Help! Storyline not saving/publishing

Hi Richard,

It sounds like the course is too large, I'm impressed you've managed to build a 450mb course! How much RAM do you have on your machine? I'm not sure if Storyline uses virtual memory when exporting/publishing but it certainly sounds like the computer might be struggling.

I'd advise breaking these scenes up into smaller courses. You'll likely run into performance issues once this is on your LMS due to the size anyway, so It'll save a headache later down the line. 

For a comparison, a fairly large course I'd been working on has come in at just over 50mb (Storyline working file) and I had no issues with publish or export with the following specs:

64bit Windows 7

Dual core 2.53 GHZ processor

4GB RAM

Hope this helps.

Alexei.

Hi Alexei, 

Thanks for getting back to me. My computer has 8GB of RAM, 64 bit Windows 8 and has a 2.60 GHZ processer. 

I make quite large e-Learning courses! The last one I made was around 380 MB and this worked fine. It also worked fine up until I got to 450 MB, and then the problems started. With my new computer, the saving issue has been mainly resolved, it's the publishing that I have problems with. 

Do you know if Articulate has a limit for how big I can make my files? My computer seems to handle everything fine - loads quite quickly, saves quickly, usually publishes ok. It's just when the file ticks over 450 MB that the problems begin! 

I really don't want to split the course in two. I can do this with Captivate, and integrating all my courses into one file was the main reason that I migrated to Articulate. 

I don't use an LMS, I just host the courses online and they load very quickly (even the 380MB ones!) because of the packaged Zip approach of Articulate (which is great). 

Thanks for your help so far, 

Richard 

Hi Richard,

Fair enough, unless the saving error refers to HDD space then I'm stumped!

I'm afraid I don't know for sure if there's a maximum file size. Hopefully one of the staff can answer if there is a limit, everything I've managed to find suggests no hard limit to course size, but I guess its got to start struggling at some point...

Best of luck.

Alexei.

Hi there Richard,

Alexei gave some great tips (thanks Alexei!). I would also recommend checking out this thread regarding Best Practices for Lengthy Courses. There's a lot of great advice and suggestions in the thread that may help you out with your course.

The file sounds very large, so I can see how this would be a difficult project to publish. It also sounds like the "breaking point" for your is the same amount for multiple projects, correct? Perhaps you could make some minor adjustments and try to stay below that amount - just to make sure you don't run into these issues every time you have a project around that size. 

I agree with Richard, it may be a space issue, maybe a writing issue to the hard drive. There really isn't a "set in stone" limitation on file sizes, it really comes down to what the machine can handle and process in most cases. 

Hi Guys, 

Thank you for your help so far. 

It is quite a large file - I agree. It's a whole course with 14 modules, multiple choice questions, audio. I built it in modules and pulled these together as stories. Annoyingly, the whole thing works perfectly and quite quickly on my computer (which is only days old and pretty powerful), it just won't publish. 

I've also tried to publish on 4 different computers with the same result. 

I've been building e-Learning for quite a while now and I am fairly sure that the problem is not lack of space on my computer (I have a TB of free space to save in !). It feels like it's a limitation within Articulate. 

I'd be interested to know if any other e-Learning builders have built anything over 450mb? I really don't want to split the course up. I'm going to try to reduce the audio size (by using MP3 instead of WMA or WAV files) and hopefully this might do the trick. 

Thanks again for your help so far! 

Richard  

Hi Richard!

Sorry about that - I swapped the names earlier! :D

I totally understand not wanting to split the courses. I usually recommend that for modifying the project, but obviously that's not going to be a good idea for you if you need them all together when publishing and this comes up when publishing. 

I'd love to know how it turns out after you try out the audio swap, or if others are able to give you some advice on such a large course.

Best of luck! :)

Christine

Hi Christine, 

Ok - I've stripped all of the audio out of the course so it's a fraction of the size - 220,000kb around. However, when I go to try to publish again I receive the same issue - it just drops out of the publish once it has got to the last slide. It's definitely not about the size now as I've published larger files successfully - can anyone suggest anything?

Many thanks, 

Richard 

Hi Richard,

Have you tried importing into a new fresh SL file post-"downsizing"? Because it sounds like it's holding onto whatever was preventing it from working initially.

i have same problem, my file not saving and not publish.

i am using articulate storyline 2 update 7, in my file have 1600 quiz questions and file size is 70mb.

i have i7 processor 8 gb ram.

articulate 32 bit version not use maximum system memory. i found low memory window every time.

Regard

furkan

Hi Furkan!

Does this happen with any of your files or just this one that you are referring to?

Perhaps you could try to import into a new file to see if this alleviates the issue.

I would also advise conducting a repair of your software once you get the file saved.