I just published a course that has audio clips on each slide for the narration. The audio works great on a computer but I ran into trouble when I tested it on my iPhone. When I loaded it on my iPhone 6 the audio was distorted and hard to hear. I just discovered that when I refresh the page the audio starts to play normally.
Does anyone know why the audio won't load correctly when the course is initially launched on an iPhone? Or why it will play correctly when the page is refreshed?
Hi, Garrett -- So sorry to hear of your troubles and thanks for reaching out! Have you had a chance to review this info on Publishing a Course for Mobile Devices? And as I have an iPhone 6 and wold be happy to do some testing for you, please feel free to upload your file and I'll let you know what I find! :)
I too am having an issue with audio on iPhone in the Storyline HTML5 output.
We actually found that with iPad, we could successfully avoid the audio issues by ensuring (transcoding, if needed) that the audio sample rate of standalone audio and the audio track within a video are at 44.1kHz. If that isn't done, the iPad will randomly (as far as I can tell) play audio back at a different speed or not at all. If there's a different playback speed, usually slower in our case, it sounds a bit robotic. And then, sometimes the audio of a slide plays fine, even in the same session. The triggering scenario seems to be that there is a mix of video (with video) and stand-alone audio for this issue to arise. If I put the audio track in a "blank" video, then the issue disappears. (The video would be off stage to avoid interfering visually.) However, this is not an option on the iPhone, since video only plays in the native player (goes full screen), and our "resampling" solution doesn't work on the iPhone.
So, questions for you:
Would you describe your audio as robotic sounding, whether or not you can here a speed/pitch change? (The drop in pitch for us corresponded with longer playback time, usually exceeding the slides timeline.)
Do you see the same-ish (there's randomness in our testing) result on iPad?
If so, are you able to resample the audio and audio tracks of video (if any) to 44.1kHz to see if that eliminates the issue? And then, do you get improved performance on iPad, iPhone, or both?
Note: when testing on iOS devices, it seems that clearing the cache before launch of a test is vital to not "polluting" the test. For example, if I play a file that is known to work reliably, I can play one that fouls the audio in another tab, and have the first one start to play poorly.
My apologies for the length of this post. This is a frustrating issue for us as I imagine it is you. If you subsequently find a way to get iPhone audio to play reliably, please share it. Thanks!
I'm still in the process of reading the information you provided so I'll follow up when I have time to get through it all. Thank you for your input.
Andre,
I wouldn't describe the audio as robotic. Ours sounded like it was heavily suppressed by static, almost to the point where you couldn't understand it. I haven't heard from our staff who tested it on an iPad yet so I can't speak to those. I'm also not familiar with resampling. If you want to elaborate on that I might be able to try it out. This is issue is definitely frustrating though because it's impacts the reliability of our courses.
You mentioned some audio and video inconsistencies and it's worth pointing out the issues with HTML5 here, but it sounds like you're mostly experiencing this on an iPhone - and based on the iphone playing the video in the full screen mode, I wouldn't expect slide audio to also play at the same time. If I'm misunderstanding your set up or how it's operating, we're always happy to take a look and I'd want to see a copy of the .story file and know more about where you're hosting/testing the content (web vs. LMS, iPhone iOS, iPhone version, etc.)
You are welcome to upload the file here using the "add attachment" button or send it along to our Support team here.
By "resampling," I could have been clearer. I mean in this sense, where the sampling frequency is changed. I use a command line tool (ffmpeg) to do this, but many interactive/GUI tools exist that can accomplish this too.
Ashley,
We are not overlapping standalone audio with audio-free video files. We even have gotten away from serially playing standalone audio and video in the same slide because of increased chance of playback issues on iPad. Unfortunately, I don't think that the issues we're seeing are a limitation of iOS or our devices, but a problem with the Storyline HTML5 player itself. I long ago implemented a simple JavaScript media player (based on JPlayer), used it to playback the same assets that fouled the Storyline HTML5 player, and found it had no problem playing them without artifact.
Thank you both for responding. I hope we can figure this out.
I too am having an issue with audio on iPhone in the Storyline HTML5 output.
We actually found that with iPad, we could successfully avoid the audio issues by ensuring (transcoding, if needed) that the audio sample rate of standalone audio and the audio track within a video are at 44.1kHz. If that isn't done, the iPad will randomly (as far as I can tell) play audio back at a different speed or not at all. If there's a different playback speed, usually slower in our case, it sounds a bit robotic. And then, sometimes the audio of a slide plays fine, even in the same session. The triggering scenario seems to be that there is a mix of video (with video) and stand-alone audio for this issue to arise. If I put the audio track in a "blank" video, then the issue disappears. (The video would be off stage to avoid interfering visually.) However, this is not an option on the iPhone, since video only plays in the native player (goes full screen), and our "resampling" solution doesn't work on the iPhone.
So, questions for you:
Would you describe your audio as robotic sounding, whether or not you can here a speed/pitch change? (The drop in pitch for us corresponded with longer playback time, usually exceeding the slides timeline.)
Do you see the same-ish (there's randomness in our testing) result on iPad?
If so, are you able to resample the audio and audio tracks of video (if any) to 44.1kHz to see if that eliminates the issue? And then, do you get improved performance on iPad, iPhone, or both?
Note: when testing on iOS devices, it seems that clearing the cache before launch of a test is vital to not "polluting" the test. For example, if I play a file that is known to work reliably, I can play one that fouls the audio in another tab, and have the first one start to play poorly.
