Slide length increasing apparently randomly.
Aug 03, 2012
Hi,
I have audio on all my slides and a next button that appears at the end of the timeline. I have ensured that the timeline ends at the end of the audio on all my slides. This was time consuming as there are 160 slides in total. The problem is that the slide length unexpectedly increases so that the audio ends and there is a long pause before my button appears. I cant reproduce this intentionally and i am not sure why it is happening...but I am finding it annoying! Is there any known explanation? Thanks
19 Replies
Stephanie,
That's not expected behavior. Would you be willing to submit this?
http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/submit.php
Hi Mike,
This is happening to me as well. Has there been a fix for it?
Vince
Vince,
I haven't heard anything on this since August. I would think it was addressed in the update. Can you describe the behavior you're seeing? Are you working on a particular slide when this happens, or is it a global change?
Mike
Hi Mike,
If I trim a video, eventually the length of the slide will jump to the original length of the video. And when I have 20 slides all jumping from 200 seconds to 3500 seconds, it can take quite a while to drag the bar to reduce the length for each slide. This is a global change.
My way around this was to remove the Seekbar in my player and to add Show Video Controls. It isn't very pretty but it works.
This also happens to trimmed audio as well.
Vince
Vince,
Yeah, not expected behavior. Could you submit your file for our folks to look at? And if this is happening consistently, could you also record a screencast demonstrating the effect? We'd love to take a look under the hood and try to determine where this behavior is coming from.
http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/submit.php
Thanks!
Mike
I'm having a similar problem. If I insert an object that starts at time zero with a timing setting of "show until end of slide" checked, then move it to align with a cue point or playhead, the length of the slide is automatically extended to accommodate the original duration of the object. What I expect is that the object duration would be adjusted to fit within the current length of the slide, which is how objects behave in Storyline 1. Why this new behavior?
Hi Doug,
That behavior occurs if you right click on the object and choose to align it to a cue point, if you just drag the item from the left hand side towards the cue point, the time doesn't increase. Presumably the first setting is so that you could keep the same amount of time, whereas if you just drag the element it'll adjust the time accordingly.
Thanks for the rapid response! Typically I add elements to my slide, play my audio to create cue points, then right-click each object to align to cue points. In Storyline 1 this worked beautifully. In Storyline 2, the timeline is lengthened with each move and creates more work on the back end to realign the end of the timeline. Your response indicates that I have to drag each item to the associated cue point, is that correct?
Correct Doug - if you drag it as you get close to a cue point, you'll see it'll "snap" to the cue point making it easy to line them up that way and keep the timings.
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Thank you for your response. Please note that I am using the right-click/align to cue point command when aligning objects, which is when the timeline is not adjusted as expected.
So I'm wondering why this was changed going to Storyline 2. Is this a bug? It's very frustrating and time consuming to have to click and drag each object timeline to it's cue point or have to adjust the end of the slide timeline back to where it was before adding new objects to my slide. This is particularly frustrating when I have multiple recordings on a slide as their starting point moves left when I adjust the slide timeline using the click+drag+left arrow key to save time. Why has this been changed?
Hi Doug,
I did a bit more digging and found that this was reported to our QA team for review. I don't have an update on when a fix may be implemented, but in the meantime I'd suggest using the workaround I mentioned.
I've added this thread to the report filed with our team, so that I can update you here once information becomes available.
Thanks for the follow up, and the tips on how to carry on. Looking forward to the next update.
Well there have been at least 2 updates since this discussion, and this issue of cue point alignment using the right-click menu has still not been addressed. Any time frame for this fix?
Hi Doug,
I don't have a timeframe to offer in regards to this particular issue - but I did want to point out that one of the updates dealt with an emergency issue with the Flash Player 16, so it was a standalone update. Once we have additional information to share we'll post that here for you and others.
It appears the most recent update tried to address this problem. Thanks. However the fix seems to have been applied only when aligning to cue points. It seems to me that this should also be applied to "align to Playhead" as well. Please add this to the queue in the next update. Thank you.
Hi Doug,
Yes, it was fixed in Update 5 detailed here.
I've just experienced something very similar. All of a sudden the length of the majority of my slides has been changed! Every element on the slide, too. No audio or video on my slides, either - just static controls, text, images, etc. Most slides are now 85 seconds long (85.03, to be exact) and others are 27 seconds. Didn't happen consistently - handful of slides are still set to the default of 5 seconds. For those that changed, some have the Show Until End box checked. When I select all items on a slide and uncheck the box, a couple of elements will go back to 5 secs, but others stay at 27 or 85. I'm in the process of changing all these slides BACK to 5 seconds each, but wonder if there's a global way to change this (in case this happens again in the future) or an update that fixes this glitch. Unfortunately I cannot change the timeline for all items at the same time on each slide. Some I can, some I can't. Haven't figured out the rhyme or reason for those yet. Thanks!
Hi, Brande --
Sorry to hear of the issues you are experiencing, but there are a few troubleshooting steps we can try first to rule out the causes of some common problems.
Please make sure you are working locally as described here, and you may want to try importing the file into a new file. If you are still having issues, you might want to try to repair Storyline. Also, could you please ensure that you are utilizing the most recent SL2 Update? Info on the latest update can be found here.
If issues persist, you are welcome to share your file so we can take a closer look for you. Please use the ADD ATTACHMENT button in the bottom left corner of the reply box in the thread, and you can browse for the file from there. Please also note that if you reply via email, your attachment will not appear here in the thread.
Thanks for the tips. I am working locally, but I'll import into a new file to see if that helps. It happened again last night after I repaired all the impacted slides - I inserted a .png image and that's what caused it. Not sure why it happens on multiple slides and not just the one where the image is inserted. Also not sure why inserting an image would do it. I am unable to update storyline, as I don't have install permission (it's a work computer), but I will contact our help desk and ask for the latest updated to be pushed. Thanks again.
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