Sync Adobe Captivate Video Narration with Closed Captions

Do you have a lot of audio that needs closed captions, but you don't want the closed captions box to be more than 2 or 3 lines? You don't need a scroll bar; all you need to do is sync the audio with the closed captions and you can create a scrolling effect.

Below is an Adobe Captivate Example of Scrolling Closed Captions on One Slide. 

Below is the tutorial video explaining the step by step process of setting your video's audio to sync with the closed captions so that the closed captions scroll seamlessly. 

NOTE: You can do pretty much the same thing for any slide that has a large amount of audio narration. In other words, it doesn't have to be video audio.  

Here is the step by step instructions explained in the video:

Go to Video, in the main toolbar, and select Insert Video

Choose Event video or Multi-slide synchronized video

One difference between the two is that event videos are not inserted into the captivate library so if you move the video or the captivate project from the folders on your computer the video will not play. If you use multi-synchronized video, the video is inserted into the captivate library so it does not matter where it is located on your computer. One advantage of event videos is that you can have more than one video on a slide; with multi-synchronized video you can only have one video on a slide. Multi-synchronized videos can be on the stage or inside the table of contents but do not have external controls (the controls are embedded with the the captivate project). Event videos have external controls but can only be imported onto the stage, not the TOC. Below is summary of Pros and Cons.

Event video	Multi-slide synchronized video
May not be in sync with the slide	Plays in sync with the slide
Can be placed only on stage	Can be placed either on stage or TOC
Does not get added to the Library	Gets added to the library. You can preview the video on both slides and  in the library. You can replace or update the file from the library.
Multiple videos can be added to a slide	Only one video can be added to multiple slides
Does not support closed captioning	Supports closed captioning
Users can play, pause, rewind, or forward the video using the playback controls in the skin.	Users cannot control the slide video.  The video plays based on how you have  synchronized it with the project.

In this case, let’s use multi-slide synchronized video. Browse to the video on your computer, (notice the types of videos that you can import into captivate), then select the video by double clicking on it or click Open

Typically you’ll choose the default video type: progressive download. Below is short description of each type:

Progressive Download Video: Choose this option if the video is hosted on any internal server, web server, or Adobe Media Server

Streaming: Choose this option if you want to use RTMP streaming

Flash Video Streaming Service: Choose this option if the video is hosted on a web server and the service provider is one of the Adobe partner

Then decide if you want to use the video on the slide stage or within the table of contents (warning if you choose table of contents, you must show the table of contents in the Separate, not Overlay style). For this example let’s choose Stage.

Then choose if you want the video to distribute across multiple slides (if you choose this change the numbers of slides to and from) or if you want the video on one slide choose: modify slide duration to accommodate the timing of the video; choosing this setting will automatically adjust the timeline on the slide to accomdate the length of the video.

Then go to Video, in the main toolbar, and select Edit Video Timing

Select the Closed Captioning tab (on the right)

And click the large + sign to insert the first row of audio

Click the play icon to play the first part of your video, then click pause (WARNING, do NOT click the stop icon, it will take the scrubber (the red line) will go back to the beginning)

Then type the text. Click the + sign again (WARNING, do NOT click Enter on your keyboard, to get to the next line, otherwise you’ll the order will be reversed).

Notice the marker is has the #2 

Click play again until you’re ready then click pause

Type in the text

Click the + sign

Click play

Notice the markers, now say 1, 2, 3, repeat until your audio is complete...

If you want to change the closed caption project settings, click the button and make any formatting changes you like. Then click ok

And click ok again

By default closed captioning is turned off, so you’ll have to select the radio button to check Closed Captioning. Go to Project, in the main toolbar, and select Skin Editor: 

Then preview and you’ll see your closed captions are synced with the audio of the video.