How can you determine the total "run time" of a Storyline file?

This may not be accurate enough for your needs, but in the Publish dialog you can see an estimated duration, see here under Step 2.

Total timeline for each question slide?  How can anyone guess how long a user will take to answer a question?

My own personal best practices:

Personally, I would never think of releasing a project without one final run-through AS A USER, to see what they see, to feel what they feel, to find the mistakes and poor design that they will experience. Of course, I may be the only designer in the world that makes mistakes, or gets tunnel vision. While I'm looking for all those other things, it's easy enough to time it.

Timing for each slide and layer? I know that sooner or later, SL, or I, or my computer is going to bargle up a presentation, and I'll be stuck recontructing at least part of it, so as I create, I keep pretty extensive notes. Recording the length of a slide and its layers would be pretty easy.

Most layers and slides that have interactions have pretty short timelines, but are designed to patiently sit and wait for the user to assimilate everything at their own pace. It;s hard to anticipate how long those will last. Naturally, linear, single-pace , non-interactive courses are easier to time.

It's based on a combination of slide timelines and layer timelines. We're not able to account for the time of a web object video or similar as that's external to Storyline. 

Ok, here's what I found out from testing some items in SL to systematically determine a estimated duration for learners to complete a module.

1) A few preconditions:

1. All the content is completed for your course (i.e., you are not adding any other content)
2. Remove all course content that is not going to be used in the final module (i.e., scenes, slides, question banks, and questions).

2)Determine the Estimated Module Duration

• Open the SL file which you want to determine the total time
• Select "publish"  (see attachment)
• Click the box to right of title input box that has "…"
• The estimated duration is provided on the pop-up window toward the bottom right of the pop-up window.

NOTE:

• Timelines on layers are not included in the duration
• If you use a question from a question bank in more than one quiz, it's time is only included once
• Quiz placeholder slides do not have a timeline

Will this timing function every be updated to include the time on Layers?  I use the automated voice to estimate the number of minutes that I will have to budget for 3rd party narration.

Hi Ari,

The overall duration of a Storyline file currently does not include layers, but I appreciate you letting us know you have a need for that. Our product team is always keen to hear about customer needs, so I can certainly pass along your suggestion. And feel free to share any other ideas you have here: Feature Request Form.

Hi, everyone!

I have exciting news to share!
We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 58, we've included important fixes and new features.

One of the features we've included is:

Create timed interactions and conditional triggers using built-in variables that track the total time a learner spends on a slide, a scene, or an entire course.

• Storyline 360: Elapsed Time Variables

To take advantage of this feature, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here.

Please let us know if you have any questions by posting here or by reaching out to our Support Engineers directly.