Been working hardcore in Storyline for a week now - all in all it's pretty cool, except the fact that it crashes often when i am pressing the space bar to preview my slides without actually clicking the preview button....if that makes any sense, haha.
It's happened 6 times today.
Maybe we're not really supposed to use that timeline feature? or maybe my project is kinda heavy asset wise
I have completed all of those steps (for about the third time since getting Storyline) and they have again made no improvement.
The slide I am currently working on has two highlight boxes, 2 pictures and a screen capture which goes for about 10 seconds but edited to only show 5. I previewed it 3 times while adjusting things and it crashed after the third preview.
Why Storyline struggles so much with previews, and has done across all updates truly amazes me. It is so unstable I actual don't expect it to work and I save before each preview.
On a side-note is anyone else still finding that if you move/change the timings for items aound on the timeline and then press preview that often the preview shows them where they were on the timeline - not where they have been moved to?
Yep, I still get the Save errors, too, even with the Update 2. I've had to give up and re-organize my entire project, learning the hassle of web objects to still give a semblance of seamlessness to the user.
I'm so sorry to hear that you've continued to run into issues after the update. We've had reports of improvements across the board from other members who had initially reported issues, so we'd love to get to the bottom of why you're continuing to experience difficulties. If you haven't already, could please send us a specific project that you're having trouble with? And once uploaded, give me the case number so I can have it escalated to our senior engineers. I think it's safe to say that we're just as eager to get this resolved as you are. Sorry again for the inconvenience, but we really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to help.
@Rebecca - Thanks for posting - I was beginning to think it was just.
@Brian,
I have been working away on my prject today and have been having less crash issues. The difference from yesterday to today being that today I am no longer inserting new screen recordings, except for when I was replacing some screen captures I didn't like - and that's one of the times it crashed.
Two points to consider here are that this means I have less software open and I am not jumping from inserting video - editing video - previewing video and saving.
I've also noticed I crash more often after the save error message comes up, which is usually after having been working for awhile.
All this leads me to believe perhaps I really am running out of memory and because Storyline is such a resource hog, when yo uask it to do something at these times it crashes where all the other software I am using is less resourse hungry and doesn't cash.
The computer I am using is a Dell Latitude E6240 (always plugged in)
Intel HD graphics 3000
i5 2.6ghz processor (sandy bridge I think)
32 bit Win 7
4g Ram
It would be interesting to know if anyone is running a similar computer and having issues, or not.
I've also run into crashing problems with Storyline but only when using the space bar to preview the timeline. It happens intermittently and I can't pinpoint anything in the project that might cause it. I'm not doing screen capture. It's simple animations using 3 to 7 cue points in the timeline. I will often be forced to close the program and restart. That usually takes care of it for a while, but it will eventually do it again.
It has happened on several different projects and my computer is running Windows 7 and has plenty of speed and memory. Not sure what causes it but, from reading this forum I can see I'm not alone.
I can no longer edit the action for screen recordings without Storyline freezing up. Each time I have to force close. Since this pertains to freezing and not crashing (which I think is more force closing), I'll create a different post with my issue.
I have to agree that is seems Update 2 kind of feels like a step backwards. Things that worked great are now feeling very shaky. I have tried to edit one single slide today and it has crashed twice. Of course i lost my work both times. I have had more crashes with update 2 than I ever did before. Even the beta test didn't crash this much.
I can no longer edit the action for screen recordings without Storyline freezing up. Each time I have to force close. Since this pertains to freezing and not crashing (which I think is more force closing), I'll create a different post with my issue.
Hi Lisa,
This sounds like a similar problem to me - all my issues revolve around preview but they seem to happen when i have been doing screen captures and editing.
Are yo udoing your edits right after (or wihin the same session) that you did the screen recordings in?... assuming yo uare editing you own screen recordings.
I've just had to go back to edit a previous training module due to a change in policy related to the content it covered.
The one slide it related to had a number of recorded screens (totalling 3.5 mins) on it and needed 6 shapes inserted to cover over part of the screen recording. I had to make these shapes appear and disapear at set times on the timeline. This sounds relatively easy and it should have been - In all Storyline crashed 5 times and because the timeline is inconsistent with when it says an object appears if you run the slide from the start of the slide or click part way down the timeline and press play I had to go in and out of slide previews to do adjustments.
I even shutdown and restarted my computer twice to ensure it wasn't really a memory problem.
An unbelievable waste of time - I've never heard of such an unstable function on any software as the preview function on Storyline. It is an absolute nightmare to use.
