Audio Cuts out on random slides

Oct 16, 2013

HI there. We have an issue where the audio cuts out on random slides. For example: In one upload slides 5 and 8, the audio will cutout half way through. But it will always be slides 5 and 8 that cutout each time I replay the scorm presentation. When I expire this scorm and re-upload a new version, the audio in one or two other slides will cut out and the original slides 5 and 8 will work. I've tried viewing these on multiple browsers and the same slides the audio will cutout. Each new version that I try, different slides have audio that cuts out.

When I Upload the scorm package to scorm cloud for testing, there are no errors. When I play the scorm locally on my machine, the audio works great on every slide.

I bumped this issue up to our server support team and they believe the issue is the content build. I can't seem to get this issue figured out and it's happening on multiple scorms that contain a lot of audio.

Many thanks for your time.

--Justin

55 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Justin,

Sorry to hear about the problems you're experiencing. You mentioned everything played as normal within SCORM Cloud? That's an industry standard testing method, and if it's able to work there, I'd suspect that there is something happening on the side of your LMS that is preventing the audio from playing and not something in the file itself. Are you able to share that posted version with your LMS team so that they can see it is working? 

We're happy to test it as well, if you'd like to share the .story file here or with our Support team we can test it as well (likely within SCORM Cloud and/or Articulate Online). 

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Kathrine!

In Justin's case above, we were not able to replicate the issue in SCORM Cloud, so he took this information back to his LMS team to review.

SCORM Cloud is a tool that we like to utilize to see if the issue lies with the project or the LMS. If you are able to replicate your issue in SCORM Cloud, we would want to take a closer look and you would are welcome to share your .story file with us here as well.

Nate Herrema

I get this same issue frequently in Storyline 2.  The problem is detectable within storyline itself most of the time (before exporting to LMS), and I'm wondering if there is a known reason for this?  Currently I have to meticulously preview every slide of my courses to make sure the audio doesn't drop before sending to clients. 

Leslie McKerchie

Oh no Kathrine, I didn't realize you were still experiencing issues. I see where you reached out to our support team previously and worked with John. Looks like he also did a web conference with your IT perhaps? We didn't hear anything back, so I'm sorry to hear that you're still having difficulty.

I'd encourage both you and Nicolle to reach out to our support team here so that we can take a look and understand the issues that may be happening and help you out.

Beth McGoldrick

I'm having the same problem. I just uploaded my files as a case. Do we have a fix for this yet? It's happened on a few courses lately. It's random which slides are affected. The audio file is complete, but for some reason, the audio just cuts out near the end of the slide, even while the rest of the animation continues on that slide.

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Christine,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing that you are running into an issue as well.

As mentioned above, the issues all seem to stem from system-specific issues.

Since you mentioned that it's not happening in your LMS, but only when publishing to CD, I'm curious if the file name/path length may be the culprit.

  • Use short names to ensure the file paths to your projects and published output are well under the 260-character limit imposed by Microsoft Windows
  • Do not use special characters, accents, or symbols in your Storyline file names or in any file paths 
Katie Riggio

Hi Hanta,

Thank you for reaching out! To make sure you get the most up-to-date guidance, could you help with these details?

  • What version of Storyline 360 are you using? Click on the Help tab, then About Storyline.
  • Is the course hosted on a web server or LMS?
  • Does the audio cut out in all browsers or a certain one?

If you're comfortable with sharing the .story file publicly, I'm happy to test it. If there is private information, use this private upload link to share it with our Support team. 

Michael Stuart

I've been having this issue for years and I just keep replacing the audio files over and over again and republishing until I get a full working version of the course. It's been a while since I've had to make a new course with audio, but I just got a request for a course with full narration. The course requestor recorded all of their slides as individual MP3 files, and now the problem is back again. Each time I publish, different pages drop the audio randomly, part the way through the slide. If I edit or re-record the slide, it will often work, but then another page will drop the audio randomly somewhere in the slide. It's like playing whack-a-mole.
I'm testing all of these courses from an intranet web server outside of any LMS. Just copying the exported files to the web server and launching story.html. I can't share the source file because it contains sensitive company information, so I'm not sure my feedback here serves any purpose other than to confirm that the issue still "plagues" some users of Storyline in November of 2020. (Pun intended.)

Specs:
Articulate 360
Storyline v3.43.22859.0
Browsers tested: Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome

Leslie McKerchie

Thanks, Michael. I appreciate your feedback and I took a look at the cases filed for some of the users above and it does not look like we have been able to track down the culprit yet.

I understand that you cannot share the file, but one thing I'm curious about is how long the audio file name may be. Once published, are these remaining under the 260 character limit? I have seen this cause an issue with missing audio previously.

Michael Stuart

Hi Leslie.  Thanks for the quick reply.  The audio file names were simply "slide 01.mp3" etc.  None of the file names were more than 10 characters.  The most odd thing is that when I republish the course, some pages no longer have the audio drop-out issue, while others that didn't have the issue begin dropping audio.  I've tried adjusting the audio quality to the maximum 160kbps bitrate on publish and then dropped it to 128 kbps, and this doesn't seem to have any predictable effect.  Also, it doesn't seem to affect audio that is recorded directly with Storyline through the microphone - only imported audio.  Everything works fine in audio recorded within the editor.

One thing I've noticed in older courses, is a distinct digital "chirp" sound in some of the audio files that preceded an audio drop-out in the published file.  It was as if some digital bits got lost when the storyline file itself was saved.  These weren't present in the initial audio files, but seem to have crept in as errors over time.  I have one particular course that seems to drop-out audio every single time I go in to edit and publish a new version of the course.  Often I'll go in to investigate the cause and find another tiny digital chirp has appeared in one of the audio files. I'm not sure if any of this is helpful in uncovering the mystery, but it's just things I've noted over time.