OK, Articulate rolled out an update to Storyline and it seems that now when publishing a course, instead of auto-playing (as before) it now puts a nasty big PLAY button on the first screen.
Hopefully Articulate will roll out a fix (very!) soon.
In the meantime, I have discovered that AUDIO on the opening slide will cause this. Removing the audio, removed the PLAY button and things went back to normal.
Therefore to get round the issue, try what I did - create a tiny opening slide of a flat colour (same as your project background) and set it to be your opening slide.
Worked well for me, and thankfully I can now stop hearing screaming from my clients.
You may also want to reach out to Mike directly - I see he has the "Contact Me" button enabled on his profile. I hope he's able to point you in the right direction for any modifications he made.
Just by way of clarification - Storyline 360 will not automatically play a video on the first slide? Users need to 'select pay' to start the package/see video. By way of observation there are websites out there where a video starts immediately. I think even the Articulate web site did at one time. Not sure why storyline would be any different.
I've been testing it as you both suggested and still have issues. On the first slide I've placed a PNG of the first frame of my MP4, made the timeline as short as possible and set it to jump to next scene when timeline ends. On the second slide I've placed the video and when timeline ends it jumps to the third slide with an transition.
Now exported it to review 360 and to scormcloud. On both platforms the scorm is unreliable. Sometimes it plays properly but most of the times (especially after revisiting is refreshing) when arriving the second slide it shows the first frame of the video but does not start to play. The seekbar however does run and at the end of the timeline it starts the transition and proceeds as normal. Very weird. This occurs on my laptop as on the laptop from my colleague as well. Any suggestions? O and by the way the video is a 8sec. Intro of 500KB so filesize can't be the issue.
Hi there, Nicole! There have been some changes in how Google Chrome and Safari handle media that should automatically play. Here's what we've done to help users deal with the impact on their courses!
Hi there, Harold. I answered in more detail here, but it sounds like you're running into an issue where in Chrome, video won't play automatically in a slide if the previous slide advances automatically. I'll make sure we keep folks updated on the progress with that issue.
Thanks for your patience while our team investigated this issue. We've determined that videos not autoplaying on any slide without a previous user interaction is the expected behavior in Chrome and Safari based on their changes to media autoplay policies.
This article is updated to reflect that and some ideas shared there to work around this browser limitation.
So what this also means is that any Storyline course we have already published and posted online has to conform to this (by any non-conforming slides being edited, and then the entire thing republished and reposted/replaced) or it stops working correctly.
Funny, I literally thought about this today on a CNET video that autoplayed audio and video with no prompt or user decision. Clearly the rules on this are bendable in some way - I'm guessing it might have something to do with those browsers' media indexing.
I have the latest update applied to Storyline 2, however the play button does not appear on slide 1 (which has audio) so my audio does not play. This is when publishing to Web, the box for "Included HTML5 Output" is checked. Any idea what may be causing this? Thank you!
Thanks for letting us know what you're running into with your project? Since you updated, you've republished your Storyline file as well?
The latest update for Storyline 2 is Build 1804.2716 and this explains what you can expect to see in your courses.
With your permission, I'd like to take a look at your project file to investigate what's happening. You can share it publicly here, or send it to me privately by uploading it here. I'll delete it when I'm done troubleshooting.
Will Articulate be releasing an update that allows the developer to turn off the ugly "play button" without having a crazy workaround of adding a blank slide?
Users should have an option of adding it or not, and it should never "automatically" add it (especially since the button is ugly, isn't symetrical or centered and many of us have created "start buttons" of our own already to fix the issue and not have "two buttons".
The play button was added to handle the autoplay changes made by browsers such as Chrome and Safari. Unless there are changes to how those and other modern browsers handle the autoplay of media, we won't be removing the play button.
After a while, learners may stop seeing the play button as Chrome's Media Engagement Index (MEI) learns that they allowed audio to play on previous visits to the same site. When that happens, audio will automatically play as it did in earlier versions of Chrome.
Wondering what is the latest on this thread. My screen is black with the play button, but why can't it be the slide showing with the play button? I just have a big black screen in SL block in Rise until the learner clicks the play button.
thanks for this Andrew. i have this issue after they rolled out a recent update - when i import in files from articulate engage, there is a big play button whereas previously the interaction was displayed and autoplayed - very frustrating
Sorry about that, Breda! You shouldn't see a play button over your Engage slide. We've got this logged as a software bug, and we'll keep you posted on our progress.
Thanks for your help Alyssa! I have been in touch with technical support over the last few weeks in relation to this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated
110 Replies
Hi Mike, Did you ever find a way to make the grey background transparent?
Hi Ianitza,
You may also want to reach out to Mike directly - I see he has the "Contact Me" button enabled on his profile. I hope he's able to point you in the right direction for any modifications he made.