I have had a lot of crashing issues, as well. The other day I was working heavily in SL all day, and I think I experienced upwards of 30 crashes. Most of my crashes seem to occur when I am working in the timeline, and especially when I preview (either in the timeline or the full preview). Unlike James B, I have no screen captures, and at the time this happened most frequently I didn't even have audio imported yet. Many of my slides have a large number of objects on them, but I really don't think I'm asking the program to go above and beyond what it should be capable of.
Hi, I just had a similar problem. For the first 20 minutes or so of opening SL up it mostly works fine then begins to become more and more unresponsive. Just trying to edit simple text etc becomes a nightmare. When trying to highlight the text and then over type it the cursor is in one place but the typing begins on a different word. Trying to drag a mouse box around a group of objects it is also slow to respond. So nothing to do with Flash player, preview etc.
Anyway I have no video or large graphics, the whole project is under 12mb and it crashed when simply selecting a shadow effect on an image. This was on a slide with about 12 layers but nothing more than a few inserted shape, some text and a few graphics (of a small file size).
I have the 3rd release of Storyline and a laptop with an i7 processor, a solid state drive and saving everything to the C: drive and only PowerPoint and outlook running alongside.
I can't send you the actual file as it was when it crashed as the hours of very quick work I had put into it have been lost and there is no file recovery as such like in PowerPoint.
The error message simply stated "Articulate Storyline has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available"
Any thoughts as if this happens again i'll have no option other than to go back to Captivate and actually be able to complete a days work?
From your post I can see that you are working off your c:/ drive and you aren't able to send in the file to the support team, because as you said it was lost.
So the best advice I can offer is to save your work often. I know that's probably just annoying to hear but with Storyline's propensity to crash, I save every 5 mins or so, whenever I switch between slides and definately before I run a preview.
The other thing that helped was switching to a 64 bit machine (with a patch to enable the extra RAM to Storyline)). Storyline uses an absurd amount of RAM and doesn't give it back once it has it, making that extra RAM helps a lot. Now my previews normally only crash if I use a different program, come back to Storyline and press preview without having done something else on Storyline first.
If I were you I would definately try reinstalling Storyline first since your crases are being bought on by such easy tasks and not previews which is a well known problem with Storyline.
Thanks for your thoughts. Glad that you read my post in more detail than the paid Articulate staff..... perhaps a "did my reply help you" button beside their comments would sort that out
Got a new latptop this morning, reinstalled Storyline and so far so good. Biggest problem I have is having to switch bewtween different programs constantly when I am building my modules which, as you mentioned, seems to be when things like to go wrong with Storyline. As much as I like Storyline it's not a $5 app built to be run on a phone so I think it's fair to expect it to be a little better coded and behave properly with other standard and widley used software. I could understand if it had more functionality but it doesn't. It's easy to use but when your business (and your mortgage payments) are reliant on delivering to deadlines then it's just not commercialy viable to be relient on something that still has a Beta feel to it.
I'll wait for the next crash and i'll post a full system spec, all open applications and processes, .story file and a short summary of what was happening at the time of the next crash if it can help anyone else figure out the issue. Just for the record all my graphics, audio and video are customised to fit the size of the story and to play with high quality on anything up a 42" Plasma or pretty much any projector and I don't have any published files over 50mb. I do all the graphic, audio and video editing on a seperate machine and never have more than the usual MS Outlook and PowerPoint and a few smaller programmes running on a Win7 Pro laptop with an i7 and a solid state drive so it's not a spec issue or a file size issue (other than I guess when folks find it crashes in preview mode).
Hi Ian! I apologize for the oversight on my part, since that one piece of my suggestion did not apply to your case. Glad that James was able to assist you. If you continue to have difficulty, I would encourage you to work with support to try to understand where the issue lies.
Dear fellow Articulate Storyline users, I have lost hours of work when Storyline crashes. My team views this lack of an autosave feature. It is expensive, frustrating and stressful to work with the constant threat of loss. I'm really fed up and of course mad at myself to be so much in the 'zone' that I completely forgot it's on me to do all the saves.
I worked as the eLearning expert at a software company for almost 10 years, and know what goes into the decisions for new software features. Our applications all had autosave however while I was there we created a new product and to my surprise, it did not autosave. For one reason or another it did not make it into the software as released. A few months later, a customer with multiple copies had huge problems when our software crashed and data were lost. My Sr. VP spoke with our programers and within days we released an update that autosaved. Our software was complex which leades me to believe it was similar in scope to Articulate Storyline, and yet the feature was added fairly quickly. That said, I've read that the concern was that users would object to the few seconds of delay that a periodic autosave process might cause.
