Intro

Interactive video is one of the new features in CP2019. Although for a normal cptx-project interactivity is very normal and has a lot more features, it is a nice addition especially to make existing passive video a little bit more engaging. To avoid confusion, because already did see a lot of theoretical posts here that talk about normal interactive projects, not about interactive videos, I will continue to point at published cptx- projects as ‘interactive movies’. A standalone interactive video can be nice. However  I believe that the combination of interactive video slides with static slides in a cptx project is much more powerful.

This first version of interactive video offers the possibility to insert:

• Bookmarks: which out of the box can be used with the new command ‘Jump to bookmark’ to realize some branching often based on answer to  knowledge check slides.
• Overlay content  slides: which appear at certain frames of the video on top of the video (can be partially visible in a dimmed version behind the overlay slides. A lot can be used on those content slides, including advanced/shared actions.
• Overlay Knowledge Check slides: which are based on the quizzing master slides.  Their appearance is the same as for the content overlay slides. Scored quiz slides are not possible.

I will post lin the future a full description of the timeline of interactive video slides, and the differences with a normal video. An interactive video is always a slide video, never an event video. Consequence: interactive video is not possible in a fluid box.

In this blog post, I’ll offer some tips for using and enhancing the present functionality of interactive video. I posted an interactive video, as illustration in this post. You can watch the tips explained here in that interactive video, from which I also post some screenshots.

Tips

Tip 1: Master Slides for the Overlay slides

You can have two types of Overlay slides; Content overlay slides and Knowledge Check  overlay slides. Both types can have the same size as the project size, but I prefer to have a smaller size for the overlay slides, so that the video itself remains visible in the background (dimmed). That can be done by using a duplicate of the Blank slide, and have a shape with a smaller size than the slide, as background for your content or questions.  Have a look at the 3 master slides used for the example video mentioned above:

You see two content master slides next to the Blank master slide:

• OverlayTip: has a bubble shape, semi-transparent as background; the white space surrounding the shape will be ignored in the overlay and show the dimmed video.
• OverlayWarn: has a different shape, less transparent and also white surrounding space.

The Quiz master slide which I used is a duplicate of the MCQ master slide. You need all the embedded objects with their functionality, a duplicate is necessary. I used a rectangular shape as background, not transparent. Beware: use a non-respnsive theme, because the Quizzing master slides in a Fluid Boxes theme have fluid boxes. Second warning: when creating a slides based on this master slide, you need to choose Knowledge Check slides, because normal Quiz slides cannot be used as Overlay slides for an interactive video.

After inserting the content slides and one KC slide, the Filmstrip looks like this (you see the hierarchy symbolized  by the smaller size of the overlay slides, and by the icons at their bottom). The video is on the second slide, after the title slide. There is an End slide as last slide:

Tip 2:  Replace Fixed duration by Close button

Interactivity to me means to offer as much control as possible to the learner. Some need more time, some want to proceed quicker. All reasons why I don’t like the fixed duration for Overlay slides.  No problem for the Knowledge Check slides,  the Submit button (with its default pausing point at 1,5secs) takes care of keeping the slide open as long as wanted. Same would be the case for a slide with a D&D interaction or an interactive learning interaction.

For the static content slides however you need to pause the slide. I used a shape button on the two master slides used for the content overlay slides:

For shape buttons on a master slide, the pausing point is always at the end of the Timeline. Contrary to pausing points on normal slides, it will not appear in the Timing Properties because master slide objects have no timing (Timeline is normally purely used as Layers panel). However, in the default setup, the shape button will pause at the end of each slide. Look under the Actions tab for the shape button on a master slide.

The action triggered by the Success event of that button is very simple: ‘Continue‘, to release the paused playhead. Since the pausing point is at the end of each overlay content slide, it will close immediately and the video continues.

Tip 3: Information button

That button is available for the full duration of the project, from the second (video) slide. The full control panel at the top is timed for the rest of the project  I described the workflow for the information button in an older post, which dates from before the appearance of Interactive Video in CP2019:  Interactive Video Buttons

Tip 4: Navigation Menu

With the Menu button the learner has a TOC to bookmarks available, to review only parts of the video. I described my workflow in this post. Sincerely hope that this enhancement will be considered for a future release or patch. It has no sense to use the normal TOC for an interactive video slide.