Help ! Seek bar not waiting for Video to load

Apr 30, 2019

Hi,

We are using storyline 3.

In one of our projects, we are using videos extensively in the slides. They have been "handbraked" and are small in size. The SCORM package has an average size of 60 MB with around 20 slides. However, the client requires that the SCORM package loads without delays on a 1 Mbps internet connection.

For some slides which has mp4 (video) files, we are noticing that while the video is getting buffered, the seek bar continues to progress and by the time the video starts to play, the seek bar has already reached the end of the timeline and moves onto the next slide (we have provided auto jump to next slide).

How can this be fixed?

7 Replies
Noel Read

Hi, a couple of thoughts. When you publish the video, check out the video quality  (under customisation when you're in the Publish window). You might be able to pull that back a bit so it loads faster - but that's a trade off with the quality.

Second option is to still allow the video to auto-play but also add in a trigger that plays the video from the start - so it is buffering and playing in the background, but when the user clicks the play button it starts it from the beginning again. You can also drag out the video timeline a bit so that there is a bit more time for the user to hit the play button and have it work before it jumps to the next slide.

You might get away with just adding a play button, but I was thinking it wouldn't start buffering until you tried to play it, so having just the play button to start it might not help if it's not already buffering.

There are probably better options that this - I haven't come across buffering issues before but I've never had to work with 1Mbps speeds!

 

Katie Riggio

Hi there, Ajay. Happy to help!

It sounds like you went through these re-encode steps to optimize your videos for web playback, but the seek bar progresses during their download and advances to the next slide.

I'm with Noel: I'd also look at the overall video quality and possibly reduce it to generate a smaller video size and faster playback. Another approach can be to host your videos externally, and then embed them as a Web Object. Could any of these options work for your client?

Ajay Balakrishnan

Thanks, Noel and Katie for your responses and recommendations.

Video quality:  Using handbrake, we brought down the video size considerably.  When we use Articulate compression of videos, it is distorting the audio component that it no longer matches with the audio levels of individual mp3 files in the timeline.  Also, most videos are small (less than 5 MB), still, the seek bar progresses during their download and advances to the next slide.

Hosting videos externally: There are over 200 small video clips (mp4) and it would be difficult to host each of them externally and would not work for my client.

This leads me to ask the following questions:

1) Is it possible to restrict the seek bar to start progressing only once the video starts playing?

2) is it possible that storyline 3 does not progressively download mp4 files in certain cases? if so is there a way to ensure it does so.

Thanks again for your timely responses.

 

Noel Read

Hi, I can see you will have some challenges with 200 x 4 - 5 mb videos in one file and streaming them on a 1mbps internet connection - that is very slow. I don't know of a way to stop the seek bar from going, I have not encountered this issue, but that might be because of the internet speed.

I would suggest having a play button come up that the user has to click to start the video  - and possibly a message box saying it will take x number of seconds to load so it might not play straight away. Not the best solution, but better what's currently happening.

Ajay Balakrishnan

Thanks, Noel.  All the 200 videos don't come in a single file. In total there are 45 files. each file having 5 small videos across multiple slides. so each file comes to around 60 Mb on an average.

I am trying to get the client to agree to higher bandwidth. At 3 Mbps it seems to work fine. Are you aware of any published recommended internet bandwidths/standards for online learning? especially when videos are involved? That will help in the discussion with the client.

I will also try the play button suggestion. But even then, the seek bar moves while the video loads. If there is a way to tackle that, it would help. 

Ajay Balakrishnan

Hi,

Finally, we were able to reduce the effect of the seek bar moving ahead while the video is loading by compressing the videos further using Handbrake software.  We set the average bitrate to 600 Kbps and enabled web optimization. Now videos immediately start loading even at 1 Mbps. 

However, the earlier issue persists if we move around the seek bar. Disabling the slide auto jump is a workaround. That way even after the seek-bar reaches the end of the timeline, the video continues to play till it is complete.

The below link was helpful in getting a good compression setting in handbrake.

https://www.vredvoice.com/handbrake-web-optimized.html

I would love to know if there are any standards on recommended internet bandwidths and quality settings for it.

Thanks, everyone for your support!

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