Once again today I lost hours of my work including edited audio that I CHOSE to edit in Storyline; this means the cleanded up files no longer exist.
Let's stop being so passive. Is there a place we could take a poll to see how many users WANT autosave? (Yes, make it optional for users to elect or not).
Our team keeps track of all the feature requests that come in and uses those when looking to what new features to include and their priority. I don't have information to offer in terms of where an autosave feature stands in terms of how many requests have been submitted, but I would suggest that if you haven't done so already, to submit it here with those exact reasons for why and what impact it has on building your courses as this will get to our development team.
It would be much easier if we could vote on various ideas, rather than having to submit them so many times individually. I know there are many features I have wanted, but haven't wanted to spend the time submitting. A voting system like GetSatisfaction would help people like me as well as offer visibility on popularity. If I submit a request and no one else votes for it, then I can intuit that it's pretty narrow and I'm not likely to see it implemented.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on feature requests. We currently do not make feature requests public but that is certainly something we can consider.
I have been crashing all day today. I must be up to 20 or more times now. I completed the update, and that did not fix the issue. Pretty much most crashes happen when trying to preview slide or using the play button on the timeline to sync items and audio. Limited amount of items on slide, mostly text on some right now. I will go open a ticket too.
I see that you were working on this with Miker, (Case # 00415064 for my reference) and were unable to replicate the error/crashing again this AM. You shared that you'd be working on the project again next week and would try and gather the information for him then.
Thanks for connecting with our team and we'll continue to follow along!
Articulate crashes every time I try to add or edit audio. It was working fine this morning. I came back after lunch and tried to record some audio. The application freezes when the recorder counts down to 1 second. Once that happens, the application stops responding. I have to go through Task Manager to close the application. I have tried several times and crashed each time.
119 Replies
HI Brian,
I have completed all of those steps (for about the third time since getting Storyline) and they have again made no improvement.
The slide I am currently working on has two highlight boxes, 2 pictures and a screen capture which goes for about 10 seconds but edited to only show 5. I previewed it 3 times while adjusting things and it crashed after the third preview.
Why Storyline struggles so much with previews, and has done across all updates truly amazes me. It is so unstable I actual don't expect it to work and I save before each preview.
On a side-note is anyone else still finding that if you move/change the timings for items aound on the timeline and then press preview that often the preview shows them where they were on the timeline - not where they have been moved to?
Yep, I still get the Save errors, too, even with the Update 2. I've had to give up and re-organize my entire project, learning the hassle of web objects to still give a semblance of seamlessness to the user.
Hi James and Rebecca,
I'm so sorry to hear that you've continued to run into issues after the update. We've had reports of improvements across the board from other members who had initially reported issues, so we'd love to get to the bottom of why you're continuing to experience difficulties. If you haven't already, could please send us a specific project that you're having trouble with? And once uploaded, give me the case number so I can have it escalated to our senior engineers. I think it's safe to say that we're just as eager to get this resolved as you are. Sorry again for the inconvenience, but we really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to help.
Thanks!
@Rebecca - Thanks for posting - I was beginning to think it was just.
@Brian,
I have been working away on my prject today and have been having less crash issues. The difference from yesterday to today being that today I am no longer inserting new screen recordings, except for when I was replacing some screen captures I didn't like - and that's one of the times it crashed.
Two points to consider here are that this means I have less software open and I am not jumping from inserting video - editing video - previewing video and saving.
I've also noticed I crash more often after the save error message comes up, which is usually after having been working for awhile.
All this leads me to believe perhaps I really am running out of memory and because Storyline is such a resource hog, when yo uask it to do something at these times it crashes where all the other software I am using is less resourse hungry and doesn't cash.
The computer I am using is a Dell Latitude E6240 (always plugged in)
Intel HD graphics 3000
i5 2.6ghz processor (sandy bridge I think)
32 bit Win 7
4g Ram
It would be interesting to know if anyone is running a similar computer and having issues, or not.
I've also run into crashing problems with Storyline but only when using the space bar to preview the timeline. It happens intermittently and I can't pinpoint anything in the project that might cause it. I'm not doing screen capture. It's simple animations using 3 to 7 cue points in the timeline. I will often be forced to close the program and restart. That usually takes care of it for a while, but it will eventually do it again.
