All of my courses open with at least two PowerPoint slides which were converted into Captivate. There is always at least two PPT slides; the intro, the index.  I add audio to these slides in Captivate. Then either the rest of the Captivate material is 100% powerpoint slides, or software demonstration videos. I have hundreds of courses using this combination, but something happened today that is causing a problem.

Like I said, I’ve done it hundreds of times without issues. Today, however, my PPT slides are not appearing. The project previews perfectly in Captivate. But if I publish and preview via University Site, the video plays – the audio plays – but the PowerPoint slides show as blank. As soon as the course gets to the software demonstration part, it correctly shows the video playing. The only thing NOT show are my powerpoint slides.  The audio for the PPT slides plays, however. So it is only the visual.

If I preview the captivate course (in Captivate) as a project or in the browser mode; it plays perfectly and you can see the PPT slides.  If  preview using HTML5, the PPT slides do not show.

If I publish (HTML5 / Zip file), it publishes without errors. But the resulting course doesn’t show the PPT slides (but does play the audio for those slides) when added to my LMS.  Courses created in the same manner which already existed on my LMS are playing perfectly fine… so it doesn’t appear to be the LMS app.

If  I publish as an MP4 file; it plays perfectly as well and the slides show normally. However, I can’t use this format as we are uploading it to a University Site LMS app, to track who had or has not observed this course.

I’ve tried the basics: I “converted” the PPT files again and added them again to Captivate. I removed the old PPT from the filmstrip and added a new one, etc.   I published to a different file and uploaded as a brand new course, still not showing the PPT slides.

I used the same saved Skin for my course as I’ve always used. And just to be SUPER sure, I published again without the skin and used the Captivate default. Same problem: previews perfectly, but resulting course doesn’t show the PPT slides.

Like I said, I’ve done this combination hundreds of times. Nothing on my end has changed to my knowledge. Same Adobe Captivate Ver7 as always. Same University Site version. All my other courses which were created before today are playing just fine.  A course I created, saved, and published this week is playing and previewing fine in Captivate (and in LMS).  Whatever happened seems to have happened between Monday evening and Tuesday  morning.

I am GUESSING I might have altered a setting in Captivate, but I can’t find it.  Does anyone have a clue what might be causing this? Or some troubleshooting step I could try to investigate further?