Unusual one for you today. We are noticing a slight increase in audio volume in engage slides when published into a presenter 13 presentation. As in, the normal presenter slides play as normal at one volume, & when the player advances to the engage slide, the volume is higher. Its not a huge difference, but enough to be noticeable. We have verified that theres no problem with the original audio files, & has been noticed independently by several people. Im wonder if this is intentional, & if there is a way to turn this off or is it a bug?
More information for you to pass onto the QA team... Engage interactions that are Media tours with MP4 video files embedded are not affected by the volume increase, only interactions where voice recordings are made within Engage for FAQ elements etc. etc.
We don't have an update to share on this particular issue, and since we can't offer a timeframe I'd recommend utilizing the workarounds mentioned here or another method so that you can share and publish your content.
Ashley, the workarounds are useless to us... For example.. We provide 5 training programs, each have at least 50 engage interactions with many elements within them .. This means approx 250 Engage items, 10 to 20 elements / audio within them - so approx 1000 volume edits ... We then publish this and the volumes will sound ok when using Flash, but too quiet when people use HTML5 ... It's a no win situation hence I keep posting... Otherwise I'd just get on with the workarounds but there really are not reasonable options, is this issue escalated with the QA team as I know I'm not the only one with the problems here...?
Yes, we have shared the comments and information here with the QA team for their continued work and review, but as I mentioned I can't share an update or timeframe for when we'll have information to share in regards to the potential fix.
Just another group (6 of us here) chiming in. Need to get this fixed at some point as we have many users on both flash and HTML5 platforms and can't have different experiences for them. Engage is pretty much useless to us right now.
Per our offline chat this has definitely reached the proper people on this end and is being addressed as part of a larger audio optimization effort. At this point I do not have an update on release timing.
The volume and quality change is totally unacceptable to our customers, so it was a fairly easy decision for us... we've totally stopped using Engage. As we go through revisions on existing presentations, we usually decide to remove the Engage interactions and present the content in another way.
Maybe someday Articulate will fix it. Maybe not. It has been nearly two years, after all.
Investing so much time and effort into recording quality audio only to have it crushed with over-aggressive compression and pushed to inconsistent levels is a disappointment on every project I produce.
Requesting an update, as we are having the exact same issue with Engage. We are in the midst of purchasing 5 additional licenses. If the Engage sound problem is not fixed, then I will not purchase Engage at all, as it is entirely too time consuming to sound edit every small interaction rendering the product useless. The sound differences are notices by all and makes the overall product seem sloppy and unprofessional.
This issue is being addressed as part of a larger audio optimization effort. At this point I do not have an update on release timing, although all subscribers to this thread will be notified of any further developments.
Hi, I just read through this thread, and wanted to see if there was an update to this issue, since the last update was 9 months ago.
We are about to develop a number of new trainings, so if there isn't a fix to this audio issue, we will avoid using Engage for future trainings.
I am working on a training right now, and experienced the same volume equalization challenge between Engage and Presenter that others have talked about. Unfortunately, the workaround for increasing the volume of the other slides won't work, for reasons that others have mentioned, as well as the fact that it makes a buzzing sound in the background. Thanks for your help, in advance.
Thanks for the update. Did Articulate choose to implement this bugfix in a way that won't break everyone's existing projects (in which interaction audio has already been adjusted to proper levels)?
If you had manually adjusted your audio levels there is not a way we could know and account for that, so the fix will adjust the audio level default of Engage to match that of Presenter.
73 Replies
More information for you to pass onto the QA team... Engage interactions that are Media tours with MP4 video files embedded are not affected by the volume increase, only interactions where voice recordings are made within Engage for FAQ elements etc. etc.
Hi Graham,
We don't have an update to share on this particular issue, and since we can't offer a timeframe I'd recommend utilizing the workarounds mentioned here or another method so that you can share and publish your content.
