Insert Flash video

Hello Mike,

I think that you could possible pull this off by breaking the elements up across multiple slides.  You can hid all the slides bu one in Slide Properties. You could even create a button to start the video. Let me know if that does not make sense and I will put together a Screenr to demo what I am thinking.

Ron's right.  Have the movie as its own slide and duplicate the elements of the slide before it.  If you have things using motion paths as part of the animation, then you want to make sure that you have the Motion Path Tools add-in found here: http://skp.mvps.org/mptools.htm.  This will help you find the proper end point of your animation so that you can properly re-create it on the next slide without it jumping upon slide transition.  Ron has also pointed out hiding some of the slides in slide properties so the learner doesn't necessarily see that you are jumping between several slides.

I can do that and it does make sense, but the playhead is going to reset and look to the user like it is on another slide, correct? That is not necessarily a bad thing I guess, and if that is the best way to do it I will give that a try.

When you say create a button to start the video, are you talking about a button that hyperlinks to the next slide where the video starts automatically, or is there a way to click to start the video on the same slide?

Thanks for the input!

Yes - that is correct creating a Hyperlink that will advance to the next slide

 You could go ahead and animate the place holder (box, tv monitor, etc.)  Have the participant click on that to launch video - see example:

Is it possible to have them click to activate a custom animation? I would like for them to click and then have the screen items move and then play the video. A good example I guess might be have them clicking would activate the curtains opening and then the video plays on stage. Any ideas how to accomplish this?

Mike,

Again, I would move the animation to a second screen - When you hide the slides in Slide Properties, it has more of a layering kind of effect.  See the attached PPT where I do the something similar to open an envelope.

Here is a project screen one as well that is also similar - I forgot about this one. The hyperlink to play the video (advance to the next slide) is over the light switch.

On the community Showcase - you can see how Mike Enders used a similar effect in his entry. http://www.articulate.com/community/showcase/?page_id=203

Those animations are great, but I still don't understand how to do the animation AND start the video AFTER the animation ends. For example on the your projector example, clicking the lightswitch triggers the next slide which plays the animation, but I don't see how to start the video after the animation concludes, unless maybe you put the video on a third slide and auto-advance slide 2.

The Enders example is actually exactly what I am looking for, but I am not sure how to build that. When you click the lights off button, it moves to the next slide, but before the video plays the lights dim, the projector turns on, and then the video appears/starts, AND it is all timed to the slide. I figured out how to delay the start of the video, but doing so turns off the 'timed to slide' feature, so if a user scrubs with the playbar they are then getting the video and the slide audio playing together. Any idea how he built that slide? If I don't get that to work I guess I can put the video on slide 3 and auto advance, but you can tell by the playbar/timeline that he has it all on slide 2 (of the breif history section).

The easy solution is to have things start on another slide.  Concerning Mike's example - It looks like all the audio and the fading in of the video etc. was on the video. So My guess is the video is actually starting a bit earlier than it seems.  I will send this thread to Mike, and see if he can chime in on the details.

@Mike,

Unfortunately, it's actually not a flash video in my course.  I used all PowerPoint animations. Here's a Screenr to demo: https://player.vimeo.com/video/148909576

I have also struggled with your dilemma about getting the movie to time up as I'd like.

As for your particular situation, I believe Ron and Robert have covered it with the use of two slides.  You are correct that the user may see the scrub bar switch slide numbers, but it can still be a really nice effect.

One other thought would be to utilize Quizmaker for this particular section of the course.  QM allows for a timeline approach that would allow you to set this up more to your liking.

Mike

Very well done, I didn't watch close enough to realize that it was images and not a video. All of you are miles ahead of me with animations, nice work.

That's it! I didn't realize you could import a Flash Video to QM, but sure enough you can! Not only that, but the timeline does allow you to have it come in at a specific time, and additionally you can actually apply animation effects to it as well! I think that is the direction I am going to go. I hadn't thought of that, so thank you.

All of these ideas and input have been valuable, and I bet I could get it to work with the 2 or 3 slide approach as well. Either way, I think I have enough info and ideas to get this done.

Thank you all very much.

Another cool "plus" about Mike's suggestion to use QM, is that you can put multiple videos on the same slide, have them start at different times on the timeline, or even play simultaneously if you wanted to try something kind of wild.

Very cool. I look forward to playing with it.

I have never done this before, but I have heard you can only have 1 graded quiz per course. How would I set this up then--would it be a graded quiz with only blank slides, or does it need to be a survey?

Mike,

You can use Quizmaker for various purposes in a course and use it multiple times.  However, you are correct that only one can be tracked by an LMS.

To accomplish what you're looking to do with the video, you can just choose Graded Quiz and then start adding blank slides on which you'll work your magic.

Mike

The only other thing you would need to do in addition is to make sure you turn off the Pass and Fail results slides since you probably do not want that popping up after someone views the video.

Ok, so I am finding that the animation options in QM are not nearly as plentiful as PPT. I don't see how I would do something like the letter opening example within QM. Might just have to scale back what I have in mind for this...

You are correct.  QM only has Entrance and Exit Animations and only 5 of  each.  For something like the Envelope animation - I use Flash Once.  This animation has been left out of PPT2010, so if you are using that software, you have to set up separate exit and entrance animations to pull it off.