Hi - I wonder if anyone has played with a "live" background at all in Storyline. For example, a cityscape with an occasional plane flying by, or the day eventually changing to night...and then back.
Are you talking about doing this for an entire presentation or just one slide? I created a series of Safety courses, and part of the intro slide was a small video instead of using bullet points.
It starts out as a nice day and then the white clouds go away and storm clouds roll in, then it begins to rain. After this a miscreant runs by and a cop follows.
Cool. I was thinking along those lines, but then building content in layers above.
The background would do it's thing, even looping, and learners could hover over and then click on various stores/building. When clicked, a layer would appear, covering 80-90% of the background. So, the background would just keep on keeping on, while learners interacted with the content on the layer.
That could work with my set up, if I expanded it. I used the news-room looking template (It has a name...but I forgot it) and put the animation in that little window.
It seems like it would be a pretty simple concept to make into reality
I would recommend grouping items in your timeline, from what I found with mine, the timeline gets pretty unruly, I had over 100 different images for rain drops to get the 'rain' effect.
I had never thought of doing this before...I think this is what you mean
Here's Story Lion....
I have created 2 x different master slides in the .story, each of which holds a full-page sized animated powerpoint slide, each of which was created in .ppt then saved to a Windows Media File
It does open up ideas...my immediate need is for a simple learning map that feels more "alive" when learners are viewing it and deciding which elements they want to learn more about. But if you add in triggers and conditionals: gameification!
I imagine something like the menu of a DVD. There is always some action going on in the background with buttons that are 'clickable'. Depending on the button (play, menu, chapters...) sometimes the Menu will do something different.
I've not thought about this at all, and cannot try it @ moment as am in the middle of narrating a course on Ishikawa (Fishbone Diagrams...), but....wondering if it is possible in SL to tie STATES, (such as slide xx = visited) to change Master Slides?
I know this could be done manually, (as I have done here), but have the background master slides changing dynamically based on course progress?
Not sure where I'm going with this one....need to carry on voiceovering..
Oh, snap, I need some creative/fool-around time to try some of these. It's crazy when you know it's possible, a couple of ways, and you just need time to play!
You can work with looping videos on slide masters a couple ways. The easiest is to insert a video or .swf file and add two triggers that tell the media to play when the media completes:
Play media (video 1) when the timeline starts
Play media (video 1) when the media (video 1) completes
Your method works great. I followed your advice. Like your files (Source), I had to put a "filter" over the video. I used a transparent rectangle. If I don't add the rectangel to cover the video on the slide master, users can click on it to play/pause the video.
Now, I am trying to work with a client on using a video from a streaming server as the background animation. I tried to Insert Video from website using an embed code, but the video, even on the bottom of the slide master, streams on the top of everything; so, there are no clickable areas!
I am trying to use a web object now. Hopefully it will stay in the background.
I haven't applied the method, but I HAVE opened David's source file in SL2 and previewed it. Then I linked to his demo file and watched it. And it looks to me like it's working the same way in both. Perhaps he'll see this thread and provide a response. It's quite an old thread!
The problem with this is that even if you got it to loop correctly on one slide, it will still skip/restart when you go to another slide because storyline reloads the entire slide. So the video/animation would have to be kept simple like the background on my Street Fighter Demo. I've been wanting to do a project with a cinemagraphic background but haven't had a chance yet. I think this would be a cool feature.
I try not to mess with placing video on the master slide if I can avoid it. Try converting the video to an animated GIF, or use SWF instead.
I also sometimes create a pseudo-KenBurns effect with my backgrounds by setting a simple motion path that lasts 20 or so seconds and then goes back the other way...
Thanks for all your replies. I did get this to work although it won't work in preview. I was using a video I ripped from YouTube and that I edited in Adobe Premiere. I think the resolution of the video was too large for Storyline (No storyline 2 yet Goverment red tape). Once I encoded the video into WMA (yuck) it works. It won’t work in preview but it will run once you publish it. It is a little clunky on the replay (it freezes then jumps ahead a few seconds) but it works.
21 Replies
Hey Eric,
Are you talking about doing this for an entire presentation or just one slide? I created a series of Safety courses, and part of the intro slide was a small video instead of using bullet points.
It starts out as a nice day and then the white clouds go away and storm clouds roll in, then it begins to rain. After this a miscreant runs by and a cop follows.
Cool. I was thinking along those lines, but then building content in layers above.
The background would do it's thing, even looping, and learners could hover over and then click on various stores/building. When clicked, a layer would appear, covering 80-90% of the background. So, the background would just keep on keeping on, while learners interacted with the content on the layer.
Could it work with your set up?
That could work with my set up, if I expanded it. I used the news-room looking template (It has a name...but I forgot it) and put the animation in that little window.
It seems like it would be a pretty simple concept to make into reality
I would recommend grouping items in your timeline, from what I found with mine, the timeline gets pretty unruly, I had over 100 different images for rain drops to get the 'rain' effect.
Lol - I LOVE unruly timelines! But I think I'll avoid rain. A couple of birds would be nice though...
OK
I had never thought of doing this before...I think this is what you mean
Here's Story Lion....
I have created 2 x different master slides in the .story, each of which holds a full-page sized animated powerpoint slide, each of which was created in .ppt then saved to a Windows Media File
Story Lion and the v/o then just sits on the top.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4349561/Storylion_Animated%20background-test%20output/story.html
Bruce
Thanks Bruce -- great way to create that effect!
Thinking about this, you could almost create a "story within a story", there's a whole load of stuff now going around my brain re this
Bruce
Can I call you Will Shakespeare then? Or Hamlet?
It does open up ideas...my immediate need is for a simple learning map that feels more "alive" when learners are viewing it and deciding which elements they want to learn more about. But if you add in triggers and conditionals: gameification!
I imagine something like the menu of a DVD. There is always some action going on in the background with buttons that are 'clickable'. Depending on the button (play, menu, chapters...) sometimes the Menu will do something different.
Linked to Eric's post.....
I've not thought about this at all, and cannot try it @ moment as am in the middle of narrating a course on Ishikawa (Fishbone Diagrams...), but....wondering if it is possible in SL to tie STATES, (such as slide xx = visited) to change Master Slides?
I know this could be done manually, (as I have done here), but have the background master slides changing dynamically based on course progress?
Not sure where I'm going with this one....need to carry on voiceovering..
Bye
Bruce
Oh, snap, I need some creative/fool-around time to try some of these. It's crazy when you know it's possible, a couple of ways, and you just need time to play!
Here is an idea, that I think I am going to use for a later project... (conversations like this is why the Heroes site is the best place ever!!)
I have two projects that are coming up soon that this would work wonders on - Customer Service and Curb Appeal
For Customer Service, there are going to be minimum 3 modules:
Here is how I see this working...
This is beautiful in my mind, and difficult to write :(
Hope this is coherent
You can work with looping videos on slide masters a couple ways. The easiest is to insert a video or .swf file and add two triggers that tell the media to play when the media completes:
Play media (video 1) when the timeline starts
Play media (video 1) when the media (video 1) completes
Demo
Source
David -
Your method works great. I followed your advice. Like your files (Source), I had to put a "filter" over the video. I used a transparent rectangle. If I don't add the rectangel to cover the video on the slide master, users can click on it to play/pause the video.
Now, I am trying to work with a client on using a video from a streaming server as the background animation. I tried to Insert Video from website using an embed code, but the video, even on the bottom of the slide master, streams on the top of everything; so, there are no clickable areas!
I am trying to use a web object now. Hopefully it will stay in the background.
~Eric
Good morning,
I can't get this to work. Is this something that still working in Storyline?
Hi Michael,
I haven't applied the method, but I HAVE opened David's source file in SL2 and previewed it. Then I linked to his demo file and watched it. And it looks to me like it's working the same way in both. Perhaps he'll see this thread and provide a response. It's quite an old thread!
Hmm.
Just tried this myself in SL2, and could not get it to work.
Trying to get the background here to loop from the Master Slide. Tried it on just normal slide layer too and it would not loop.
Have I missed something in the control Triggers?
The problem with this is that even if you got it to loop correctly on one slide, it will still skip/restart when you go to another slide because storyline reloads the entire slide. So the video/animation would have to be kept simple like the background on my Street Fighter Demo. I've been wanting to do a project with a cinemagraphic background but haven't had a chance yet. I think this would be a cool feature.
I try not to mess with placing video on the master slide if I can avoid it. Try converting the video to an animated GIF, or use SWF instead.
I also sometimes create a pseudo-KenBurns effect with my backgrounds by setting a simple motion path that lasts 20 or so seconds and then goes back the other way...
GM,
Thanks for all your replies. I did get this to work although it won't work in preview. I was using a video I ripped from YouTube and that I edited in Adobe Premiere. I think the resolution of the video was too large for Storyline (No storyline 2 yet Goverment red tape). Once I encoded the video into WMA (yuck) it works. It won’t work in preview but it will run once you publish it. It is a little clunky on the replay (it freezes then jumps ahead a few seconds) but it works.
thank you david
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