Editing Full Motion Recordings

At my job, I recently had to edit some Full Motion Recordings (FMRs) in Captivate, which proved very problematic. In the hopes of saving those of you who might ever need to touch these touchy files, here's what I did.

Essentially, I continually split the FMR into two separate slides and then added any manipulations that I needed into the new slides. To do this:
NOTE: All actions take place in Captivate's Edit mode.

1. Locate the animation you want to edit in the Captivate library.
All FMRs are located in the Media folder of the library, but you can also jump to it by right-clicking the animation from the Timeline and selecting Find in Library from the pop-up menu.
2. Right-click the animation and select Edit with FMREditor.
3. In the FMREditor, click Toggle Mode to switch to Insert/Split mode.
4. Place the triangle indicator at the moment where the next dialog box/page opens.
5. Select Edit > Split SWF. This splits the FMR into two separate files.
6. You’re prompted to select the file you want to keep. Select the first one.
Note: The file names Captivate uses are not intuitive (e.g., Cop71C_1.swf and Cop71C_1.swf), so you may want to make a note of the file names for future reference.
Bonus Note: For me, renaming the .swf files in Captivate rendered them unusable for me, so I was forced to retain these confusing names. Due to this, I made sure I was always editing the correct file by right-clicking the animation from the Timeline and selecting Find in Library from the pop-up menu.
7. Back in Captivate, insert a new blank slide.
8. Insert the second animation created in step 5 from the library by clicking and dragging it from the Library into the main pane.
9. Duplicate the audio for the original slide (right-click the audio in the library and select Duplicate).
Note: I was able to rename audio tracks with no problems.
10. Add the duplicated audio from the Audio tab of the Slide Properties dialog box by clicking Library and navigating to the audio file.
11. Edit the audio files of both slides to match the new (split) animations.
12. Create drawing objects or add screenshot images to cover up the mouse in the animation.
13. Select Insert > Mouse to add a mouse object.
14. Manipulate the mouse object so that it navigates and clicks how you’d like it to.

Note that you can repeat these steps as many times as needed. In my case, I split the original FMR file into four separate files with no problem.
The end result was adequate, but not the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. If possible, I recommend having the SME re-record the presentation in lieu of devote the time to edit the FMR.
For more information, you can find a series of excellent Captivate training videos – including manipulating FMRs – here: