File Size with Storyline 2 and Video
Feb 16, 2015
Good afternoon. I have a question and I am not sure if this is the right forum but I will give it a shot. Recently, my department was asked to create webinars (recorded sessions) for sessions that are usually instructor-led. This is temporary but we needed to turn this around very very fast.
I have Storyline 2 and was very excited to start using it but I have noticed that the file size for these projects in Storyline 2 are much much larger. I have a course with 60 MB of video (yes that is a lot). Due to the size, I put limited additional information (2 slides) with slight interaction (triggers to launch the video).
When I published the Storyline, that file increased to 212MB. When I placed this course into our servers, that file did not run well due to the file size. I am extremely surprised that the file was so large.
Because I this I had to move the videos to Articulate '09. It keep the file down to 70MB which is reasonable.
My question is this: Is there something that I can do to decreased the file size of the file? I have already compressed the videos as much as possible. I have limited interaction. So I don't know if I am missing something.
26 Replies
Hi Elisa
I wonder if this is a possible workaround / cause. I created a course (using Storline 1) that included a number of screencasts. I first incorported a large amount of footage before cutting it back - and deleting a number of unwanted slides. However, when I saved the file it retained the (extremely) large file size (over 330MB). I was able to reduce the file size (now 7 MBs) by creating a new file and importing the final footage ( saved as MP4s).
I wonder if importing your video into a new file might (somehow) reduce your file size.
I hope this helps.
Lynne
Thanks, Lynne. I did try what you recommended but it came up with the same file size. Unfortunately, it appears that Storyline 2 is making these files ginormous. I have read some of the other post on file size and followed some of the recommendations but the file size is still too large.
This is unfortunate, as I was very excited to get Storyline 2 but wishing it was more efficient on the file size.
Hi folks I found this myself just now.
I was creating a stripped down version of a course that had a bunch of audio & video in it.
I replace all the videos with tiny ones and removed all the audio.
But the story size remains at the same 45M that it was before.
I can't start it again because I need to show someone the structure that I built!
Very frustrating.
Even more so because SL does not have the concept of an internal library so I still have to point at stuff outside every time.
Hi Alan,
They remain until you save and close Storyline and then reopened it - this is in case you need to use the "undo" function. You could also do a save as upon the second open just to check that the file size changes.
Very frustrating, has anyone found anything that works? I am running into the same issue..and now I cannot open these files in Storyline...because I imported them into Storyline 2.
Hi Jodi! I do not have an update to provide at this time as this still lies in the hands of our QA Team.
Has there ever been any resolution of this issue? Our team is now running into gargantuan project files in Storyline 2, and it takes forever to save/open files. What gives?
Hi, Rebecca. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any resolution to this issue. Hopefully, we can get an update to this as I am also in the same position.
Hi Rebecca and Elisa! Unfortunately this issue is still in the hands of our QA Team and I do not have an update to provide.
Two months seems like a while to be in QA. What is the typical turnaround?
I do not have a typical timeline to provide. It is typically is dependent on the issue and the QA Team's ability to reproduce and understand it. As well as other factors on testing, beta, and releasing updates.
Leslie,
Has there been any movement on this issue? I have upgraded a course from Storyline 1 to Storyline 2 and the file size has jumped from 40MB in SL1 to 600MB in SL2. It is really important that my team and I have a way to get course size down as we pay for storage on our content management system, and often supply courses to students with slow or weak internet connection.
Hi Isaiah,
Just to confirm, are you seeing the increase in the .story file or the published output? The published output in Storyline 2 allows for uncompressed videos and as such could be larger file sizes. This issue was discussed a bit further here between one of our Senior support engineers and a few super heroes - so it's got some good break down of what's happening. If you're seeing it in the .story file, you may want to take a look at doing a "save as" to a new file and if you've removed any videos or elements being sure to save and close, and reopen to check the file size, as the assets are only removed when reopening the project to allow you to use the "undo" button while still in the project.
I wonder if my issue is related to the above. I am experimenting ways in which I can shrink our Storyline 2 files that happen to be crammed with video.
