Audio Not Playing Upon First Visit

Mar 11, 2019

Hello all,

I am working on a module that has audio narration on all of the slides. Each slide is set to play the audio within 1 second of the user visiting the slide. My client is using Safari to visit the current URL and some random slides will not play the audio automatically for her upon first visiting the slide (it is just silence). She can move ahead and then click back to return to the slide and the audio will play. I have checked that these random slides are set to "reset to initial state" upon revisiting (just like all the other slides in the module). There are no commonalities among the slides that aren't playing audio for her.

I have also tested the link on my Macbook, using Safari, and have not had these audio issues.

Has anyone encountered this before?

thanks!

Shannon

12 Replies
Alyssa Gomez

Hi Shannon!

I can appreciate that it's frustrating when someone reports an issue to you and you're unable to replicate the behavior yourself. First, I would check that you're both using the exact same version of Safari. You can check the version number by going to Safari > About Safari.

Also, are you both viewing the course in a learning management system, or is the course hosted somewhere else?

Katie Riggio

Oh no, James! Sorry to hear you're also at this roadblock.

Could you help us with these key details so we can investigate this oddity further?

  • Did you publish your course to Review 360, LMS, or something else?
  • Would you mind sharing your .story file so I can try to replicate the behavior? You can share it publicly here, or send it to me privately by using this upload link. I'll test it in a similar environment, and will delete it once we solve this puzzle!
James Thomas

Unfortunately I don't have the original file to share, it's been modified.  The work around for us was to convert the timelines to video, essentially removing any timeline audio clips.

We rigorously tested in all popular browsers including mobile.  Safari 12.0.3  was the only browser with this issue.  Fortunately, it's not a very widely used browser, at least for our clients.

James Thomas

Yes, set to autoplay.  Nothing funky or intricate involved. 

My opinion is that Safari is muting the audio clip, waiting for user interaction.  If "Player" buttons are selected (Notes, Glossary, etc), the audio clip will be heard, but a "play" button on the slide will not be seen as an interaction.  I'm assuming this is why the opening play button is a Player function versus embedded in a slide.

Also unusual, if a button is selected to show a layer, that layer's audio WILL play, meaning, that interaction is making it to the player level.

One fix we tried but didn't work was to have audio and video on the first slide, so that the Play button would set interaction for both.  Meh, it was worth a try. 

But again, we used the "publish to video" feature for each slide that had an .mp3 on the timeline.  Imported those videos in, keeping the original functionalities of the slides, not a total rebuild.

Crystal Horn

Thanks for those details, James. I'm tagging this discussion so we can give you updates about this behavior. We're seeing Chrome and Safari having issues with audio playback when slides are set to advance automatically.

Putting audio on the first slide should cause the play button to appear in Safari; let me know if that's not happening for you, however.

Lauren Connelly

Hi!

I'm pleased to announce that we released a new version for Storyline 360, v3.30.19518.0 this morning! One of the many reasons you will love this update is that it fixed the inconsistent audio issue many of you were experiencing with different versions of Safari 12.

The next step is to update Storyline 360 by heading to your Articulate 360 desktop app and clicking "Update" next to Storyline 360.

As always, we are happy to answer any questions you have by posting in this discussion or you can contact our Support Engineers directly.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.