Animated GIF playback

Hi Ashley,

I'm not importing them from Powerpoint. I'm creating them as custom animations in another program. I'll submit a support case as you say.

Thanks!

Thanks L D - it sounds like a Support case will be the best option than! If you'd like to send me the case # once you've submitted it I can follow along and update the thread later. 

Here you go: Case #00348639

Thanks L D! I'm following along in your case and see that Jayem has identified what was happening with your files and that it's off to our QA team for review. 

Hi,

Is there any update on this issue?

I'm experiencing the same problem.

Thanks.

Hi Aviv and welcome to E-Learning Heroes! I checked on the case mentioned above and this issue is still with our QA Team and I have no update to provide at this time.

Here is the workaround that was provided if you would like to try that:

In the meantime, I suggest converting your GIF into a video as a workaround. Here's one method that you can try out.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5692757_turn-animated-gif-avi-file.html 

I am also experiencing this issue. So far, I have tried to change the resolutions of the .gif files to see if that would make a difference. Has anything been discovered about this issue as of yet?

Hi Glenn,

It's still with our QA team, so I don't have any further information to offer. As Leslie mentioned the current workaround is to convert your GIF into a video file. 

I assume there is so no update on this (I'm also experiencing this issue with Articulate products)? If the animated GIF is converted to a video, is there a way to make the background transparent? (that's one of the really nice features about an animated GIF, is that it can have transparency which can then be layered on top of objects on the timeline).

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately I don't have any updates to share in regards to the animated gif and how it's looping within Storyline even though it was not set up as such. These threads are linked with the report filed with our QA team so that they're aware how many users are impacted by this issue. When there is additional information to share, we'll post here in the forums.

When will SL2 handle animated gifs correctly? I have created a simple 16 frame animation of an aircraft moving (plan view) through 90 degrees. The background is transparent. The movie has been created in Adobe Image Ready from a Photoshop layered file. It is set to play ONCE. 

This animated gif can be opened in any web browser and plays correctly once then stops on the final frame. 

When I insert it as an image into SL2 it loops continuously, preventing me from illustrating this single movement. Why does SL2 not respect the standard settings of a graphics format that has been around almost since the dawn of the internet? I used Authorware for 18 years and took this level of capability for granted.

Please don't ask me to submit a 'feature request'. I have submitted numerous 'requests' since 2012 for 'features' that should really be standard functions and not one has ever been implemented. 

When will SL2 handle animated gifs correctly?

I have created a simple 16 frame animation of an aircraft moving (plan view) through 90 degrees. The background is transparent. The movie has been created in Adobe Image Ready from a Photoshop layered file. It is set to play ONCE and stop. 

This animated gif can opens perfectly in any web browser and plays correctly once, then stops on the final frame. 

When I insert it as an image into SL2 it loops continuously, preventing me from illustrating this single movement. Why does SL2 not respect the playback settings of a graphics format that has been around almost since the dawn of the internet? I used Authorware for 18 years and took this level of capability for granted. 

Please don't ask me to submit a 'feature request'. I have submitted numerous 'requests' since 2012 for 'features' that should really be standard functions and not one has ever been implemented. 

Examples of what I have asked for since early 2012 ...

-  Can't jump straight to a cue point on the timeline
- Can't Pause or Stop the currently playing audio (rather than pause/play/stop named files)
- No direct access to variables such as the date, time, eased time from a start point without resorting to JavaScript
- Don't encrypt the externally-held media files we insert into SL2 (mp3, mp4, etc.) as unintelligible names. If SL2 retained a file's original name we could replace it with an updated file without re-publishing SL.
- No program control over the size and position of an object (from variables we set)
- Poor support for images placed in a scrolling text panel - images reduce in size and have to be chopped up and placed manually in a vertical sequence. If I have a graphic exported from Adobe Acrobat that is 800 pixels wide and 10,000 pixels high, please let the image stay that size and extend the scroll bar to accommodate it. It doesn't do this.
- No proper control over the size and style of text in the SL menu panel. This data is all there buried in an xml file after publishing so why not let us actually help people with poor eyesight? You pay lip service to accessibility by not providing this facility.
- No 'Object Library' to enable many slides to reference and display a single (editable) instance of a graphic, audio or video file.
- No control over the start and end frame numbers of a video
- No way of interrogating a video to find out what frame it is currently at

Hi Tim. 

The issue with animated GIF files is a known issue. Based on the status it does appear that this is an issue we will try to address though I can't say for certain when. As a workaround you could convert the file to MP4 and use that. 

Regarding your previously submitted feature requests, we do appreciate them though we cannot make any guarantees if or when a feature request would be implemented. 

Anybody have any ideas for maintaining the transparency of my gif's?  Doesn't look like SL2 supports transparent avi's.

The only thing you can do that I have had to do with short animated gif files is convert the gif into a series of png files as they have the transparency option. Flash CC does it quick and easy with movie clips! It's a lot of work reassembling them though! But you can get the results you want. I had to do it with Captivate 7 as well as that also didn't support the non-looping issue (which is a whole other problem I ran into with animated gifs).

The plus side of SL2 is that you can use cue points to set the exact length of time that your individual png files to show for. This way they can be nice and short if you want it to move through the frames fast. But it is a tedious process.

Thanks Daniel!  Yeah, that sounds suuuuuper tedious.  Interesting little workaround though.   I wonder if anybody else has a fix we can use on a larger scale.  

What I'm reaaaally trying to do is insert an after effects animation with transparency into storyline.  I was thinking turning it into a gif was the only way to go, but now I'm not so sure.  

I would love to see them put a feature into SL that converts your gif files into a sequence of png files and keeps them lined up and grouped so they could be easily moved from one project to another.

Heck, I'd even settle for gif files that work.  ;)

I hear ya. I have had issues though with gif files in the past playing weird in different browsers. And that had nothing to do with SL or other issues other than the browser itself. I figured that compiling a bunch of png files in SL would fix those issues since transparent png files have never given me issues.

Hi Dan and Daniel,

I did want to chime in here that our Quality Assurance team is aware of an issue where Storyline has some inconsistencies with the animated gif and transparency, but it seems specific to the HTML5 output. Are you both having difficulty with this in Flash as well? If you'd like to share a copy of your course with us, we're happy to take a look and you can upload it here using the "add attachment" button. We'd likely want to see the .gif and the .story file. You can also send it along to our team here if you need to share privately. 

Thanks for the info Ashley! I have always been curious to as if animated GIF issues stemmed more from HTML5 then anything else. I'm not having a problem at present but have experimented with them in the past. I already submitted a request for something like what I described above a few posts back to the feature request. It would be amazing if SL could convert swf animations into HTML5! But I know it's a tough feature to implement.

Thanks Daniel - and if you do run into a future problem you can always share with our Support engineers here or reach out again in the forums. We can then take a look and determine if it matches a known issue, but can also report to our Quality Assurance team if it's something new.  Thanks for also submitting your ideas as a feature request! 

Hi all,

I wanted to provide an update here, as Storyline 2 Update 10 was just released, and included a number of fixes which you can see in the release notes available here. The items you all may be particularly interested in are the following:  Fixed issue where a non-looping GIF would unexpectedly loop in Storyline and it fixed the issue where an animated GIF wouldn't always start playing at the beginning of the animation when it appeared on the slide. 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.