I am wondering if there is a way of save and compacting the storyline file as it doesnt seem to correspond with the size of the file. For example I tried to delelete all slides in project to keep its setting etc before importing some slides ...and yet it is stil 7MB when empty.
Other files seem to creep up to 20MB and then others with sames slides in are under 3MB.
When it publishes it goes down to under a MB . I guess I am looking for a save and compact function?
If I remember right, over time, things get smaller once you remove assets.
I suppose one could open the .story file with something like 7Zip and manually delete unused assets but that's not something I'd never do. The naming convention of things would probably trip you up to begin with.
Just curious (and no criticism) but why the concern? Scarce disk space?
On the size issue I have been emailing the source files around so am having to do it individually to keep with email program limits.
How do you mean over time?
Sometimes a 'save as' does the trick and it seems to correct itself but not sure why it doesnt work every time. Or even most of the time just occassionally
I am talking about the source.story file being overblown, am assuming when you suggest using 7z you are talking about the output, which there is no problem with.
No, I remember during the beta removing some slides and assets and doing a save as and not noticing the new file not being much smaller. Then I looked later and the file was smaller.
Not a big issue for me so I stopped watching and worrying about it. Since I do things locally, and have plenty of disk space and a very powerful PC, it was not a big concern for me, though YMMV and I can appreciate why some folks would be concerned.
As for 7-Zip, I was speaking about the story file itself and not the output. You can open up the story source file with 7-Zip. But again, not something I'd advised doing. I'd leave it alone. I was just playing around with a copy of a story file.
That's interesting, Gerry. I had tried to open files earlier and it didn't work out for me. Going to have to give it another try It's fun to rummage through the guts.
That's interesting, Gerry. I had tried to open files earlier and it didn't work out for me. Going to have to give it another try It's fun to rummage through the guts.
I agree with Gerry dont worry about the storyline filesize, especially when it is only 32mb. I have been working on files that are from 150mb onwards and often these drop to 75mb only to balloon to 200mb. It doesnt seem to effect performance or saving.
The only reason I think I would care is if I had to email it to a colleague but this is what dropbox is for
It may well be purging surplus information from time to time. Keep saving as and occasionally it goes right down but it lack consistency. 20MB down to 6 but it doesnt seem to be controllable.
Macromedia products used to do the same thing but had a save and compact function.
I have been noticing exactly the same thing where file sizes are not going down, even when you delete slides and I have have to start every project as a new file rather than being able to simply "save as" a new name or else the files stay large. I haven't noticed the size going down while working on it but I do not usually check that until I am finished and I have to upload the file to Dropbox. Continually saving a .psd or a .pdf makes it marginally larger each time, so I am surprised to hear that .story files could get smaller when doing that.
In my case, I do NEED to be able to make the files smaller as I am working with a developer who is building a custom player to play the HTML5 output on iPad and iPhone, as well, without having to do a second build in iOS (which Storyline can't produce, unfortunately). In order for the files to play properly, the dev has requested that all .story files be kept no larger than 30MB and many of mine are up around 70-80MB. I generally have approx. 12 slides per project and am using a lot of .jpgs and .pngs, as well as illustrated characters from within Storyline (I have been butting several instances of the character back-to-back in the timeline to make them change poses and expressions in time with the audio rather than using state changes as I have found this to be much easier to adjust - I have a LOT of content to produce!). The audio files are almost all .aif with the occasional .m4a. I prefer using .mp4 for any videos I've included as you can actually see the start frame within your slide without having to preview it but there are a couple of .swfs, as well (.swf just shows up "blank" until you preview it, so it's really a pain if you want to resize the video or adjust its position onscreen but I don't know what else I can use if I need the video to contain transparency).
I've heard that there is a way to reduce file size to approx. 1/10 of its original size just by switching the audio files to one particular format but I am not sure what that format would be. I have a very solid understanding of image file properties but am not nearly as well schooled on audio formats and their pros and cons. Would anyone have any suggestions for me as to how I could drastically reduce the file size, whether through audio format or otherwise? I don't know how much it matters but the project dimensions are 960x600 pixels.
