2014-15 elearning audio/video/graphics/bandwidth/html5 standards

Nov 26, 2014

Hello Everyone,

I am looking for some "expert" advice from the Articulate community.

I have been tasked by my company to our elearning courses into Storyline 2 courses. Before attempting the conversion, I am trying to gain a better understanding of the web technologies involved today in delivering non-flash courseware to the broadest audience possible.

Can anyone point me to any standards that address optimizing audio, video and graphics for web delivery in today's world of all things Internet?

For instance, I plan on outputting to HTML5 and using mp3s/mp4s/gifs/jpeg/pngs, but I am not current on designing for optimal settings/file size maximums/compression/codecs, etc. for the media.

I am also not up-to-date on how to determine:

  • the overall file size of my storyline project once published
  • how my storyline pages are served to the users onced published
  • or the approx. bandwidth  required for published course

Thank you all in advance.
Any guidence/direction is much appreciated.

StPeteISD

 

3 Replies
Brett Rockwood

At risk of over simplification  you don't need to really worry too much about optimizing your files. Storyline does a pretty fine job of doing it for you when you publish the file. I would err to using higher res images than necessary and letting SL re sample to the proper resolution.

the overall story file size is going to vary considerably depending on what your content is. Video/audio and large graphics can quickly increase the file size over a simple text-based course.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Suresh, 

There isn't a one size fits all approach, as it'll depend on many factors.

For example, will these courses be mostly text or media heavy with a lot of images, audio, or videos to load? Storyline does preload content as detailed here, so that should help with loading of media assets, especially if you space them out every few slides.

You'll also want to check that users are viewing a course on a supported browser. What version of Storyline are you using? You'll see the Storyline 3 system requirements here which would give you a sense of what learners would need regarding browser version to view a course. 

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