Hey Tom, here is my Audio question

Jun 10, 2022

I have a slide with 6 layers with audio in all the layers. When the learner click on the layer, the audio continued where it left off last. I want the audio to restart from the beginning each time the learner click into it. 

I have the "slide property" set to "reset to initial state". It worked on all my slides but just not this one particular slide. 

10 Replies
Daniel Canaveral

Hi Shirley.  Not Tom, but I enjoy troubleshooting things in Storyline and find myself with quite a bit of time lately 😄.

Let me see if I got this right: You have audio playing on the base layer of your slide. You also have something on that base layer that triggers 1 of 6 layers to appear.  When the learner clicks on that...something...the layer appears and the audio on the base layer is paused (?).  When the learner closes the layer and returns to the base layer, the audio picks back up where it left off.

Is that more or less what's happening?

Tom Kuhlmann

I built a mock up with six layers and audio and it works as you say you want it to work (assuming I understand what you want).

Here's a video where I explain a couple of things. If you want to share the file we can look at the slide and see if there's something wrong with how it's set up. If it's set up right, then the support team can look at your file and work from there.

Tom Kuhlmann

There's a nuance to the way slide layers work. You can read about it here.

  • If the layer has an interaction and you leave, then when you return, the layer picks up where you left off. That's why you hear the audio resuming. The layer has the interactive accordion elements.
  • The solution is to remove the triggers to play audio and the audio will play automatically on the timeline.
  • Set the layer properties to Reset to Initial state when revisiting. 
Brian Glover

I've been struggling with this same issue for a number of hours. I've got a project with seven layers - each layer has some text and a button to play an audio clip. We need the users to play the audio after they've read the text, so having it play automatically when the layer loads is not an option.  I've got my layers all set up so they reset to initial state, and I tried adding a trigger to the layer, and then to the audio button, to jump to 0 seconds on the timeline... nothing has worked so far. 

The only solution I've managed to come up with is to completely rebuild everything on one layer, using triggers to hide/show text objects and audio buttons. By doing this, the "jump to 0 seconds" trigger actually works, but wow - the programming is exponentially more complex.