Have you tried publishing the course yet? Storyline's compression feature should reduce the file size simply by publishing. Also, if you're working on a network or USB drive, the file can swell up in size.
same situation occures for me, i've made a review of a video, for 2-3-time and each time i saved the file size increased. That is really a bad bug in my opinion. I'm using Storyline from a couple of week now, and i found out a huge list of problems that are really annoying when developing, i will expose them in another post since this is not the right thread, but this issue should be absolutely fixed. The only method i found out to solve, was creating a new file and importing all slides from the old one (but it takes time to reset player, menu, question banks etc.)
Sorry to hear about the issues you're bumping into, Zio. We've worked hard to handle file size better in our next update, which will be released soon. I'll be sure to update this thread once it is released.
I'm working with files 347MB, and just wanted to send a co-worker three slides. So I saved as, deleted extraneous files, and it's still 343MB. File storage and transfer are my issues. I used to have the save problem with MS Office products, particularly PPT. I think it's because the file embeds assets, and doesn't let go even if you delete the slide that asset is on. I tried publishing but nothing changed. Even zipped, the file is still 294MB.
Just wondering if anyone has found a way to purge the file of it's unused assets. I do not want to try the 7zip suggestion above.
Might have been a corrupt Engage file, actually. My Media Tour interaction kept crashing, and the links in the Captions were spaced weirdly. I was saving frequently, and my Storyline file reflected the changes in the preview. But when I went in and tried to edit the interaction in Engage some more, I was getting the original file I started with.
So, I started fresh, reimporting my videos and typing each caption menu and assigning the links from scratch, and so far, so good. If that doesn't fix the problem, I'll report back. Thanks!!
I've got the same issue as described above. I've updated the software and I am still getting the same file size. What can I do so that the edited "smaller" file gets saved as a smaller file?
I just saved a completely empty project file (no slides in it). It just has a background formatted in specific color and a logo in the slide master. The files size is 119MB. Is there a solution to make this empty project smaller?
58 Replies
If I remember right, over time, things get smaller once you remove assets.
I suppose one could open the .story file with something like 7Zip and manually delete unused assets but that's not something I'd never do. The naming convention of things would probably trip you up to begin with.
Just curious (and no criticism)
but why the concern? Scarce disk space?
Thanks for getting back to me.
On the size issue I have been emailing the source files around so am having to do it individually to keep with email program limits.
How do you mean over time?
Sometimes a 'save as' does the trick and it seems to correct itself but not sure why it doesnt work every time. Or even most of the time just occassionally
I am talking about the source.story file being overblown, am assuming when you suggest using 7z you are talking about the output, which there is no problem with.
Thanks Dave
No, I remember during the beta removing some slides and assets and doing a save as and not noticing the new file not being much smaller. Then I looked later and the file was smaller.
Not a big issue for me so I stopped watching and worrying about it. Since I do things locally, and have plenty of disk space and a very powerful PC, it was not a big concern for me, though YMMV and I can appreciate why some folks would be concerned.
As for 7-Zip, I was speaking about the story file itself and not the output. You can open up the story source file with 7-Zip. But again, not something I'd advised doing. I'd leave it alone. I was just playing around with a copy of a story file.
That's interesting, Gerry. I had tried to open files earlier and it didn't work out for me. Going to have to give it another try
It's fun to rummage through the guts.
I agree with Gerry dont worry about the storyline filesize, especially when it is only 32mb. I have been working on files that are from 150mb onwards and often these drop to 75mb only to balloon to 200mb. It doesnt seem to effect performance or saving.
The only reason I think I would care is if I had to email it to a colleague but this is what dropbox is for
No i just wondered if there was an easier method than hacking into it, the file size isnt a problem as such I just think that it is varying a lot.
It's all very strange...I've never seen it with an application before.
My bug file lost about 5mb when I DropBoxed it over to Magnus last night...I just hope it wasn't the 5mb that had the bug in it.
Yours - not quite understanding technology yet...
Bruce
...oh how true
Bruce
It may well be purging surplus information from time to time. Keep saving as and occasionally it goes right down but it lack consistency. 20MB down to 6 but it doesnt seem to be controllable.
Macromedia products used to do the same thing but had a save and compact function.
