# Creating custom playback controls

Users control Captivate movies with playback control buttons such as Play or Pause. These buttons allow users to set the pace of the movie as necessary. (Example)

Shown below is the default playback control, named Steel, that can be included in any Captivate SWF movie.

For example, if a movie contains step-by-step instructions, a Pause button allows users to pause the movie until they have finished reading and processing the necessary information.

You select the playback control buttons that appear in a finished movie. These buttons "float" on top of the movie in a specified location. Captivate contains numerous playback controls you can use in your movies, however, you can also create custom playback control buttons.

Each playback control is a series of bitmap images (BMP). The images are stored in the Captivate> Graphics subfolder. A playback control can have the following buttons:

- Play: plays the movie (or restarts the movie if Pause has been pressed)

- Back: moves back one slide

- Forward: moves forward one slide

- Pause: pauses the movie (until Play is pressed)

- Exit: closes the web browser or movie window

- Rewind: restarts the movie from the beginning

### Naming conventions

Each button has two bitmaps — one bitmap showing what the button looks like when pushed down and one bitmap of the button when it is in its normal up state. This is the naming convention for these two buttons:

- style-playbuttonup.bmp

- style-playbuttondown.bmp

Notice that the filename consists of the following elements:

- Name of the playback control ("style")

- Hyphen ("-")

- Name of the button ("play")

- Either " buttonup " or " buttondown "

- Bitmap file extension (". bmp ")

#### To create custom playback controls:

1. Create new buttons using a graphics software package such as Macromedia Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop. Save the buttons as separate bitmap (BMP) images. Use the naming conventions outlined above when you name and save your bitmap images.

2. Create a bitmap that contains a preview image for the whole control. (This image appears in the playback controls list so you can preview the playback control.) This filename can be called controlname-preview.bmp, where controlname is a specific name for your new control.

3. Using Windows Explorer, place the bitmap images in the Captivate playback controls folder located in: C :/Program Files/Macromedia/Captivate/Gallery/PlaybackControls.

4. Open your movie in Captivate and add the playback control to your movie.

Note: Playback control buttons should all have the same width and height. If the images are not the same size, they might not be displayed properly in the finished movie.