Problems cueing triggers and retaining screen image in video

Hi

I'm creating a simulated software interaction. I'm finding the slide-by-slide interactions a little clunky (and extra screen shots weren't working when I requested them), so I've decided to work with one complete video.

What I'm aiming to do is the following:

• simple play and pause triggers
• timed text captions that tell the learner what action to take
• (ideally) hints that show up when they click in the wrong place (rather than error messages).

I'm trying to create the basic triggers following Mike's (EndersDesign?) video - placing an object off-screen and adding a 'pause' trigger to it, then adding hotspots, including a screen cover hotspot. A few issues I'm having with this include:

• the timing appearing different on the workspace screen and on the preview screen, so that my cueing in one area seems great but then doesn't work in preview
• the preview showing different things even if I haven't changed something! (This is when I decided to scream for help!)

I'm starting to think that perhaps simply triggering screen grabs may be better than video, however Storyline doesn't seem to want to photograph itself (shy? ).

Questions:

• Can I post this file privately for someone to (i) tell me why my preview is being so erratic and (ii) give me some hints on making things work? I don't think I can share this software image publicly.
• Is there a way of showing a final image or stopping the video image from disappearing when it's finished?
• If I go with the screen grabs solution, what image quality should I be aiming for?
• I haven't used the timeline much up until now (though I've done a lot of work cueing audio in music programs), so can you please tell me how I can cue my triggers more accurately?

Sorry for the blah. Any simple answers in response to this blah would be great!