Flash Video doesn't go full screen once pubished on LMS

Jan 11, 2012

James Brandwood
By James Brandwood

I have been working on this problem on and off for over a month now and finished the last module in a course today and decided to sit down and figure it out - I spent a few hours on it, luckily paid hours because it is a work problem.

What is happening is that when I publish a module made in Articulate on an LMS the first time you open up a flash video (any flash video in any of the modules) it doesn't open up to full size - probably about 3/4 size starting from the top left corner. The video isn't truncated or anything it's just smaller than it should be.

Then if I let it play out or close it down (I use tabs/hyperlinks that point to other points in the presentation a lot) and then open up the same flash video or any other flash video in the module it opens up to the correct size. If I close down the whole module and open it or any other module from the LMS it repeats the fault the first time flash video is played.

This occurs regardless of the settings in 'Player Template' - I have tried browsers current size, optimal size, full screen; I've tried launching presentation in a new window, displaying controls or not and all combinations of those options.

I've gone back to the source of the flash video and re-sized it, trying it's original size (860xsomething), also the best size for Presenter with no side bar which is 813xsomething and the best size for Presenter with a side bar 720x540 (from memory). I've re-sized when inserting into PowerPoint too <-- In the end I must say resizing flash video downwards doesn't seem to effect the quality so if you insert it at whatever size it is and just re-size it to fit onto the slide it will be fine.

I've change the quality of the flash video in and out of the source and Presenter.

I've published it as SCORM 2004 and as SCORM 1.2

I've tried it on 2 different LMS  - but the kicker is that when I publish to LMS in Articulate and 'View Output' the problem doesn't occur (Publish to CD is fine too), it is only after it has been placed onto the LMS and it is only the first time a flash video is played in the module that it opens too small, all subsequent flash videos open full size.

I was thinking internet explorer problem but I have tried it on IE7 and IE9 - and no my work said no to getting firefox, something about security issues.

I had decided to get around this by having flash videos open in a new window - which does alleviate the problem of trying to fit software simulations on a PowerPoint size slide and I may keep doing that but it is all the other places that you would put flash that would be a problem (I often video capture powerpoint transitions so I can insert them as a swf and get around the annoying fact that Articulate hasn't got transitions).

Anyway I'm sorry for writing a thesis but I have run out of ideas, aside from making people only watch training modules from a great distance so they don't notice the change in size.

All help would be appreciated.

16 Replies
James Brandwood
over 12 years ago01/11/12 at 11:25 am (UTC)

Yes I have contacted my LMS and also have been trying to figure it out on Scorm Cloud - neither support groups could help.

I sent the module to my LMS and they were able to replicate the fault, but I don't think all the time - they aren't great communicators and when they couldn't figure it out, just said they didn't know why it was happening. But since it happened on 2 different LMS' I was thinking maybe it's not the LMS.

James Brandwood
over 12 years ago01/12/12 at 9:28 pm (UTC)

I may be talking to myself here but if anyone else has this problem in the future I have worked around it.

On your first slide place a small flash player video that is the same background as the slide and where it won't interfere with what's going on in your slide - I used Articulate Video Encoder to trim down and crop an existing wmv I had to be about 1 second long and about 90x90 pixels.

Then because this fault only happens the first time flash is played the fault will occur on this tiny flash video, which you won't see because it is the colour of the background. After that all of your other flash videos will work fine.

Mike Hipsher
12 years ago04/09/12 at 5:55 am (UTC)

I have a similar problem with my published content.  I don't use flash video in my courses, just interactions, and when I publish to the LMS (we use Taleo) the presentation doesn't fit to window and multiple scroll bars appear. Scroll bars on the bottom scroll bars on the side.  It's very frustrating for the users and looks very unprofessional.  I've tried different setting (all of them I think) and nothing worked.  I contacted  the LMS host but they are at a loss.  I'm open to ideas.  Thank you.

Ann Sisco
12 years ago04/09/12 at 6:27 am (UTC)

I have the same issue with a course published with two embedded SWFs.  The first SWF appears smaller than the size specified, but the second SWF appears at the correct size.  When i navigate back to the first SWF, it then appears at the correct size as well.  But closing the course and reopening it shows the same sizing issue all over again.  I have seen this when running this course on one of our regular web servers as well as one of our LMSs.  I'm going to try the workaround that James suggests using a dummy SWF file.  Fingers crossed...

James Brandwood
12 years ago04/09/12 at 7:02 pm (UTC)

Hi Justin

The article you link to would seem to set changes to all video inserted into a module. If the issue is that only the first video shown is too small (or big I guess in Mike's case - though that does seem like a different issue) then what effect do you think doing something like 'Modify the Published Output' would have on the videos that opened at the correct size? Will it make them too big or would they max out in size in Articulate and be the right size?

Ann Sisco
12 years ago04/10/12 at 5:22 am (UTC)

Hi, James-- Adding a dummy SWF file to the first slide did fix the issue i was seeing on our LMS.  I have one more LMS to test on and hope that this shows the same results.  I am running in IE 8.

Justin, the article you referenced was interesting and would seem to state the issue -- running in IE and in Slide View -- but I could only edit the HTML and that didn't work.  Using MP4, republishing the Flash or switching the views are not options for me on this project.

Ann Sisco
12 years ago04/10/12 at 6:13 am (UTC)

Tested on second LMS (the target LMS) and both SWFs are scaled smaller than they should be in IE 8, the target browser.  This version does have a dummy scaled SWF on the first slide.  My presentation uses a custom player which essentially plays the whole course in Slide View with custom navigation.  I've got it set to expand to full screen upon launch, so the presentation is scaling up.  I ran the course in FireFox just to see, and sure enough, it plays both SWFs at the correct sizes on both LMSs.  So definitely not scaling correctly in IE in this environment.

Curiously, I've got the same behavior (both SWFs scaled smaller) when running in IE on a non-LMS web server.  Again FireFox looks fine.  Going to play with this version to see if I can affect the results.

Justin Wilcox
12 years ago04/10/12 at 6:25 am (UTC)

Hi Ann. I know you are saying that you can't modify the SWF or the view but those are really your options here that I can see. If you recreate the Flash movie so that you don't have to scale it in PowerPoint, this issue won't occur. If you change the view, this issue won't occur. If you can't change the view, you need to use the movie at its original dimensions. If you can't use the movie at its original dimensions, you need to change the view.

Ann Sisco
12 years ago04/10/12 at 9:02 am (UTC)

Ah but I've hit upon a work-around that will allow me to keep the view at Slide only, scale the SWFs, and still work in both IE and FireFox on an LMS or regular web server...

On each of the slides where I want a scaled SWF, I created a Web Object and sized/positioned it to fit the area I wanted.  I point the Web Object to an HTML page I created (one for each SWF), where I scale the SWF to height and width of 100%.  I include the following style to maximize the area of the HTML that the SWF can take up.


html, body {
padding:0;
margin:0;
height:100%
}

Each SWF scales to fill the HTML which fills the Web Object space.  The SWFs properly scale when the browser is resized.  Since the HTML is actually handling the scaling, this method is not affected by the IE/Slide Only/Scaling SWFs bug.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.