Random Lockups and Poor Video Quality in Published Course
Jan 22, 2014
Hi All,
I have a course that was converted from Articulate 9 to 13. The videos are substantially degraded from their camtasia original outputs even after setting the quality settings in the publish dialog to higher quality in the video setting. In addtion, the course freezes for quite some time while the video loads, which is different that the behavior in 09.
I've also noticed freezing when clicking on various slides in the course. I'm sitting on a VPN connected to a corporate WAN with a dedicated business cable connection sitting at 15Mbs, and don't have this issue with the course when published in 09. I also don't remember the videos being this degraded.
This is probably a buffering issue, but did Articulate change the way slides are loaded in the new version? Before I believe that videos inserted into a screen might take some time to load, but the slide hosting the video would load immediately. I'd rather the learner look at the slide so they don't think the course has locked up on them.
Thoughts?
Mike
3 Replies
Hey Michael!
Are you still having this issue after you corrected your install as you reported here?
I output the course using my good install of Articulate on my personal machine, then copied it over to the corporate machine to ftp to our test server. I think it's actually an issue with our internal test server. The course plays fine now in our SharePoint environment. It's a little laggy but much better.
I think the problem is that the new output of Articulate separates the MP3 files from the slide content, where in 09 the audio was integrated into the SWF files that were created from the PowerPoint. The test server we use might have something set up for MP3 audio streaming that manages bandwidth, which I think is the culprit. If we get it figured out I'll post on here again as to the root cause. That way if anyone else runs into this problem they can check it out.
I found the article about the video quality. I'm playing with replacing the files, but I will say I was shocked at how much compression happened even with the "higher quality" video setting. It really degraded the screencasts. Hopefully you all will look at that a bit more. Maybe someone could post some optimization hints?
Thanks!
Hi Michael! Thanks for your update!
I would appreciate you sharing your findings with the community, and that is what makes this group awesome!
Yes, video quality is something that is on our radar. Technology is quickly changing and many of our users would like uncompressed options due to bandwidth no longer being an issue for many.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.