It has happened on several different projects and my computer is running Windows 7 and has plenty of speed and memory. Not sure what causes it but, from reading this forum I can see I'm not alone.
Just wanted to let you all know.
I can no longer edit the action for screen recordings without Storyline freezing up. Each time I have to force close. Since this pertains to freezing and not crashing (which I think is more force closing), I'll create a different post with my issue.
Hi Lisa!
Any chance you can share your .story file with us so we can run some tests on our end? We'd love to help figure out what might be going on.
I have to agree that is seems Update 2 kind of feels like a step backwards. Things that worked great are now feeling very shaky. I have tried to edit one single slide today and it has crashed twice. Of course i lost my work both times. I have had more crashes with update 2 than I ever did before. Even the beta test didn't crash this much.
Hope we get another better update soon.
Hi Lisa,
This sounds like a similar problem to me - all my issues revolve around preview but they seem to happen when i have been doing screen captures and editing.
Are yo udoing your edits right after (or wihin the same session) that you did the screen recordings in?... assuming yo uare editing you own screen recordings.
I've just had to go back to edit a previous training module due to a change in policy related to the content it covered.
The one slide it related to had a number of recorded screens (totalling 3.5 mins) on it and needed 6 shapes inserted to cover over part of the screen recording. I had to make these shapes appear and disapear at set times on the timeline. This sounds relatively easy and it should have been - In all Storyline crashed 5 times and because the timeline is inconsistent with when it says an object appears if you run the slide from the start of the slide or click part way down the timeline and press play I had to go in and out of slide previews to do adjustments.
I even shutdown and restarted my computer twice to ensure it wasn't really a memory problem.
An unbelievable waste of time - I've never heard of such an unstable function on any software as the preview function on Storyline. It is an absolute nightmare to use.
I have had a lot of crashing issues, as well. The other day I was working heavily in SL all day, and I think I experienced upwards of 30 crashes. Most of my crashes seem to occur when I am working in the timeline, and especially when I preview (either in the timeline or the full preview). Unlike James B, I have no screen captures, and at the time this happened most frequently I didn't even have audio imported yet. Many of my slides have a large number of objects on them, but I really don't think I'm asking the program to go above and beyond what it should be capable of.
Hi, I just had a similar problem. For the first 20 minutes or so of opening SL up it mostly works fine then begins to become more and more unresponsive. Just trying to edit simple text etc becomes a nightmare. When trying to highlight the text and then over type it the cursor is in one place but the typing begins on a different word. Trying to drag a mouse box around a group of objects it is also slow to respond. So nothing to do with Flash player, preview etc.
Anyway I have no video or large graphics, the whole project is under 12mb and it crashed when simply selecting a shadow effect on an image. This was on a slide with about 12 layers but nothing more than a few inserted shape, some text and a few graphics (of a small file size).
I have the 3rd release of Storyline and a laptop with an i7 processor, a solid state drive and saving everything to the C: drive and only PowerPoint and outlook running alongside.
I can't send you the actual file as it was when it crashed as the hours of very quick work I had put into it have been lost and there is no file recovery as such like in PowerPoint.
The error message simply stated "Articulate Storyline has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available"
Any thoughts as if this happens again i'll have no option other than to go back to Captivate and actually be able to complete a days work?
Ian
Hi Ian and welcome to E-Learning Heroes! The behavior that you are experiencing seems erratic and I'd like to run a few ideas by you.
Be sure that you are working on your local drive
If it's just this file, you may want to try to import into a new project.
If it's multiple files or Storyline in general, then you should check out this troubleshooting.
You can always send in your .story file if you would like help from our support team as well.
Hi Ian,
From your post I can see that you are working off your c:/ drive and you aren't able to send in the file to the support team, because as you said it was lost.
So the best advice I can offer is to save your work often. I know that's probably just annoying to hear but with Storyline's propensity to crash, I save every 5 mins or so, whenever I switch between slides and definately before I run a preview.
The other thing that helped was switching to a 64 bit machine (with a patch to enable the extra RAM to Storyline)). Storyline uses an absurd amount of RAM and doesn't give it back once it has it, making that extra RAM helps a lot. Now my previews normally only crash if I use a different program, come back to Storyline and press preview without having done something else on Storyline first.
HI again Ian,
If I were you I would definately try reinstalling Storyline first since your crases are being bought on by such easy tasks and not previews which is a well known problem with Storyline.
