Animating in Storyline

Hi Harold, 

I haven't run into the same issue, but I don't handle as much editing of animation and audio within files. I did want to ask a few questions that could help your editing process or identify any issues I can report to our team. 

1. Is this while using the timeline play button vs. the preview button in the ribbon? I know some folks have experienced slowness there. That's an area our team has on their radar. You mentioned it didn't start automatically, and I'm not clear on that piece? Is that the slowness/caching that you're seeing? 

2. The timeline header can be moved to choose where you'll start the playback, but it won't change what is shown on the slide at that exact moment. With the storyline slide and timeline, you'll see everything shown unless you choose to hide it with the 👁 icon. 

3. Transitions are slide to slide, while animations occur on the slide itself. Since a transition is between two slide, there isn't anything that appears on the slide itself or timeline to indicate that. 

Some other general questions:

• what version and update of Storyline are you using? 
• when you and your colleagues share files, do you download them and save locally? Working from a network or shared drive is known to cause some odd behaviors.
• how often do you close out of Storyline? are other applications running while you see the slow performance? 

Ashley, 

 

Thanks for your reply. Please find my comments below. 

1. Is this while using the timeline play button vs. the preview button in the ribbon? I know somefolks have experienced slowness there. That's an area our team has on their radar. You mentioned it didn't start automatically, and I'm not clear on that piece? Is that the slowness/caching that you're seeing? 

It occurs while using the timeline play button. The preview button of the audio works like a charm. The only thing is that I always have to select a part of the timeline before I can play this part of the timeline. Then it needs to "pre-load" the part prior to playing it. This is not fluid or realtime which makes timing very difficult. 

 

2. The timeline header can be moved to choose where you'll start the playback, but it won't change what is shown on the slide at that exact moment. With the storyline slide and timeline, you'll see everything shown unless you choose to hide it with the 👁 icon. 

This is indeed what is happening to me also. I must say that if this is not a bug I find it really weird. For instance, if I have an animation and on 1sec. a ball starts bouncing until 5 sec. after that it disappears and I place the header on 10 second. I don't want to see the ball on the slide. This because at time it should not be on the stage. Seems like basic animation features to me.  

 

3. Transitions are slide to slide, while animations occur on the slide itself. Since a transition is between two slide, there isn't anything that appears on the slide itself or timeline to indicate that. 

Ok, maybe weird but this is something I did not know ;). And every animation on a object should be marked with a star on the slide? Because if so I have the idea that this is not always the case. Especially when grouping objects. Probably a major change on storyline, but it would be a real improvement if the timeline would work more like "other" animation software with keyframes on the timeline. This would work a lot more efficient. 

 

Some other general questions:

• what version and update of Storyline are you using? 

We all work with identical "high" performance laptops. We use storyline 360 v  3.19.16600.0 
and we check for updates on a regular basis. 

• when you and your colleagues share files, do you download them and save locally? Working from a network or shared drive is known to cause some odd behaviors.

All of our files are stored on the network. But before working on the files we all copy the files to our desktops before editing the files. Although I find it strange that an application with so much users can't operate properly from a network.

• how often do you close out of Storyline? are other applications running while you see the slow performance? 

Of course we have other applications running like outlook. But the general performance of Storyline is OK-ish. It's just the timeline that is not running realtime which makes animation difficult in my opinion. 

I surely hope as well that my findings are read by other people. Because I do want to give articulate feedback on their software. But if my workflow could be improved and achieving the same result I'd like to know. 

Kind regards

Harold

 

 

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback Harold.

One additional thing I wanted to note, regarding your #2 request above is that this is a feature request we are tracking and I've added this conversation to the report as well so that we can pop in here and update you when we can.

Leslie, 

Thanks for the update. Can't wait to see some (positive) changes on these matters. 

Kind regards, 

Harold Lentink

Hi Harold,

I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 66, we’ve included important fixes and new features.

One of the features we’ve included is:

Scrub the timeline to quickly see when timed elements appear and disappear on the stage without previewing the entire slide.

To take advantage of this update, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here.

Please let me know if you need additional help!