Size of Captivate Files

In reference to my article Captivate File Size Tricks for Software Training via Simulations, I was just asked:

I was hoping you could answer a real easy question for me?

For an enterprise wide LMS system, would a Captivate movie (file) that is 1.5mb or less too big? I think this file size is micro, and that for real good elearning a file size of 40+mb is getting to a threshold. But these are tiny files, and I want to make sure we don’t get any pushback from IT on slow load times being a result of file sizes.

First, when you ask a question, never say its "real easy" - at least not to a developer. Anytime someone says the word "easy" - you generally should look out! :)

Let me start my answer by saying that if you are doing this within the US only, and on high speed connections, then 1.5mb should be no problem. That said, if you are international and/or have people running on slower connection speeds, you should be aware of two possible speed issues: load time and streaming issues.

With Captivate, theoretically the movies should have some initial load time and then should stream the remainder of the content while you are going through the movie. I personally believe (but am not sure) that larger movies have longer up-front load times. Still, I wouldn't be all that concerned with a 1.5 MB file. I would with a 40MB file.

You should also check out what is being reported in the bandwidth monitor. As long as the streaming requirements are reasonably below the line of your slower connection speeds, you should be in good shape for streaming.

All that said, one of the bigger reasons for splitting up the files is just authoring / managing large files in Captivate itself. Again, though, our experience says that 1.5MB (with audio) is not that big.

If any blog readers have had challenges with Captivate file sizes and want to help, please comment.