Ashley, the workarounds are useless to us... For example.. We provide 5 training programs, each have at least 50 engage interactions with many elements within them .. This means approx 250 Engage items, 10 to 20 elements / audio within them - so approx 1000 volume edits ... We then publish this and the volumes will sound ok when using Flash, but too quiet when people use HTML5 ... It's a no win situation hence I keep posting... Otherwise I'd just get on with the workarounds but there really are not reasonable options, is this issue escalated with the QA team as I know I'm not the only one with the problems here...?
Cheers, Graham
Hi Graham,
Yes, we have shared the comments and information here with the QA team for their continued work and review, but as I mentioned I can't share an update or timeframe for when we'll have information to share in regards to the potential fix.
Just another group (6 of us here) chiming in. Need to get this fixed at some point as we have many users on both flash and HTML5 platforms and can't have different experiences for them. Engage is pretty much useless to us right now.
Anything happening on this Ashley? Any feedback from the QA team? Cheers...
Hi Graham,
Per our offline chat this has definitely reached the proper people on this end and is being addressed as part of a larger audio optimization effort. At this point I do not have an update on release timing.
Thanks,
Brian
"Articulate forces audio volumes to wildly inconsistent levels" strikes me as more of an urgent bugfix than a discretionary future update.
Well said Andy... :)
Nothing on this yet?
j
Is there a fix for this issue yet?
Hi Meadow,
There is not any additional information to share at this time. Once we do have information to share we'll include an update here in the forum thread.
The volume and quality change is totally unacceptable to our customers, so it was a fairly easy decision for us... we've totally stopped using Engage. As we go through revisions on existing presentations, we usually decide to remove the Engage interactions and present the content in another way.
Maybe someday Articulate will fix it. Maybe not. It has been nearly two years, after all.
j
Investing so much time and effort into recording quality audio only to have it crushed with over-aggressive compression and pushed to inconsistent levels is a disappointment on every project I produce.
Requesting an update, as we are having the exact same issue with Engage. We are in the midst of purchasing 5 additional licenses. If the Engage sound problem is not fixed, then I will not purchase Engage at all, as it is entirely too time consuming to sound edit every small interaction rendering the product useless. The sound differences are notices by all and makes the overall product seem sloppy and unprofessional.
Sorry that you have experienced this issue Elizabeth, but unfortunately I do not have an update to provide.
Do we have an update on this issue yet?
Good Afternoon, Chadi.
This issue is being addressed as part of a larger audio optimization effort. At this point I do not have an update on release timing, although all subscribers to this thread will be notified of any further developments.
Hi, I just read through this thread, and wanted to see if there was an update to this issue, since the last update was 9 months ago.
We are about to develop a number of new trainings, so if there isn't a fix to this audio issue, we will avoid using Engage for future trainings.
I am working on a training right now, and experienced the same volume equalization challenge between Engage and Presenter that others have talked about. Unfortunately, the workaround for increasing the volume of the other slides won't work, for reasons that others have mentioned, as well as the fact that it makes a buzzing sound in the background. Thanks for your help, in advance.
Hi Brittany
Yes, this is still the case in Engage - so you'd have to continue using the workaround in the meantime.
Please know that we'll update this thread once we're able to share the additional information.
Hi all,
I wanted to provide an update here, as Studio ‘13 Update 8 was just released, and included a number of fixes which you can see in the release notes available here. The item you all may be particularly interested in is how it fixed an issue where Engage '13 interactions embedded in a Presenter '13 course are louder than the rest of the course. You can download the latest update here, and after downloading and installing the latest update you’ll want to republish any existing content to ensure that the updates and fixes are applied.
Let us know if you have any questions, either here or by reaching out to our Support Engineers directly.
Thanks for the update. Did Articulate choose to implement this bugfix in a way that won't break everyone's existing projects (in which interaction audio has already been adjusted to proper levels)?
Hi Andy,
If you had manually adjusted your audio levels there is not a way we could know and account for that, so the fix will adjust the audio level default of Engage to match that of Presenter.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.