Anyone else always having to go to the end and shorten timeline?

Sep 20, 2012

As I make modules, I am forever finding that for strange unknown reasons, my slide timelines' overall lengths get lengthened way out like 60 seconds long or so, and I am constantly having to scroll to the right, drag it back, scroll a little more in, drag it left again, over and over again just to get it to come back to the end point of my audio track.

Anyone know what causes it to get pushed so far to the right somehow?

Anyone have a fast trick for automatically snapping it back as far left as the last chronological item in the timeline?

58 Replies
Jeanette Brooks

Hi Eric! What's probably happening is, if you paste an object from another slide, that object's duration comes with it, which might end up altering the duration of the new slide where you've pasted it. Example: let's say you have a shape on slide 1, and that shape is set to display till the end of the slide's timeline. Let's also say that slide 1 is 60 seconds long. If you copy & paste the object  to slide 2, which is only 5 seconds long, the timeline on slide 2 expands to accommodate the same 60-second duration the object had on its previous slide. 

Bruce Graham

Hi Jeanette

It does seem that "60-seconds" is something that crops up again and again.

I have just spent 45 minutes or so going through a course sorting this issue out, (someone else created it), and they were 60-seconds - all of them.

I think there's something more going on here, but I cannot put my finger on it, (yet!).

Bruce

Chat54 .

Happens to me all the time and I agree with Bruce they is something else going on here. Some times it is dependant on where the time line is when you are pasting or inserting either picture or audio file and that seems to create that effect. I always try to remember to make sure my time is set to where I want it, but it does not always seem to work? Chat54 

Jeanette Brooks

Thanks guys for chiming in! We're not aware of issues with the timeline extending unexpectedly like that, other than due to a pasted object as mentioned earlier. But definitely, if you do experience other instances and are able to reproduce it, we'd love it if you can submit a case so that we can investigate. Thank you!

Lisa Struebing

So back to the original question as I have this one as well...if I have several objects stretched out to say 20 seconds, but they can truly be trimmed back to 10 seconds, is there a way to adjust the timeline to the left for all items in the slide?  Do I need to continue to adjust every object individually, then move the timeline to the left?  Can I create a single cutoff time for all objects in the slide?

Lisa Struebing

I've tried that...I hover over the the edge of the end line on the right, ge the vertical bar with horizontal arrows, and it doesn't move...I have tried it both on the time line and the vertical section of the timeline where the end of the slide times out...I got it to work once, but I don't remember if there were more than 5 objects in the slide or anything like that.  Are there conditions where you can't adjust the timeline to the left for all objects?

Meryem M

Anyone have a fast trick for automatically snapping it back as far left as the last chronological item in the timeline?

Eric, this is exactly the question that I have.  The "scroll to the right, drag it back, scroll a little more in, drag it left again, over and over again" procedure gets old, slide after slide.  I keep thinking that the heroes must know a quick trick to snap the end of the timeline back to some designated point.  Surely the heroes don't do the "scroll a little, drag a little" dance?
Eric Stephan

Actually I just recently realized that if you grab the rightmost edge and pull it all the way to the left so that while holding the mouse you have moved the mouse leftward beyond the leftmost edge .... the screen automatically starts to scroll, and if you've pulled over fairly far (not just a short bit beyond) it scrolls quite quickly and you don't have to do the repeated steps.

Load up a test module you don't care about and give it a practice drag or two...

Jeanette Brooks

Hi Meryem - Eric's right, you can just drag past the left boundary and the scrolling will keep going automatically (you don't need to release). Another thing that can help is to change the zoom setting on the timeline so that you can get more of a birds-eye view of the timeline - that way you can see the entire timeline all at once without having to scroll. Here's a quick screencast showing both these tips: 

Meryem M

Thanks, Jeanette and Eric.  Just keep dragging... It works!

Jeanette, I notice that my timeline can show forty-something seconds at lowest zoom, and that is if I reduce the sidebar width to get more space.  Am I correct that it is not possible to reduce the zoom to see the entirety of the timeline on longer slides?  Many of mine have audio that is 1-3 minutes, and it doesn't seem possible to see the entire timeline at once.  This isn't a big issue, but I just want to be sure that I'm not missing a trick to "View All" on the timeline.

Michel Gilbert

This is an old thread - but it seems to be a current issue. It's not just when I import things either. I've noticed that objects that are not set to "show until end" will push the timeline out if you align them with a cue point and the time from the cue point to the current end of timeline is less than the duration set for the object. I found it helps a bit if you leave everything set to "show until end" and align to cue points, then (for objects you need to have disappear, go back, reset them to NOT show until end, and then adjust the duration appropriately. It would be very nice to have an "adjust to cue point" option for the END of an object's timeline as well as the beginning (feature request anyone? :).

That being said, I am ALSO finding that sometimes the timeline moves out and I have everything set to "show until end," I have not yet found rhyme or reason for this, but it IS annoying to constantly have to readjust the timeline. And sometimes it has been padded by a lot. My record so far was 415 seconds for a page with 15 seconds of audio. I'll keep looking for a pattern - but if anyone has any ideas...

Michel Gilbert

OK, I just hit an odd one. The element was a text box. It was set to start at time stamp 46s, show until end of slide, and used "float in" to animate in (1 sec). The slide/page timeline ended at the end of the audio (49.5 seconds and some change).

I right clicked on the text box item (on the timeline) and aligned it to Cue Point 8 (which was at time stamp 37.75). When I did so, the text box was aligned to the Cue Point, but Storyline 2 ALSO added 8.5 seconds to the end of the timeline, pushing it out to 58 seconds. A little quick math showed a pattern: In order to come back to Cue Point 8, the object needed to have 8.5 seconds added to its duration. That's EXACTLY the amount of time that was added to the overall timeline.

Furthermore, the phenomenon is repeatable. When I adjusted a second item to a cue point, this time moving it back 7 seconds, Storyline padded the over timeline by exactly that much.

Sounds like a bug. There's a system variable being adjusted that shouldn't be.

Leslie McKerchie

If you'd like our team to take a look at your .story file, you are welcome to share here.

I know our team is aware of an on-going issue, but the workaround is the same as what you mentioned finding above:

I found it helps a bit if you leave everything set to "show until end" and align to cue points

Workaround:
Instead of using align to playhead, insert a cue point and align to cue point - be sure you've enabled "show until end" as a part of the object status on the timeline

Michel Gilbert

I've submitted the file with an explanation. Just so you know, I am using "align to cue point" and "show until end" is enabled. The problem is that if you adjust an object to a cue point BEFORE where it currently sits on the timeline, Story line moves it back to the requested point, and then arbitrarily pads the timelines with whatever number of seconds it moved the object back. So if the object was aligned to time 10 secs, and the entire timeline ends at 30 seconds, if you align it to a cue point at time 5 secs, the object is moved back by 5 seconds and the timeline is now 35 seconds long (original 30 plus 5). This is apparently how I got to over 400 seconds. I had a slide where I substantially shortened the audio, and when I adjusted all of the cue points and then aligned the objects, it padded the timeline for each and every adjustment.

Karel Wagner

Hi Everyone, 

I noticed that the original discussion is a few years old, however I'm experiencing the same problem with Storyline2. I'll set my timeline to end after the audio is complete, come back to the project days later and the slide timing has extended by a minute or more. Has anyone figured out what is going on and how to make it stop?

NOTE: I haven't pasted anything. I just opened the project and notice the extended timing.