Here's what's baffling me: I used Wondershare to strip out the sound from the videos and reinsert them. When I saved and published, I saw that removal of the sound INCREASED the size of the Storyline files significantly! How can this be?
Hi Jay!
Did you check out the latter part of Ashley's response above, it sounds like what you may be experiencing:
If you're seeing it in the .story file, you may want to take a look at doing a "save as" to a new file and if you've removed any videos or elements being sure to save and close, and reopen to check the file size, as the assets are only removed when reopening the project to allow you to use the "undo" button while still in the project.
Wow, "Save as" did it! I just could not understand why a smaller video file (about half the size with the sound off) could result in a larger Storyline file, and the "undo" mechanics does seem to explain it.
Thanks so much, Leslie!
Is there any update on this? Our company uses a lot of short vignettes that would be valuable to embed in Storyline 2 but I have to create 5 articulates and would rather have the one. My Video file sizes should not cause the final published articulate to be over 149MB. What causes this?
Hi Theresa!
Justin gives a great explanation here that may help.
If you are still working with your project file and feel that the size is enlarged, you may want to import into a new file and see if this alleviates the issue you are seeing.
If you need our team to take a look, you are welcome to share here.
Hi everyone:
We've run into the exact same issue here at our organization.
The best compromise we could come up with was to manually edit/convert the source video and reduce its original resolution and playback size slightly, decreasing the original insert/import payload being added into the Articulate Storyline 2 project.
EXAMPLE: We started with a full-sized 1080P video.
This was great, quality-wise, but also led to the Storyline file (20 plain slides with text and graphics, 1 video slide) increasing to nearly 250 MBs in size.
Too large. We then reduced the play-screen size and quality of the original 1080P MP4 down to 720P MP4, and this got the published project size down to about 65 MB.
Quality of video still looks very good and size was much more manageable when being sent up to and hosted on the learning network.
We did this video conversion using Adobe Premiere, which was the only tool available to us to ensure that we could maintain quality of our source content.
Unfortunately, Storyline insists on reconverting files (such as native MP4s) that frankly, should not need to be reconverted, which may lead to some reasons why the file size of published projects increase.
Perhaps in future versions of Storyline (v3?) we will see more flexibility in options for video handling, conversion, and compression, that allow for greater ease-of-use in terms of payload handling and management.
Hey, I am having a similar ish problem.
We use a lot of video in our storyline. My current storyline 2 file is 2 Gb in size!!!! This is making the program run so slowly it's unusable.
The fact that the software imports media into the storyline file is a limitation. Can you either have something to compress video files when they are imported or like other softwares, do not import the media files into the storyline file in the first place?
Hi Dara
You do have the ability to reduce the video quality in the publish settings. However, given the size of your file, even with compression the file size will still be very large. If you use a lot of video the best option may be to consider hosting your videos elsewhere - say YouTube or Vimeo - and then embed these in your storyline course.
Cheers
Lynne
Hi Lynne
The issue is not the published content. The Storyline software runs really slowly when files are larger than 2Gb. The reason is that the software imports the media into the file as is without compression.
Hi Dara,
We compress the video files and other media upon publish so that it's compressed in that final set up which you'll be uploading to your web server or LMS.
Dara, are you making any changes to the video? If you are editing the video, I have had issues where it has blown up my course by 2x the size. This issue is still waiting to be addressed by Articulate. Hopefully, you have another software that will help you to edit the video because Articulate is very limited and not effective. Hopefully, they will make improves since this has been an issue from the very beginning.
If you have edited your video in a different software, you can try using Clip Champ. The website is great for compressing large video. www.clipchamp.com
Experiencing the same issue here on two projects. First has three mp4s that total 70MB going onto a few text screens. No editing or altering of the files, and very little else in the course, and the file size grows to 137MB.
The other project had a 500MB (60 minutes) video that I imported just to see what would happen. This too has very few screens in it. I was quite happy to find that Storyline, at first, compressed it down so it published a 30MB scorm. Also very few slides in the whole project. Then I had to break that one video across two screens (so our LMS wouldn't time out). Now the scorm is 125MB.
Any thoughts?
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