My apologies for the length of this post. This is a frustrating issue for us as I imagine it is you. If you subsequently find a way to get iPhone audio to play reliably, please share it. Thanks!
-Andre
When you say 44.1 kHz, are you referring to the sample rate when importing into StoryLine, or the final audio rate in the published folder? It appears that the final publish makes the audio 22kHz.
Thanks for that clarification and we'd still be happy to take a look at one of your files to see how it's behaving for our team as well. Please let me know if you sent it along to our Support engineers and I'll be able to follow along in your case.
Although this forum is 2 years old, I'm reading it now because we're experiencing something possibly related in playback of a Storyline 2 course on various iPads. Does ensuring that standalone audio and a video's audio both are at 44.1k always resolve the issue? Has that issue gone away with Storyline 360, or does matching the sampling rates remain a best practice?
This discussion is quite a bit older! But I saw in this discussion you're also working with our Support Engineers, and taking a look at Daniel's idea.
So let's keep the conversation going in that discussion and your support case - that way we won't lose any clues or tidbits that could help figure out the issue!
9 Replies
Hi, Garrett -- So sorry to hear of your troubles and thanks for reaching out! Have you had a chance to review this info on Publishing a Course for Mobile Devices? And as I have an iPhone 6 and wold be happy to do some testing for you, please feel free to upload your file and I'll let you know what I find! :)
Hi, Garret.
I too am having an issue with audio on iPhone in the Storyline HTML5 output.
We actually found that with iPad, we could successfully avoid the audio issues by ensuring (transcoding, if needed) that the audio sample rate of standalone audio and the audio track within a video are at 44.1kHz. If that isn't done, the iPad will randomly (as far as I can tell) play audio back at a different speed or not at all. If there's a different playback speed, usually slower in our case, it sounds a bit robotic. And then, sometimes the audio of a slide plays fine, even in the same session. The triggering scenario seems to be that there is a mix of video (with video) and stand-alone audio for this issue to arise. If I put the audio track in a "blank" video, then the issue disappears. (The video would be off stage to avoid interfering visually.) However, this is not an option on the iPhone, since video only plays in the native player (goes full screen), and our "resampling" solution doesn't work on the iPhone.
So, questions for you:
Note: when testing on iOS devices, it seems that clearing the cache before launch of a test is vital to not "polluting" the test. For example, if I play a file that is known to work reliably, I can play one that fouls the audio in another tab, and have the first one start to play poorly.
My apologies for the length of this post. This is a frustrating issue for us as I imagine it is you. If you subsequently find a way to get iPhone audio to play reliably, please share it. Thanks!
-Andre
Thanks for posting everyone.
Christie,
I'm still in the process of reading the information you provided so I'll follow up when I have time to get through it all. Thank you for your input.
Andre,
I wouldn't describe the audio as robotic. Ours sounded like it was heavily suppressed by static, almost to the point where you couldn't understand it. I haven't heard from our staff who tested it on an iPad yet so I can't speak to those. I'm also not familiar with resampling. If you want to elaborate on that I might be able to try it out. This is issue is definitely frustrating though because it's impacts the reliability of our courses.
Hi Andre,
Thanks for posting here and in a few other threads such as this one.
You mentioned some audio and video inconsistencies and it's worth pointing out the issues with HTML5 here, but it sounds like you're mostly experiencing this on an iPhone - and based on the iphone playing the video in the full screen mode, I wouldn't expect slide audio to also play at the same time. If I'm misunderstanding your set up or how it's operating, we're always happy to take a look and I'd want to see a copy of the .story file and know more about where you're hosting/testing the content (web vs. LMS, iPhone iOS, iPhone version, etc.)
You are welcome to upload the file here using the "add attachment" button or send it along to our Support team here.
Garrett,
By "resampling," I could have been clearer. I mean in this sense, where the sampling frequency is changed. I use a command line tool (ffmpeg) to do this, but many interactive/GUI tools exist that can accomplish this too.
Ashley,
We are not overlapping standalone audio with audio-free video files. We even have gotten away from serially playing standalone audio and video in the same slide because of increased chance of playback issues on iPad. Unfortunately, I don't think that the issues we're seeing are a limitation of iOS or our devices, but a problem with the Storyline HTML5 player itself. I long ago implemented a simple JavaScript media player (based on JPlayer), used it to playback the same assets that fouled the Storyline HTML5 player, and found it had no problem playing them without artifact.
Thank you both for responding. I hope we can figure this out.
-Andre
When you say 44.1 kHz, are you referring to the sample rate when importing into StoryLine, or the final audio rate in the published folder? It appears that the final publish makes the audio 22kHz.
Hi Andre,
Thanks for that clarification and we'd still be happy to take a look at one of your files to see how it's behaving for our team as well. Please let me know if you sent it along to our Support engineers and I'll be able to follow along in your case.
Although this forum is 2 years old, I'm reading it now because we're experiencing something possibly related in playback of a Storyline 2 course on various iPads. Does ensuring that standalone audio and a video's audio both are at 44.1k always resolve the issue? Has that issue gone away with Storyline 360, or does matching the sampling rates remain a best practice?
Hi Hal,
This discussion is quite a bit older! But I saw in this discussion you're also working with our Support Engineers, and taking a look at Daniel's idea.
So let's keep the conversation going in that discussion and your support case - that way we won't lose any clues or tidbits that could help figure out the issue!
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.