the well-known large file size/performance issues associated with Captivate’s CP file format
I recently upgraded my PC to a Mac (woo hoo!) and am running Fusion for virtualization – I’ve noticed that when I use my VM Win partition (not BootCamp) for high-end audio and video editing – I’m still learning Logic and FCP so I’m using my Windows apps to create content I lose about 10% performance. Would this align with your experience?
Keep up the good work on the blog and best regards,
Michael
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Michael Hanley´s last blog ..Concerning Open Source, LMSs and SCORM: Correcting Some Common Misconceptions
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 am
Hi Michael,
Since my original posting I have had varied success with running CP4 via VMWare.
My original macbook had 2GB RAM, which I found wasn’t ideal for using VM’s for long periods of time, as only 1GB was allocated to Windows and another to OSX. I found that VMWare was great for quick edits, or ‘light’ CP work but that I would get frustrated with it ‘hanging’ when using for long periods at a time.
Since then, I have moved to using a 2.53ghz Macbook Pro with 4GB of RAM. The extra RAM makes a huge difference to CP performance via VMWare and I can comfortably work in CP4 for a long period of time.
No matter how powerful your Mac is, there will always be a performance difference b/w running Win via Fusion or natively . . . which is why I also have a Boot Camp partition which I boot into if I need to do some serious ‘Windows’ work or to play my fav Win only games
If you have any other questions about the best solution or combination of solutions let me know.
Kind Regards,
Matt