Closed captions not working

Hi Ravi,

Would you be able to share your file so we can test it on a web server and a LMS? 

You can either share it here in a new reply, or send it to us privately here. I'll be standing by!

I am having a similar issue - the captions work fine in preview - but on publish screens with video full screen - the video seems to be sitting over the top of the captions! I only know this as one of my videos does not fill the whole screen.

Need a fix asap please

ok so it is a review tool problem - the captions at the moment sit over my menu bar (it was designed with out captions in mind) it all is fine until some thing animates in and then suddenly the captions sit BEHIND everything else and are illegible - not great for client review

Hi Lizzie,

Sorry for the trouble you've run into with Closed captions! You mentioned it's a Review tool problem, do you mean that you only see this happening while viewing the course in Review instead of Storyline's preview or published output? 

Could you share an example for us to take a look at? 

Can someone walk me through the process to take my audio recording on the slide and get it to show up in captioning?  I can save my audio file as an MP3 or a wav.  I see no option to save it in the other formats that are listed: SRT, VTT, SBV, or SUB.  Thanks.

Hey Matt, 

If you have an audio clip added to your slide, you should be able to select that and then click Options > Add Captions in the ribbon.

Check out the documentation here.

OK, I see.  I think I was hoping that it would take my audio and automatically populate the captions.  Kind of like a reverse operation of how you can type the text and have the automated voices read it.  Thanks for getting back so quickly, it's not what I wanted (having to type captions for 3 dozen slides), but at least now I know how to do it.  Thanks again Leslie!

quicker way to do it is copy and paste your audio script into the text to speech tool - click for closed captions to be created. - this will create your captions along a timeline - then go into the closed captions option on that audio your created - export the captions and then import them into your proper audio - it wont match exactly but will be a case of adjusting rather than typing all of them in.

Lizzie- while this isn't a perfect solution, it's a real time saver over what I was doing.  You've literally saved me hours on this course. Thanks so much for sharing!

Hello,

I am also having an issue with captions. They work perfectly when I am previewing my file. My published file, however, is very inconsistent. Sometimes the captions work, sometimes they don't work, and sometimes they randomly stop in the middle of a slide. I have done many captions with Storyline, and this is a first for me. 

Hi Cassandra, 

Can you tell us more about where you've tested the published course? I'd want to make sure you've uploaded it to your LMS or web server to test and use a supported browser. If you're doing all that and the captions are misbehaving are you able to share a sample of your course with our Support Team so that we can take a look?

Hi Ashley,

I tested my published course to my LMS as HTML5 Only. I had the same experience with the captions using Edge, Chrome and FF.

We have many Storyline courses with captions working as expected with our LMS. I'm not sure what's different about this one. Unfortunately I am unable to share my file. The only 'unique' characteristics that come to mind:

* This course was originally in Storyline 2, and upgraded to Storyline 360

* I copied and pasted the captions from text (not VTT/caption file uploaded)

* The slides are all set to 'advance to the next' when timeline reaches the end.

Although I mention the above as 'unique', it's realty not all that unique, because we have other courses we recently upgraded with the same above characteristics and they work fine. Not sure what's going on with this one.

Thanks

Cassandra

Cassandra S. Miller
Instructional Designer and Developer
Transition Services
[Software

Hi Cassandra, 

It's difficult to say what could be wrong without seeing this one file, especially since you have other files set up exactly the same way. If you're not able to share the file (we can sign an NDA if that helps!) I'd test out importing it into a new Storyline file and confirming that all your files are saved locally. 

If you're still stuck, reach out to our Support Team and perhaps a screen sharing session will at least allow us to see what you see! 

Hi Leslie/Ashley,

I'm facing the similar issues for the closed captions file (.srt file) which was added to storyline file by two methods thatI found through the forum itself:

• Renaming the .srt file as the video file and when we insert video the .srt file embeds automatically.
• Adding the closed captions file separately using the add caption tab.

In both the cases I could neither see the text in edit caption window nor while previewing the slide nor in the publish version (IE / Chrome).

All I could see in the edit caption window was the duration placeholder where the caption were supposed to be added manually which all together did not solve the purpose of importing the caption file. 

The .srt file was created using the below format;

1

00:00:01.000 -> 00:00:05.000

Lorem ipsum.

2

00:00:06.000 -> 00:00:11.000

Lorem ipsum.

I'm currently on 3.26.18601 version.

Hi Ashley/Linda,

Please update about the above issue I'm facing.

Hi Priyanka,

Have you looked at updating to the latest version of Storyline 360,  build 3.29.19305.0?

I'd start there to ensure you have all the latest updates and fixes, and if you're still having trouble our Support Team would love to take a look at your files. Let us know if you go that route and I'm happy to follow along! 

Hi Ashley,

Thanks for the response.

I have updated my storyline version to 3.29.19305.0, but the problem still persists. The closed caption placeholders were generated but the text did not seem to appear in the caption box itself.  

I will not be able share the source file, would appreciate if this can be done without it.

Regards

Priyanka Mehta

Hi there, Priyanka. Thanks for sharing this extra piece!

We appreciate confidentiality and are happy to sign an NDA if that works for you and your team. If you can only share a .SRT file with us for testing – that would be gold, too! Just let us know. 😊

The steps you took are spot-on, so let's see if we can narrow down why this is happening:

• Are the files saved on a local C: drive? Saving on a network drive can cause odd behavior, so I'd like to rule this out as the culprit.
• Is this happening in a specific Storyline file, or with any one you create? 

Hi Katie,

To answer your questions first, 

• Yes the files are on C drive.
• No, I have tried the same steps in different storyline files, system as well as versions but still the error persists.

When I'm inserting the video wherein the .srt file name is kept same as video file name the .srt file in importing to storyline with only placeholders visible but not the text that's been entered in the .srt file.

I have attached the .srt file I was testing with and here is the link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6Hwpp1jWok) of the video from where I fetched the transcript. The timings may not be apt as I have written them without using any particular software. 

Hope this helps!

Regards

Priyanka Mehta

Hello, Priyanka! Really sorry you're still dealing with this. I'm going to open a case for you so we can get this resolved as soon as possible.

You'll hear from one of our Support Engineers soon!

Hi Alyssa,

Yes, Michael sent the solution and there was a gap in .srt file. Now, it is working fine. Thanks for the support. :)

Regards

Priyanka Mehta

Happy to hear that Priyanka, and thanks for the update! 

I just received a license to use Sonix, which transcribes closed captions from audio and video. I can export to either .srt or .vtt files.  I am embedding the .mp4 of a webcast on a slide (insert video from file) and including the cc file in the same folder with the same name.  The help file says that the cc file will automatically get uploaded. I've tried this about 8 times with manually importing, hoping the automatic import works, using 2 different cc files and my project crashes each time.  I'm using Storyline 360 version 3.29.19305.0  

Is anyone else having problems importing CC files to an inserted mp4 file?