How do you play a single song as background music?

Jan 07, 2013

I have a short (2 minutes) marketing piece that tells the story of who our training department is what we do. It contains less than 20 slides. I've not been able to figure out how to play a single song during the entire course. I plan to voiceover each slide and have music playing in the background.  I did a quick search of the forum and find anything. I know Storyline can do it. How do I do this?

61 Replies
Scott Lindsey

First, a BIG thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread. I had a last-minute request from a customer to add background music to a Storyline file that's about 80% complete and you have given me some great ideas. 

I was able to get this to work using Google Chrome, but we're still using IE8 as our default browser. It doesn't support the <audio> tags. I had to use the <EMBED> code. But I know some people use Google Chrome here. I ended up using both snippets of code.

The audio file is in the same root directory as the story.html file.

Hope this helps! 

Lina Galrito-Leinonen
Scott Lindsey

First, a BIG thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread. I had a last-minute request from a customer to add background music to a Storyline file that's about 80% complete and you have given me some great ideas. 

I was able to get this to work using Google Chrome, but we're still using IE8 as our default browser. It doesn't support the <audio> tags. I had to use the <EMBED> code. But I know some people use Google Chrome here. I ended up using both snippets of code.

The audio file is in the same root directory as the story.html file.

Hope this helps! 

Hi Scott,

Can I include this code also in the index_lms.html file as well? I tried to do it and the sound doesn't play. Do you know how can I fix this issue?

Thank you in advance!

Lina

Lina Galrito-Leinonen

Thank you Ashley!

The Exit button is working but the audio file not. :/

I published the course to LMS and I included the code mentioned above.

Probably I am doing something wrong as it doesn't work on the index_lms.html file.

It works fine on the story.html though.

Any ideas on how to workaround this issue?

Thank you in advance!

Lina

 

Rick Pruitt

Well, you stirred my curiosity here. So attached is a demo I threw together where I just added the music to a single slide, then use layers instead of additional slides. You must be sure the layers cover the base layer content as you can't hide the base layer content for the layers, or you will not here the music. Navigation options are plentiful. Auto based on cue points or timelines, or just add navigation as I did here directly on top of each other.

Maggie Merino

Hi Rick, Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I did what you suggested and it works great, but I have one question. I set up the layers to automatically advance, but when I click the pause on the player, it pauses my music, but the slides conitnue to advance. Is there a way to have the slides pause as well as the music without adding "back" and "next" buttons on each layer?

 

Maggie Merino

Thank you Jackson, but I'm not very familiar with using code. My project only has one slide with multiple layers and the music is on the base layer. Each layer has animation and automatically advances. The problem is the pause on the player only pauses the music on the base layer and the slide layers continue to advance. I did find another suggestion I'm going to try...http://www.articulate.com/support/storyline/how-to-pause-the-timeline-of-a-slide

Rick Pruitt

Maggie,

Basically with the seek bar you are pausing the main timeline but your animations on the layers are on another timeline. I use the solution you showed the link to as well, but that brings up a transparent layer that pauses the main timeline as well. You may be able to add a transparent pause layer, with a button to pause available on each of your slide layers. The triggers need to call that layer to pause everything, possibly. I did not try it.

It seems that if you kept more of the content on the main timeline it would be much easier.

Maggie Merino

Because my music was on my base layer, and my animated slides were on other layers, I ended up disabling the seekbar on the player and adding a pause button to each animated layer. I then duplicated layer 1, for example, and named it "resume layer 1 and changed the button to a play button.

My triggers for Layer 1 are "Show layer 2 when timeline ends", "Pause timeline on This layer when user clicks the pause button", and "Show layer Resume Layer 1 when user clicks the pause button". The triggers on my resume layer 1 are: "Resume timeline on layer 1 when the user clicks the play button".

I'm sure there is probably an easier way, but for now, this worked well for me. Thanks again for all your help.

 

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