Do videos in Storyline 360 need to fully download before playing?

Feb 22, 2022

I was previously under the impression that videos would stream or start playing when enough data had buffered (making bitrate an important consideration).

At the bottom of this page it states that in Storyline 360, videos must fully load before playing: https://articulate.com/support/article/how-content-is-preloaded-in-storyline

And on this page, it states that video progressively download so they play before fully loading: https://articulate.com/support/article/mp4-movie-doesnt-begin-playing-until-it-has-fully-downloaded

A client is experiencing issues with courses freezing on slides with videos and their IT dept has done some network monitoring and they claim that videos are needing to fully download before playing. This would mean that once they can see a video playing... they shouldn't have issues with anything freezing up as the video is fully downloaded. It would mean there'd be a lengthier wait for things to play though.

Can someone please confirm how things work?

Thanks,

Brett

2 Replies

Kelly Auner

2 years ago02/22/22 at 10:04 pm (UTC)

Hi Brett!

Storyline360 will preload the first slide so you can get started right away. The next three slides will automatically preload as well to avoid any delay when moving to the next slide. Assets for each slide download in the order of images, audio tracks, and videos, so if there is a heavy object, such as a video on the first slide or if the customer has a slow internet connection, this could possibly cause a delay.

However, in Storyline 1 and Storyline 2 HTML5 courses, videos don’t preload; they progressively download so they can begin playing as soon as possible.

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Kelly

Developer 1
Author

2 years ago02/23/22 at 10:34 pm (UTC)

Thanks Kelly.