Automatic and Manual Panning
In the movie industry, Panning is moving the camera during the filming. In Captivate, our camera is the red recording area. When Panning is turned on in Captivate, it simply means that the red recording area can be moved during the shooting. This will enable us to shoot a bigger application with a smaller recording area.
In the Choosing the right resolution for the project section mentioned earlier, we had a discussion on how to solve the project sizing problem. Panning was one of the possible approaches. Let's take a closer look at it.
Perform the following steps to use Panning feature:
- Close and reopen the Adobe Media Encoder application to reset the user interface.
- Delete all the
.flv
files present in thevideos/MOV
folder of the exercises files. - Return to Captivate and go to the File | Record new Software Simulation menu item. The Captivate interface disappears and the red recording area shows up.
- In the recording window, choose to record a Screen Area (and not an Application as before). Give the area a Custom Size of 800 x 600 pixels.
Normally the size of the Adobe Media Encoder application should still be 1024 x 768 pixels from the previous filming sessions.
- Move the red recording area so its top left corner corresponds to the top left corner of the Adobe Media Encoder application window.
In this configuration, the Adobe Media Encoder application and the red recording area do not have the same size. The recording area should be smaller than the Adobe Media Encoder.
- In the bottom part of the recording window, make sure the Demo mode is the only one selected.
- In the Panning drop-down list, choose Manual Panning. Set the Audio drop-down to No Narration. Your computer screen should look like the following screenshot:
- When ready, click on the red Record button to switch to recording mode.
- After the countdown, use the Adobe media Encoder to perform the first few steps of the scenario from Rehearsing the Scenario section mentioned earlier.
- When the Export Settings window opens, place your mouse above the red line of the recording area until the mouse turns to a grabbing hand. Then, slowly move the red recording area until it covers more or less the lower-right part of the Export Settings window.
- Modify the size of the video as defined in the scenario discussed in the Rehearsing the scenario section mentioned earlier.
- When the Export Settings dialog closes after you clicked on the OK button, move the red recording area back to its original position.
- Click on the Start Queue icon (the green play button) as defined in the scenario.
- Use the Print Screen key (Windows) or the cmd + Fn + F6 shortcut (Mac) three or four times to capture the progression of the yellow bar.
- When done, hit End (Windows) or cmd + Fn + Enter (Mac) to return to Captivate.
- When the project loads in Captivate, use the Preview icon to preview the entire project. Can you see the Panning movements in the Preview pane?
- When the movie is finished, close the Preview pane and save the file as
Chapter02/encoderDemo_panning.cptx
.
Back in Captivate; take a look at the Filmstrip. Beneath some of the slides' thumbnails, you should see the camera icon indicating that there are some Full Motion Recording slides in the project. Full Motion Recording is used to reproduce the panning movements made during the capture.
In this example, we have used the Manual Panning. When using Automatic Panning, Captivate places the mouse at the center of the red recording area. During the filming, the red recording area automatically follows any mouse movement. Automatic Panning produces a lot of unnecessary movements and, consequently, a lot of extra Full Motion Recording slides.