SLOW compile with Captivate-generated HTM files (solved)

[bobmoon]

Our Flare (version 6) web help compile went from 10 minutes to 50 minutes recently. I've just diagnosed the cause, and talked to Support to get help with the solution. I thought I'd share because I know other folks use Captivate output in their help.

For each movie, we generate a SWF file and an HTML file from Captivate, which we copy and paste into the Flare project. We link to the Captivate-generated HTML file, which displays the SWF movie when opened. We do not embed the SWF into a Flare topic.

The movies in this project were created with Captivate 3, but we recently recompiled them all with Captivate 4. That's when the compile time went through the roof. I thought the issue was caused by some change in the SWF output files, but it turns out to be an issue with the javascript used in their HTML files.

Adobe changed the javascript methods used to embed the SWF object, and for some reason Flare now "chews" on those HTML files incessantly. As an example, one test project with 15 of the Captivate 3 HTML files compiled in 22 seconds. With 15 of the new files, the compile took 13 minutes.

I called Madcap support, and they had me try the Project > Import HTML Files option to get the files into the Flare project, rather than simply copying the HTML files outside of Flare. This seems to have solved the problem. During the import, Flare massages the HTML in a way that makes it happier during compile. It adds the MadCap.xsd schema reference, and adds ![CDATA[ ]] tags into the body of the javascript. My guess is that those tags trick Flare into ignoring the script during the compile.

I think that we have avoided this option because in the past Flare's changes to the HTML whacked the movies. Perhaps they've cleaned that up since the last time we tried it. Everything seems to be working now.

Anyway, thought I'd share my experience in case anyone else hits the same problem.

Bob

[SteveS]

Thanks for sharing that, Bob.

[mwainer]

I want to import an Adobe Captivate output into Flare 7, but it looks like I can only import project files such as chm, hhp, xpj, mpj. Unless the time issue with moving Captivate html files directly into Flare in V6 was resolved in V7? Regardless, what would be the best - cleanest way to bring in an Adobe Captivate "video" into Flare? Our group was using Mimic v2 and we were pushing for an upgrade to the latest Mimic but alas, the PTB in the company jumped on the Captivate bandwagon for some reason and obtained multiuser licensing for in-house use of that program to create training videos for clients. Sigh. So I am wondering if we need to just import the SWF or the html to bring Captivate videos into our Webhelp.

[bobmoon]

I would recommend that you import the Captivate generated HTM file into Flare. Then use Windows Explorer to copy the SWF and standard.js file into the project folders in the appropriate place.

The problems we were having were because we did not import the HTM file using Flare. Once we did that, we had no problems with the compile in Flare 6.