Is there a way to enable audio closed-captions by default? There is no setting in the Player Properties other than the CC button either showing or not showing, but nothing to toggle the captions "on" when the course starts.
EDIT: Asking for a group of new Storyline users in a workshop I'm teaching and wanted to demonstrate the power of this community - ask a question; get loads of help!
You can put a trigger on your first slide to set the built-in variable Player.DisplayCaptions to True when the timeline starts. That will turn it on essentially by default.
Thanks, David. Yes, I'm aware of the variable but I failed to add context to my initial question. Edited above, but the question was posed in my fundamentals workshop today. Without getting too deep into variables, I said why don't we ask the community.
It does seem odd that a checkbox of sorts is not on the Player Properties to default to CC "on" or "off" though. Thanks for posting!
I've tried everything including these earlier suggestions and nothing I do enables the CC icon/button on my course in the player. My default Player Features has CC checked, I have CC checked on each slide with audio, using Text-to-Speech, I have Generate Closed Captions selected, and I copied all my text from the Slide Notes. Again, no CC displays. Others on my team, using the same player design/defaults are NOT having this issue. Please advise :-)
Thank you for reaching out! Let me ask you a few questions to narrow down the issue:
Are you working from a local hard drive? Working on a network drive can cause erratic behavior.
Since you mentioned others on your team not having this issue, have you attempted to repair Storyline 360? Here are the instructions.
Did your teammates try to open the same .story file you had problems with?
If this is happening with a specific file, I'd like to take a deeper look at it. Would you be comfortable sharing it publicly here or privately through a support case?
Thanks for the reply. We tested a few things as a team and may have found the fix!
I added all my audio as Text to Speech from notes, and checked the Generate Closed Captions box. I noticed that my Progress bar never loaded, and the Notes text never appeared in the window, but the audio loaded and worked fine on the Timeline - so I never gave it a second thought.
In troubleshooting with my team we found that if we right clicked the audio timeline file, and selected Text to Speech, the window displayed the notes text but DID NOT have a check in the Generate Closed Captions box. We clicked THAT box, clicked "Update" and our slide preview DID show the CC box which now works as intended!
I'm in the process of repeating this for all my slides and will share my success with the team, but I still don't understand why it didn't initially work as I expected - even though this is my first attempt at doing closed captions. (I previously just used the Notes tab...)
Thank you so much for taking the time to come back here to share what worked for you! I'm glad you can now get the closed caption box to show up.
I'm not sure why it didn't work the first time. However, if it happens again, would you be able to submit the file with a support case so we can try to troubleshoot what the initial issue might be?
We think that maybe since the project/file was started without the expectation of using CC, and some slides already had Text to Speech included when the decision was made to include CC, I just checked the boxes of those slides already "recorded" and they didn't work retroactively. Even though I checked the boxes of all subsequent slide prior to adding Text to Speech, the whole thing was just a little confused.
I start a new project tomorrow and I'll use that opportunity to do a test myself. I'll keep you posted!
9 Replies
Hi Kevin,
You can put a trigger on your first slide to set the built-in variable Player.DisplayCaptions to True when the timeline starts. That will turn it on essentially by default.
Very cool! I never thought to try to change the default values of any built-in variables. An even nicer solution.
Thanks, David. Yes, I'm aware of the variable but I failed to add context to my initial question. Edited above, but the question was posed in my fundamentals workshop today. Without getting too deep into variables, I said why don't we ask the community.
It does seem odd that a checkbox of sorts is not on the Player Properties to default to CC "on" or "off" though. Thanks for posting!
Nice solution! Echoing @David that I hadn't thought of changing the system variable default value. Thanks!
I've tried everything including these earlier suggestions and nothing I do enables the CC icon/button on my course in the player. My default Player Features has CC checked, I have CC checked on each slide with audio, using Text-to-Speech, I have Generate Closed Captions selected, and I copied all my text from the Slide Notes. Again, no CC displays. Others on my team, using the same player design/defaults are NOT having this issue. Please advise :-)
Hi, Glenn.
Thank you for reaching out! Let me ask you a few questions to narrow down the issue:
If this is happening with a specific file, I'd like to take a deeper look at it. Would you be comfortable sharing it publicly here or privately through a support case?
Hi Maria,
Thanks for the reply. We tested a few things as a team and may have found the fix!
I added all my audio as Text to Speech from notes, and checked the Generate Closed Captions box. I noticed that my Progress bar never loaded, and the Notes text never appeared in the window, but the audio loaded and worked fine on the Timeline - so I never gave it a second thought.
In troubleshooting with my team we found that if we right clicked the audio timeline file, and selected Text to Speech, the window displayed the notes text but DID NOT have a check in the Generate Closed Captions box. We clicked THAT box, clicked "Update" and our slide preview DID show the CC box which now works as intended!
I'm in the process of repeating this for all my slides and will share my success with the team, but I still don't understand why it didn't initially work as I expected - even though this is my first attempt at doing closed captions. (I previously just used the Notes tab...)
But for now, the mystery is solved!
Thanks so much!
BTW: We're on version (v3.50.24832.0)
Hi, Glenn.
Thank you so much for taking the time to come back here to share what worked for you! I'm glad you can now get the closed caption box to show up.
I'm not sure why it didn't work the first time. However, if it happens again, would you be able to submit the file with a support case so we can try to troubleshoot what the initial issue might be?
Maria,
Certainly!
We think that maybe since the project/file was started without the expectation of using CC, and some slides already had Text to Speech included when the decision was made to include CC, I just checked the boxes of those slides already "recorded" and they didn't work retroactively. Even though I checked the boxes of all subsequent slide prior to adding Text to Speech, the whole thing was just a little confused.
I start a new project tomorrow and I'll use that opportunity to do a test myself. I'll keep you posted!
Thanks again for your help!