32 Replies
Michael Mercier

With the Autoplay Policies that went live with Chrome 66, we are now seeing a play button similar to what happens when training is opened on the iPad. Unfortunately, this button does not work on slides with videos on them. If the first slide does not have video on it, the play button seems to work as intended.

All of our training begins with Welcome videos, so we currently have several live clients who cannot access their training in Chrome 66. Besides informing users to change a flag setting in Chrome, are there any workarounds? Perhaps a modification to the published output files similar to Chrome 44 issue? As these clients are live, republishing would not be ideal.

Crystal Horn

Hi there, Michael.  Could my team have a look at an example .story file where you're unable to play the course when video is added to the first slide?  We want to test how we can reliably reproduce this behavior.

After pressing the Play button, your course should begin to run smoothly.  I'm sorry for the trouble!

Adam Read

Please can Articulate provide an update on this. This is a significant issue for many of our clients and courses which have previously been delivered, which are now not working.

As of this morning, audio within Storyline 2 will simply not autoplay on timeline start. The ability to have a voice over / narration play automatically when a learner reaches a slide is an expected feature within elearning packages. Requiring the learner to click a button on every slide (instance of new audio) is simply not a workaround that is acceptable - neither is your message here to use a different browser.

I'm surprised that Articulate weren't ahead of the curve with a fix in place before Chrome released this update.

This is another issue, in a recent string of bugs that members of my team have reported, without any of them being fixed. We are growing increasingly concerned that Articulate standards of quality are slipping, with little concern for their customers. Development Teams are now having to take the flack for problems resulting from Articulate's software.

 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi all, 

As you know, Google changed the way media is handled in Chrome 66, so audio in your Storyline and Studio HTML5 courses might not play in Chrome 66 and later.

Here's what to do, depending on your version of Storyline or Studio:

We added support for Chrome 66 in the April 26, 2018 update for Storyline 360 and Studio 360. Just install the latest software update and republish your course.

We're working on a solution for our perpetual apps (Storyline 3, 2 and Studio '13) and will update this article with details as soon as possible. In the meantime, ask learners to use a different browser, such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari.

Let me know if you need anything else or have any questions! 

John Willis

Hi All,

This issue has been haunting our company for a few days now and a colleague of mine has helped with a solution, it's not the cleanest but certainly works.

Essentially after a bit of searching, we stumbled upon a fix via GitHub - we then proceeded to create a js page and add a line of code to all of the HTML output pages. - Attached

A simple line of code - <script src="directory-file-here/chrome-audio.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

pasted into the head tag of the HTML output files creates the unmute button which when clicked allows the audio to begin working. - See Unmute.PNG.

 

As I stated previously it's not the cleanest method but it certainly works and has saved a lot of time.

Hope this helps someone.

 

Edit** The above fix has only required me to press the unmute button once at the beginning.. 

John Willis

Hi Ashley,

I'm not quite sure what you are asking, however, due to the update to storyline 3 being released I've only applied the above fix to courses that are still published in storyline 2. 

 

If you are wondering if the above fix would work for storyline 3 after the update, I cannot say, I'll try to run some more tests today and see if I can gain any more data from storyline 3.

 

Thanks.

Joe Candido

Since this is a global problem affecting all courses published before the latest fix from Articulate, the impact is HUGE. I have over 200 modules that are being used by many clients that all must be fixed. This is an impossible amount of labor for my company and my clients. Articulate must work with Google to resolve this problem. It's the only way that makes senses. I'm sure they could add a toggle feature or button to unmute. Come on Articulate, stop pushing the burden on your customers and shift your focus to compelling Google to modify the mute feature!!!!!!!!!!!

Joe Candido

Storyline 360 has been updated here are the details: (https://community.articulate.com/series/122/articles/articulate-360-user-guide-how-to-install-launch-desktop-authoring-apps#update). However, this fix requires republishing and reinstalling all (yes ALL) of your courses. As I see it, Articulate needs to work with Google to get them to modify the audio settings on Chrome. Republishing and reinstalling every course is a huge disaster. Please join me in encouraging Articulate to pursue a better approach than republishing. 

Mike Jones

Hey everyone,

It may be a long shot for a lot of organizations, but one option would be to disable the autoplay policy in your Chrome settings. This article explains what to do.

https://9to5google.com/2018/02/15/how-to-disable-autoplay-videos-chrome/

You'll want to change the autoplay-policy flag to "no user gesture required."

We've been instructing Safari users to change their settings whenever possible, as a workaround for this same issue. Hope that helps!

Joe Candido

Thanks Michael. I tried it on my system and Articulate plays audio and much to my surprise ads and videos on public websites are still defaulted to mute. I'm not sure why but that's what happened for me. I've contacted one of my good clients and asked them to experiment with changing autoplay to "no user gesture required". 

Joe Candido

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for taking the time to write a very well thought out and clear position. You've made great points which help me to better understand the big picture. I wish someone from Articulate took the time to do this. Their explanations are very limited which leaves many gaps and confusion. Anyway, I will wait to see what Articulate comes up. I hope it's soon because I have to give my clients a solution and right now I don't really have one that is reasonable.  

joe Najera

Like others here, we have published hundreds of presentations since moving to Articulate 360 a couple of months ago. We have courses that are now live with students submitting support tickets indicating that audio isn't playing. 

Any suggested directions for our users of existing content while we work through a plan to re-publish all of this? We'll need to communicated clearly and completely with them while we work through this mess.

joe

Crystal Horn

Hey Storyline 2 users!  Good news... I'm excited to let you know that we released update 13 for Storyline 2 which addresses the autoplay issues with Google Chrome. 

Download Storyline 2 here for the latest version!

*Note:  Google Chrome rolled back their autoplay policy for now, but they expect to implement it again later this year.  Make sure to republish your content with the latest version so that you're ready!

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