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Adobe Captivate is a screencast program that outputs swf files using a Microsoft Windows computer. It can also convert Powerpoint files to Flash files.

This software lets the operator build and edit interactive program demos and lessons very quickly. It has an efficient screen-capture movie mode that snaps a sequence of still images and then builds mouse movement simulations to create the appearance of a running program. By using Adobe Flash Tweening technology, Captivate is able to create screencast in a much smaller filesize than needed for a real full-motion screen capture movie.

Users of Captivate can edit Captivate presentations to add captions, clickable hotspots, and change the time items appear and disappear. The hotspots can branch to other slides in the presentation, or to outside webpages.

Captivate supports the import of still images, PowerPoint, video, and audio tracks onto any Captivate slide. This allows presentation of large amounts of complex information using Captivates portable Flash .SWF output. Although creating Captivate presentations required Microsoft Windows, output can be played on computer platforms such as an Apple Macintosh, Linux Computer, or portable devices that supports Flash player 5.0 or higher.

Captivate is often targeted toward the corporate e-learning departments, industry trainers, and professional educators, but is helpful to anyone who wants to capture and edit screen recordings. For the educator, the product comes with several pre-built exam configurations allowing you to test a student's learning using multiple answer and fill in the blanks exam questions. Captivate supports the automatic sending of a user's exam results to the test giver's email. Additionally, the product supports many e-learning standards such as SCORM and AICC. The output can be published to a web site, saved to a CD, or sent via email. Captivate is 508-compliant which is especially effective when manually populated with detailed information.

The software is sold as a license from Adobe that can be used on two computers at any one time. Activation is best performed using an Internet connection and it is tied to the identity of the computer using a hardware matching schema. Licenses can be easily passed from one computer to another using Adobe's "Transfer License..." option found in the help menu.

The Captivate Users Group | Seattle [1] discusses best practices, tips & tricks and industry trends.
Raisingaimee [2] Captivate hints, tips & addons

The product was originally known as Flashcam (Nexus Concepts 2002) acquired by eHelp and rebranded RoboDemo. In 2003 Macromedia acquired San Diego-based eHelp Corporation and the product became known as Captivate. The product overlaps in part with Macromedia Breeze. In 2005 Macromedia and its products, including Captivate, was acquired by Adobe.

Camtasia Studio and Wink are similar programs available for Windows and Linux. Wink is freeware that allows for export to EXE, PDF, HTML, or PostScript as well as SWF.

ViewletBuilder [3] is a commercial competitor to Captivate.