Disappearing Flash Content

To add to the strangeness:

When the Flash Object disappears, one of the content place holders gets duplicated.

Does that help at all?

Hi Sean,

There are several reasons why this could be happening. This could be related to where the content is, the naming conventions you used, etc... 

Please make sure of the following:

1. Your PowerPoint file is not located on a network drive. Working on a network drive is not recommended. If you are working on a network drive, copy the PowerPoint file and the PPTA file to your C: drive and work from there.

2. The PowerPoint file is located in a directory whose path is longer than 256 characters. Windows has a limitation of 256 characters so I would make sure that the directory your PowerPoint is located in is much smaller than this. A good place to place your PowerPoint and PPTA file would be something like C:\Articulate

3. Your directory path has special characters, accents or your file name has special characters or accents. I would make sure that your Flash movie has no spaces, no special characters and no accents. A good name is something like flash_movie_1.SWF or something like that.

4. I would also review this article for Flash movie best practices:

Flash movie best practices – Articulate Presenter ‘09 Knowledge Base

Hi Peter:

1. Powerpoint and all other files are local.

2. All other flash objects inserted successfully. I find it hard to believe that these two slides would have any difficulty with a directory path, but I'll move it just to eliminate that as a possibility.

3. Directory path has no special characters.

4. I've followed all the best practices. It's working on every slide save for the only 2 I have left to import to. =)

Has anyone else run into this?

It's currently occurring in just about every project I work in.

I insert an .swf, then go to preview and the .swf disappears and is replaced by a duplicated content placeholder textbox. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of consistency as to which placeholder appears.

Needless to say, this is quite frustrating.

The only workaround that works consistently is to replace the affected textbox section with an image. Unfortunately, this degrades the quality of the text and makes it harder to read.

Hi Sean and Valerie,

Sorry for the trouble you're encountering. If you haven't had any luck following the steps above, you're welcome to Create an Articulate Presenter Package and upload the zip file to our support engineers. They'd be happy to take a closer look and help you find a solution. You can do that here:

http://upload.articulate.com/

Please include the url to this thread, your versions of software and any other pertinent information when submitting your case. Thanks for your patience!

Is the content of the Flash simple video or are there interactive elements involved or any subfolder of source files?

Simple Flash video. It's a single .swf file, no subfolders.

I, too, am having same problem as Valerie. My flash video that I created with ScreenR appears fine in Preview mode. I have moved files to C:Articulate to minimize length of file name, have followed file naming conventions, have the most recent version of Adobe flash player, am not playing from a network server. When I publish, a have the audio, but cannot see the video. This is an MP4 file from Screenr. 

Hi Bonnie,

Have you checked to confirm that your server is configured for MP4 MIME type?:

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=3204

Guess I do not understand that piece. I am not uploading these to a web server. When I publish, I am emailing to myself to test and saving as a Zip file to my hard drive. I do not believe there is a server involved. 

Apologies, Bonnie. Just re-read your post and see you aren't working on a server. I'd recommend sending us your files You can follow the directions above or through this link:

http://upload.articulate.com/

Thanks!

I would like to know what the resolution is, in case I come across this issue as well.

Hi Adam!

The issue was with popup blockers. Simply disabling popup blockers on your browser is a good place to start if you encounter a similar issue. 

Hi there,

I am facing a similar issue...when I embed the file (and this is consistent for many courses, not just one), initially a few times, it will show the video in preview mode. However, after sometime, it will show the content placeholder even in the preview window, as if it keeps forgetting the reference path!! And since it doesn't even shows up in preview mode, its not the case of popup-blocker i guess!!

As a result, I have to delete the embedded file and re-embed it .

What could be the reason??

Thanks,

Hi Bhavna,

Are you storing your flash file on your local drive or on a shared/network drive?

If it's on a network drive then that can be the issue.

You may also want to check out your PPT file. I've had issues where the PPT has been corrupted in a fairly specific way and caused this sort of issue.

Thanks for replying Sean.

However, the issue is not with the PPT as this is happening with all the ppts I have made so far...

Thanks for replying Adam,
however, the issue is not this as everything is stored on my local PC, that too within the same directory as the ppt. 

Hi Bhavna,

Are you able to send us your files so we can test them on our end? Please create an Articulate Presenter package, then upload the zip file to our server. You can review how to do this here: 

Send to Articulate Presenter Package – Articulate Presenter ’09 Help

Upload the resulting zip file from your computer to our server using this upload form: 

Articulate Support - Upload Your Files for Review 

Thanks!