Blurry Images.. Still

Jan 07, 2019

Mark Hawkins-Wood
By Mark Hawkins-Wood

Hi all, 

 

This seems to be an issue many people are talking about but I can't find a definitive answer without having to trawl multiple threads and links. 

It would appear that Storyline is not fit for purpose when it comes to inserting images. Even when I'm trying to use the 'Try-it mode' on screen recording, the start and end frame is blurred regardless of what resolution, size, quality of screen grab I insert into Storyline. 

I would think it should be quite simple to do and fix, but appears not to be. 

I thought the major selling point of using Articulate was that it 'Automatically scales to mobile and tablet', if the only workarounds (which are far from perfect and still blurred), are fixing image sizes, or player sizes etc.. then this removes the automatic scaling onto mobile devices and means we have to develop the course mobile ready. 

I'm in the process of deciding whether as a business we should curate in Articulate, or the Adobe Suite, and this problem is unfortunately making us lean away from Articulate. I've found no way to make these images High Quality and would appreciate an easy way to do this.

72 Replies
Crystal Horn
over 5 years ago01/07/19 at 5:56 pm (UTC)

Hi there, Mark.  It sounds like you have some decisions to make, and you're experiencing some issues with images and screen recordings that are getting in the way.  I'm happy to help you make the most of Articulate!

First, I'll start with the best practices.  These are our current recommendations when working with visual media in Storyline:

We do have some open issues that our team is investigating, like blurriness in some step-by-step screen recording scenarios, or a blurry image output with certain animation or player settings.  So that we can see if you're experiencing one of these known issues, would you be able to connect with our support team and share an example file?  We'll be happy to help with a workaround, if possible, and let you know if fixes are released.

Our support is always free and unlimited, whether you're on a trial or you're a licensed user.  Let  me know how I can help!

Mark Hawkins-Wood
over 5 years ago01/08/19 at 10:08 am (UTC)

Hi Crystal, 

Thank you, it would seem to be bad timing you are experiencing such major problems with image quality / compression, as you're right I need to make a judgement call on whether to use the product going forward or another solution. 

I noticed yesterday also, when I add animation to text boxes, the text goes blurry also. 

 

Warm Regards, 

Mark

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
over 5 years ago01/08/19 at 4:33 pm (UTC)

Hi Mark, 

I know our team is also looking into an issue where the text is blurry as it animates in, but it should appear normally once on the screen. I'll keep you posted on that issue here in case it's fixed within the timeframe that you'll be making a decision, but I don't have an ETA to share. 

Manjul Khadolia
5 years ago02/05/19 at 9:37 pm (UTC)

Hi Ashley,

My company too is in the final stages of taking a decision on this, and while testing the tool me and my team is experiencing the blurriness issue as well. I read through enough literature on this and finally came to this thread, so it is good to know you guys are working on this and I hope you have a resolution soon. 

Although I do not want to rule out Articulate just for the blurriness issue, I do want to say that this will become an issue very soon in my case. I see this post is about 4 weeks old and was hoping if you have any update on the issue...

I am pretty sure you have enough examples and you know there is an issue; I have a sample too in case you want to take a look. Mine is simple, I am taking a screenshot and pasting it in SL 360... The moment I do that, the quality becomes unreadable... it's not unreadable, but it just becomes noticeably bad and puts a strain on the users eyes to actually read the content of the screenshot.

I also noticed the fonts are not crisp in the tool. When I write the text in PPT, I see it sharp and crisp, whereas it loses the sharpness in SL 360. I am using Noto Sans, but the case applies to all the fonts...

It will be really helpful to get some resolution.

Thanks,

Manjul

PS. I tried the resolution settings, optimizations and other means suggested in different blogs, it does not improve the quality of the screenshot.

Crystal Horn
5 years ago02/06/19 at 2:51 pm (UTC)

Hi there, Manjul.  Thanks for sharing your experience.  To make sure I'm on the same page, are you experiencing blurriness in the output, and in any particular browser?  Or do you find the blurriness is isolated to editing your project in Storyline?