Hi Crystal,
Just by way of clarification - Storyline 360 will not automatically play a video on the first slide? Users need to 'select pay' to start the package/see video. By way of observation there are websites out there where a video starts immediately. I think even the Articulate web site did at one time. Not sure why storyline would be any different.
Thanks and kind regards,
Nicole
Hello,
I found this post after creating my own, but maybe somebody can relate over here as well.
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/issues-with-video-in-360#reply-547514
I've been testing it as you both suggested and still have issues. On the first slide I've placed a PNG of the first frame of my MP4, made the timeline as short as possible and set it to jump to next scene when timeline ends. On the second slide I've placed the video and when timeline ends it jumps to the third slide with an transition.
Now exported it to review 360 and to scormcloud. On both platforms the scorm is unreliable. Sometimes it plays properly but most of the times (especially after revisiting is refreshing) when arriving the second slide it shows the first frame of the video but does not start to play. The seekbar however does run and at the end of the timeline it starts the transition and proceeds as normal. Very weird. This occurs on my laptop as on the laptop from my colleague as well. Any suggestions? O and by the way the video is a 8sec. Intro of 500KB so filesize can't be the issue.
Hi there, Nicole! There have been some changes in how Google Chrome and Safari handle media that should automatically play. Here's what we've done to help users deal with the impact on their courses!
Let me know if you have any specific questions!
Hi there, Harold. I answered in more detail here, but it sounds like you're running into an issue where in Chrome, video won't play automatically in a slide if the previous slide advances automatically. I'll make sure we keep folks updated on the progress with that issue.
Thank you for your prompt response.
Thanks, I'll reply there
Hi all,
Thanks for your patience while our team investigated this issue. We've determined that videos not autoplaying on any slide without a previous user interaction is the expected behavior in Chrome and Safari based on their changes to media autoplay policies.
This article is updated to reflect that and some ideas shared there to work around this browser limitation.
and yet, every time I go to CNET to read an article, they seem to have found a way to get around this!
So what this also means is that any Storyline course we have already published and posted online has to conform to this (by any non-conforming slides being edited, and then the entire thing republished and reposted/replaced) or it stops working correctly.
Funny, I literally thought about this today on a CNET video that autoplayed audio and video with no prompt or user decision. Clearly the rules on this are bendable in some way - I'm guessing it might have something to do with those browsers' media indexing.
This is broken then because I never want to watch the autoplay videos at CNET!
Reading up on the MEI is probably a good idea: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_278v_plodvgtXSgnEJ0yjZJLg14Ogf-ekAFNymAJoU/edit#
Hi Ashley,
I have the latest update applied to Storyline 2, however the play button does not appear on slide 1 (which has audio) so my audio does not play. This is when publishing to Web, the box for "Included HTML5 Output" is checked. Any idea what may be causing this? Thank you!
Hi Luke,
Thanks for letting us know what you're running into with your project? Since you updated, you've republished your Storyline file as well?
The latest update for Storyline 2 is Build 1804.2716 and this explains what you can expect to see in your courses.
With your permission, I'd like to take a look at your project file to investigate what's happening. You can share it publicly here, or send it to me privately by uploading it here. I'll delete it when I'm done troubleshooting.
Will Articulate be releasing an update that allows the developer to turn off the ugly "play button" without having a crazy workaround of adding a blank slide?
Users should have an option of adding it or not, and it should never "automatically" add it (especially since the button is ugly, isn't symetrical or centered and many of us have created "start buttons" of our own already to fix the issue and not have "two buttons".
Please advise.
Hi Jonathon,
The play button was added to handle the autoplay changes made by browsers such as Chrome and Safari. Unless there are changes to how those and other modern browsers handle the autoplay of media, we won't be removing the play button.
After a while, learners may stop seeing the play button as Chrome's Media Engagement Index (MEI) learns that they allowed audio to play on previous visits to the same site. When that happens, audio will automatically play as it did in earlier versions of Chrome.
Wondering what is the latest on this thread. My screen is black with the play button, but why can't it be the slide showing with the play button? I just have a big black screen in SL block in Rise until the learner clicks the play button.
Hi Julie,
Thanks for reaching out for clarification. It sounds like your question is specific to Rise 360.
Take a look at Adam's reply here with regards to how this is handled. It sounds like you are experiencing the expected behavior.
I read Adam's reply before sending my note.... He is describing behavior on a phone. I am experiencing this behavior on my laptop.
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Hey, Julie. I'd like to take a closer look at this. Can you help me with a couple details?
thanks for this Andrew. i have this issue after they rolled out a recent update - when i import in files from articulate engage, there is a big play button whereas previously the interaction was displayed and autoplayed - very frustrating
Sorry about that, Breda! You shouldn't see a play button over your Engage slide. We've got this logged as a software bug, and we'll keep you posted on our progress.
Thanks for your help Alyssa! I have been in touch with technical support over the last few weeks in relation to this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated