64bit and Multithread Workloads for Storyline

Been hearing this for years. I'll believe it when I see it. In the meantime, I'll just keep my chin up while suffering the multiple Storyline crashes that will occur today. By the way my machine is built with some of the best hardware available today. It's definitely Storyline and not my rig.

OMG, this is so many years old and Storyline is the same. Do you have a road map or plan any improvements at all?

Hi, Dan.

While I don't have any news to share on the feature request for a 64bit version of Storyline, you can keep an eye on our feature roadmap here. 

Storyline is dead, no major updates, no new version, no Mac version, nothing on the roadmap, even the characters inside look like the year 2000. It seems that Articulate is just milking this as long as they can. The semi monopoly they have helps them do it. Shame! :read this as the GoT meme:

Articulate, what are you doing with the $1.5 billion raised last year? unfortunately the article doesn't raise the concern that the "easy to use software" is essentially unusable due to unlimited crashes per day.  I'm running a new i9, 64gb RAM, NVIDA A5000 trying to convert a Captivate course to Storyline at the customer's request (LMS issues). Captivate is just humming along, Articulate crashes no less than 4 times per hour. Only "solution" i recommend is to literally Save after every move, simply because of the randomness. It's funny because it's true.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/articulate-raises-1-5-billion-110000414.html

Sadly I think that unless Microsoft drops support for 32 bit applications in WIndows 11 we're unlikely to see something that would be as costly to implement as a 64 bit version any time soon.

Unfortunately I think this is a side-effect of the subscription business model, where building new features is a higher priority than fixing underlying technical issues. I imagine there's been a cost-benefit analysis where they've calculated that new features will help attract new subscriptions, and likely offset any subs that are lost by users leaving for other software due to technical problems.

If Storyline were still primarily a standalone purchase then I imagine that in order to release a new version to the market it would need to be 64bit to compete with everything else out there, but the inertia of having all the existing subscriptions for 360 means there probably isn't the appetite for making that big a change.

I think you may be on to something.  They just implemented all the nonsensical (at least to me) 3D image capability that maybe 5% of their users are ever going to use - while 100% of their users would love to see a dramatic increase in productivity and reliability a 64-bit environment would offer.

I have been reading now so many discussions with this complaint, and it looks as if they don't give a sh*t. 

The frustrations you get from losing your work because you can not save. The crashes all the time; it drives you crazy.

It works well with small projects, but the moment you go to a 100Mb project, the nightmare starts.

2023 and still no 64-bit version.

It seems they do not want to invest in it anymore but they are still asking for a lot of money for the license—very disappointing and lousy customer service.

Alan Sodenkamp

"I have been reading now so many discussions with this complaint, and it looks as if they don't give a sh*t."

I would tend to agree. Come on Articulate, get on this!!  This should be PRIORITY ONE!!!

I imagine that Rise is now the 'priority one' unfortunately - no need to worry about redeveloping the software from scratch for a new OS version if it's all browser-based!

At one point I did have quite a bit of crashing since I was experiencing the Intel issue, but they eventually fixed it and I have had zero crashing since then. I don't think the lack of 64bit support would result in crashing, so I would continue to follow up with them to troubleshoot your issue. In my experience, their actual customer support has been great. It's the lack of software engineering development that I 100% agree with you on. Two different things though.

Lack of 64 bit support means the software is massively limited in the amount of RAM it can address in your system - depending on how many other 32bit apps you have running this could be less than 2gb. With larger projects you can quickly hit that limit and then find the software hanging and crashing, meanwhile most modern PCs will have 16gb+ of free RAM that is going unused but can't be accessed by a 32bit application.

Just because a program is 32 bit running on a 64 bit system, does not mean it will crash. If that was the case we would have many more reports of crashing. I work with very large files and have zero crashing, post the Intel bug fix. 

"Typical causes include accessing invalid memory addresses, incorrect address values in the program counter, buffer overflow, overwriting a portion of the affected program code due to an earlier bug, executing invalid machine instructions (an illegal opcode), or triggering an unhandled exception." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(computing)#:~:text=Typical%20causes%20include%20accessing%20invalid,or%20triggering%20an%20unhandled%20exception.

I agree that not having it written in 64 bit can cause performance issues, but not crashing. I would continue to work with them to identify the actual root cause of your crashing. They did a remote desktop on my PC and confirmed it was the Intel bug. Once they fixed that, it's been smooth sailing.

But when Customer Support is running as little more than interference for an incapable or absent software engineering corps, there are only so many times CS will get good marks before the house of cards collapses.

Running incremental updates as sprints with little to no communication between sprint teams does get regular, incremental fixes into the pipeline and buys time, but only so much time. Unless Articulate is willing (let's be brutally honest, capable) to do a ground-up rewrite of Storyline as a 64-bit native app, this conversation will continue until Microsoft drops the last of 32-bit support in its OS.

Adobe appears to be having its own issues, considering how long Project Charm, the new version of Captivate, has been going on. Their development model is very similar to Articualte's, with the exception of a standoffish attitude to the user-base which dates back LONG before they bought their way into the eLearning game. With Adobe's Lead eLearning Evangelist no longer a part of the organization, I'm pessimistic if Captivate 20/21/22/23 will ever see the light of day.

Hey Mke,

Would you please post a link to the intel bug fix you're referring to? 

thx

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/storyline-on-11gen-intel-processor-with-iris-xe-graphics

Thanks Mike!  I've got a NVIDA A5000, it can handle running Premiere Pro, AE, and Cinema 4D simultaneously ... but not Articulate running alone ... it literally just stops, often without the crash report popup, just disappears ...  company IT folks say RAM issue from 32 bit restrictions on a 64-bit machine - I've got 64 GB ram, but captivate maxes at 2, for what that's worth.

Good luck everyone!

Your welcome. I'd open up a ticket with their support team on your specific issue and have them do some debugging to narrow down the issue. Doesn't mean they will fix it anytime soon, but at least they will be aware, and hopefully work on fixing it in the future.

Yah, good idea, thanks and enjoy the day!

Hi Everyone!

Great news! I'm happy to share that we just released Storyline 360 (version 3.82.31354.0), which includes a new 64-bit version of Storyline 360! Harness the processing power in modern computers with 64-bit Storyline 360. Large, media-rich courses benefit from increased stability and faster performance!

To use 64-bit Storyline 360, please update your Articulate 360 desktop app, then click the Install button next to the Storyline 360 app with the 64-bit and beta labels. The Install button will change to an Open button when the installation is complete.

This was highly requested, so we hope it serves you in your course creation! If you run into any snags, don't hesitate to contact our team in a support case.

5 years and 3 companies later, about time!

I would love a deeper dive into how the processes within storyline are shared between cores, so we can better improve our workflows.

I put together a powerhouse PC a few months ago (Intel i9-13900K, 96GB RAM, Gen 4 PCIE SSDs, 12GB GPU, etc.), hopeful that Articulate 360 would run faster, and it does to an extent, but because of the 32-bit limitations, it was only going to improve somewhat. I just installed the 64-bit version, hoping that things would fly. Sadly, the improvements in Save and Publish times are quite modest.

I will note that for the most part, I rarely had any crashes with the 32-bit version. 

Here's some rudimentary testing I did for some sample courses I've been working on (values are elapsed seconds)

Hi Bill!

Thank you for the detailed feedback!

We appreciate you taking the time to share those specifications with the community. We're always looking to improve our products for our users, so I've notified our Storyline product team as well.

Have a great rest of your week!