In the meantime, I'm continuing to share the impact of this issue with our team as we work toward potential fixes.

Manjul Khadolia
5 years ago02/07/19 at 5:57 am (UTC)

Hey Crystal, thanks for the response and further questions... 

I am experiencing the blurriness in the editor, preview and the published output both.

We only use Chrome, so that is what I would be able to comment on. Have not tested on other browsers.

I think this is a known issue, right; it does not take a lot to identify that the screenshots taken get blurred the moment we place those on SL 360. One thing I noticed though, is that there is a marginal improvement if the screenshot is first saved as a JPG, and then inserted on a slide. However, the blurriness remains (just a little less).

Looking forward to a fix for this issue.

Manjul

Bérengère LITTY
5 years ago02/07/19 at 3:44 pm (UTC)

Pictures and videos are the core of e-learning design. Please stop telling us how to avoid blurriness by tricks. There has been dozens of comments and example about that.
It's not the authors who should follow tutorials and get mad but the software that should work for basic stuff such as cropping, resizing, etc.
I lost a whole day because of video blurriness. Instead of having a fancy Media Library, I would prefer to be able to work easily with the media I need...

Marlit Stubb
5 years ago03/14/19 at 2:03 pm (UTC)

I too am having an issue with blurriness. I am a new user. I switched to Storyline 3 because my Captivate software was crashing too often. I am using IE as my browser. I am trying to figure out what to do to make my images crisp. I use the MS Snipping tool, copy what I need and paste it into the articulate software and it becomes so blurry that the text in the image can't be read. This is in the editor and preview views. I'm so new that I haven't tried to publish yet. I have watched tutorials etc but nothing seems to help. I have added a screenshot to show you how it looks.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
5 years ago03/14/19 at 8:13 pm (UTC)

Hi Marlit,

Sorry, to hear you've hit some stumbling blocks here as you get started! Luckily, I think it's different than the issues mentioned in this discussion, as those are specific to how Chrome is displaying things.

Let's start with the basics of adding images and other media. You'll see our best practices are outlined here, and if you're inserting a screenshot you'll want to look at not scaling it as that can contribute to a loss in quality. Your image looked to be a full-screen view, but perhaps instead you could narrow down to just the highlighted section? Or, look at enlarging your story size to be a bit bigger. Also, if you'll be adding in a lot of manual screenshots, what about using the screen recording feature of Storyline?  It may even save you some time. 

Also, double check that your version of Internet Explorer matches up with any of the supported ones here based on how you've published. Using an out of date browser to view newly published content could be the culprit for your blurriness! 

Let us know if that helps, and if you need anything else! 

Manjul Khadolia
5 years ago03/15/19 at 3:11 pm (UTC)

Hi Ashley,

I, and am sure everyone in this loop, has tried all this...  It is an Articulate issue for sure.

Please have the development team take a serious look at this. We will be purchasing the software as we like all that it does. But it does not manage the image and video resolution well for sure.

Mark Hawkins-Wood
5 years ago03/19/19 at 4:55 pm (UTC)

All, 

It's great to see that this post has gained momentum. Unfortunately however I spent weeks trying to solve this problem, and even consulted a highly skilled software development team internally, and the problems with the product were unsolvable externally.

We opted to use Adobe Captivate and have had no problems with image quality so far. Although it lacks some good features Articulate has, we had no choice and have ultimately saved days of time over trying to bodge a course together in Storyline.

I hope you all manage to find a solution, but I wouldn't hold your breath on Articulate fixing this any time soon.

Warm Regards,

Mark

Crystal Horn
5 years ago03/21/19 at 4:28 pm (UTC)

Hey everybody. I'm excited to let you know that we just released update 26 for Storyline 360! Here are all the details.

We addressed an issue where text and images could be blurry when viewing a course in Google Chrome or Safari.

Here’s how you can update Storyline 360 to take advantage of everything the latest release has to offer. If you need more help, please let me know!

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