Captivate Video Guide

Follow these steps to get a high-quality video that will fit on a variety of screen sizes.

Before you start recording, set your display to a size that will fit on smaller screens:

1. Right click on the desktop and pick Display Settings,
2. Set Display Resolution to 1280 x 720,
3. If you are asked if you want to keep changes/settings, click Yes.
4. Right click on the taskbar and pick Taskbar Settings,
5. (With Windows 11, click Taskbar Behaviors)
6. Check “Automatically hide the taskbar”.
7. Open the program or website to record,
8. Maximize it so it fills the whole screen,
9. If you’re recording a web app, zoom in or out so it fits the window.

Use PowerPoint’s screen recording feature:

1. Open PowerPoint,
2. Open the Insert menu,
3. Pick Screen Recording (on the far right).
4. Click Select Area and click and drag from the top left to the bottom right,
5. Click Record and quickly move the mouse away from the recording toolbar,
6. Record your video, narrating what you are doing. (Include enough detail so someone who can’t see the video will still understand the important steps; Write a script and practice it a few times.)
7. When done, press Windows + Shift + Q. (Practice doing this until you can do it quickly.)
8. Right click the video and pick Save Media As,
9. Choose where to save the MP4 video file, enter a File Name, and click Save.

Use Microsoft Stream to generate and proofread captions:

1. Go to Stream.Office.com and login.
2. On the Stream home page, click Upload,
3. Find the video MP4 file you saved from PowerPoint and click Open and then Upload,
4. Once Stream shows “Upload Complete”, click Open.
5. In Video Settings, click Transcript and Captions, and then click Generate,
6. After the captions are generated, click the Transcript tab on the right,
7. Scroll through the transcript to proofread it, 
8. Click Edit to make any corrections.
9. Open the Download dropdown and pick Download as .vtt.

Insert the video and captions into Captivate:

1. In Captivate, duplicate or insert a new slide,
2. Click Add Media Block, and then Video (not Slide Video),
3. In Visual Properties, set Number of Videos to 1,
4. Uncheck the Title and Body components.
5. Drag the bottom border of the video so that the video fills the width of the black box it is in (this should make the height of the video a little less than the full slide),
6. Expand Alignment and Spacing and check Autofit Height.
7. Click the center of the video and pick System,
8. Find the video MP4 file and click Open,
9. Under Closed Captions, click Import Captions, find the VTT captions file, and click Open.

To include a button to turn closed captions on and off:

1. Set the Button component to show 3 buttons (in addition to Back & Next),
2. Change the text of the middle button to “    CC    ”,
3. If the button has an Icon, turn it off.
4. If the button has an Interaction, delete it,
5. Add an Interaction, selecting More, Toggle Variable, System, Project.Closed Captions.
6. Set Accessibility Text of the CC button to “Closed Captions”.