Hi James,
Thanks for your thoughts. Glad that you read my post in more detail than the paid Articulate staff..... perhaps a "did my reply help you" button beside their comments would sort that out
Got a new latptop this morning, reinstalled Storyline and so far so good. Biggest problem I have is having to switch bewtween different programs constantly when I am building my modules which, as you mentioned, seems to be when things like to go wrong with Storyline. As much as I like Storyline it's not a $5 app built to be run on a phone so I think it's fair to expect it to be a little better coded and behave properly with other standard and widley used software. I could understand if it had more functionality but it doesn't. It's easy to use but when your business (and your mortgage payments) are reliant on delivering to deadlines then it's just not commercialy viable to be relient on something that still has a Beta feel to it.
I'll wait for the next crash and i'll post a full system spec, all open applications and processes, .story file and a short summary of what was happening at the time of the next crash if it can help anyone else figure out the issue. Just for the record all my graphics, audio and video are customised to fit the size of the story and to play with high quality on anything up a 42" Plasma or pretty much any projector and I don't have any published files over 50mb. I do all the graphic, audio and video editing on a seperate machine and never have more than the usual MS Outlook and PowerPoint and a few smaller programmes running on a Win7 Pro laptop with an i7 and a solid state drive so it's not a spec issue or a file size issue (other than I guess when folks find it crashes in preview mode).
Hi Ian! I apologize for the oversight on my part, since that one piece of my suggestion did not apply to your case. Glad that James was able to assist you. If you continue to have difficulty, I would encourage you to work with support to try to understand where the issue lies.
Dear fellow Articulate Storyline users, I have lost hours of work when Storyline crashes. My team views this lack of an autosave feature. It is expensive, frustrating and stressful to work with the constant threat of loss. I'm really fed up and of course mad at myself to be so much in the 'zone' that I completely forgot it's on me to do all the saves.
I worked as the eLearning expert at a software company for almost 10 years, and know what goes into the decisions for new software features. Our applications all had autosave however while I was there we created a new product and to my surprise, it did not autosave. For one reason or another it did not make it into the software as released. A few months later, a customer with multiple copies had huge problems when our software crashed and data were lost. My Sr. VP spoke with our programers and within days we released an update that autosaved. Our software was complex which leades me to believe it was similar in scope to Articulate Storyline, and yet the feature was added fairly quickly. That said, I've read that the concern was that users would object to the few seconds of delay that a periodic autosave process might cause.
Once again today I lost hours of my work including edited audio that I CHOSE to edit in Storyline; this means the cleanded up files no longer exist.
Let's stop being so passive. Is there a place we could take a poll to see how many users WANT autosave? (Yes, make it optional for users to elect or not).
TWITTER?? LInkedin? Ideas?
If there were a place to tally the dollar and cents value of lost work, perhaps (user optionsl) autosave would not seem like a frivolous request.
Hi Patricia,
Our team keeps track of all the feature requests that come in and uses those when looking to what new features to include and their priority. I don't have information to offer in terms of where an autosave feature stands in terms of how many requests have been submitted, but I would suggest that if you haven't done so already, to submit it here with those exact reasons for why and what impact it has on building your courses as this will get to our development team.
Also, if you haven't already it seems other users in this thread have had success in conducting a repair of Storyline. You'll also want to check that you're using the most recent version of Storyline (update 4) . Some other items to check are that you are working on your local drive. Also, if it's just this file, you may want to try to import into a new project.
It would be much easier if we could vote on various ideas, rather than having to submit them so many times individually. I know there are many features I have wanted, but haven't wanted to spend the time submitting. A voting system like GetSatisfaction would help people like me as well as offer visibility on popularity. If I submit a request and no one else votes for it, then I can intuit that it's pretty narrow and I'm not likely to see it implemented.
Hi Rebecca.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on feature requests. We currently do not make feature requests public but that is certainly something we can consider.
I have been crashing all day today. I must be up to 20 or more times now. I completed the update, and that did not fix the issue. Pretty much most crashes happen when trying to preview slide or using the play button on the timeline to sync items and audio. Limited amount of items on slide, mostly text on some right now. I will go open a ticket too.
Hi Sarah,
I see that you were working on this with Miker, (Case # 00415064 for my reference) and were unable to replicate the error/crashing again this AM. You shared that you'd be working on the project again next week and would try and gather the information for him then.
Thanks for connecting with our team and we'll continue to follow along!
Articulate crashes every time I try to add or edit audio. It was working fine this morning. I came back after lunch and tried to record some audio. The application freezes when the recorder counts down to 1 second. Once that happens, the application stops responding. I have to go through Task Manager to close the application. I have tried several times and crashed each time.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.