Dave
funny that you say that when you look at whop the dev team were
I have been noticing exactly the same thing where file sizes are not going down, even when you delete slides and I have have to start every project as a new file rather than being able to simply "save as" a new name or else the files stay large. I haven't noticed the size going down while working on it but I do not usually check that until I am finished and I have to upload the file to Dropbox. Continually saving a .psd or a .pdf makes it marginally larger each time, so I am surprised to hear that .story files could get smaller when doing that.
In my case, I do NEED to be able to make the files smaller as I am working with a developer who is building a custom player to play the HTML5 output on iPad and iPhone, as well, without having to do a second build in iOS (which Storyline can't produce, unfortunately). In order for the files to play properly, the dev has requested that all .story files be kept no larger than 30MB and many of mine are up around 70-80MB. I generally have approx. 12 slides per project and am using a lot of .jpgs and .pngs, as well as illustrated characters from within Storyline (I have been butting several instances of the character back-to-back in the timeline to make them change poses and expressions in time with the audio rather than using state changes as I have found this to be much easier to adjust - I have a LOT of content to produce!). The audio files are almost all .aif with the occasional .m4a. I prefer using .mp4 for any videos I've included as you can actually see the start frame within your slide without having to preview it but there are a couple of .swfs, as well (.swf just shows up "blank" until you preview it, so it's really a pain if you want to resize the video or adjust its position onscreen but I don't know what else I can use if I need the video to contain transparency).
I've heard that there is a way to reduce file size to approx. 1/10 of its original size just by switching the audio files to one particular format but I am not sure what that format would be. I have a very solid understanding of image file properties but am not nearly as well schooled on audio formats and their pros and cons. Would anyone have any suggestions for me as to how I could drastically reduce the file size, whether through audio format or otherwise? I don't know how much it matters but the project dimensions are 960x600 pixels.
Thanks in advance!
Welcome to Heroes, Mel!
Have you tried publishing the course yet? Storyline's compression feature should reduce the file size simply by publishing. Also, if you're working on a network or USB drive, the file can swell up in size.
hello,
same situation occures for me, i've made a review of a video, for 2-3-time and each time i saved the file size increased. That is really a bad bug in my opinion. I'm using Storyline from a couple of week now, and i found out a huge list of problems that are really annoying when developing, i will expose them in another post since this is not the right thread, but this issue should be absolutely fixed. The only method i found out to solve, was creating a new file and importing all slides from the old one (but it takes time to reset player, menu, question banks etc.)
Peter, publishing the course didn't solve the problem, the file size is still the same, and it still contains unused assets.
Sorry to hear about the issues you're bumping into, Zio. We've worked hard to handle file size better in our next update, which will be released soon. I'll be sure to update this thread once it is released.
I'm working with files 347MB, and just wanted to send a co-worker three slides. So I saved as, deleted extraneous files, and it's still 343MB. File storage and transfer are my issues. I used to have the save problem with MS Office products, particularly PPT. I think it's because the file embeds assets, and doesn't let go even if you delete the slide that asset is on. I tried publishing but nothing changed. Even zipped, the file is still 294MB.
Just wondering if anyone has found a way to purge the file of it's unused assets. I do not want to try the 7zip suggestion above.
Thanks!
Hi Patricia and others
Have you had a chance to upgrade to Update 2 yet? I think that should help with what you're describing. Let us know...
Thanks!
Too early to tell. I haven't had a chance to do tests, because since I upgraded last night, Engage isn't playing nicely with Storyline :(
Hey Patricia,
Sorry to hear it. Can you tell us a little more about the trouble you're experiencing with Engage playing with Storyline?
Might have been a corrupt Engage file, actually. My Media Tour interaction kept crashing, and the links in the Captions were spaced weirdly. I was saving frequently, and my Storyline file reflected the changes in the preview. But when I went in and tried to edit the interaction in Engage some more, I was getting the original file I started with.
So, I started fresh, reimporting my videos and typing each caption menu and assigning the links from scratch, and so far, so good. If that doesn't fix the problem, I'll report back. Thanks!!
Sounds good, Patricia! Good luck with the project
Hi Guys,
I've got the same issue as described above. I've updated the software and I am still getting the same file size. What can I do so that the edited "smaller" file gets saved as a smaller file?
Thanks
~Stephen
I just saved a completely empty project file (no slides in it). It just has a background formatted in specific color and a logo in the slide master. The files size is 119MB. Is there a solution to make this empty project smaller?
Thanks!
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.