Imported Videos with massively reduced resolution after Publishing

Feb 19, 2015

Patrick Quirke
By Patrick Quirke

We have many videos in our current CBT but after producing the project our users are reporting very blurry videos. The videos originally are of very high quality and I have not made any changes to them, simply imported them as I have done in any other project. Having looked myself the quality is pretty dramatic in difference and obviously not acceptable for any kind of professional course. I have been looking through your forums but haven't seen a conclusive answer to this problem.

 

We have made many CBT's and not had this particular problem to this extent ever before.  We are looking to move to showing videos as web objects but we were hoping there was some idea of why there would be such a difference in quality even when video output settings are put up to 9 and the original versions being virtually HD. (see image)

 

The videos are standard .mov's created with Camtasia.

 

As stated before the quality settings are set to maximum when producing, all videos are essentially on default within the edit video menu,  so there is no trimming/cropping or changing of dimensions. 

 

Is there any way to fix this?

 

 

 

 

12 Replies
Patrick Quirke
9 years ago02/19/15 at 4:20 pm (UTC)

As stated, I have set everything within Storyline to maximum,  the Video Quality within the menu you have suggested to maximum along with the Image Quality.

When I first published I did have Video Quality set to 5 which I believe is the default. I think I actually found the article you have posted myself and found that menu, however, when I set Video Quality to maximum,  I didn't see much improvement at all,  it was minimal at best.

 

George Briggs
9 years ago02/19/15 at 7:57 pm (UTC)

Hey Patrick,

I just worked on a module where I exported 1920x1080 .mp4 videos from Camtasia and dropped them into Storyline (1).  I had exported with high quality settings, and adjusted Storyline's settings as high as they'd go...but had extremely blurry videos when Previewed or Published.

What I didn't know, but found out during my troubleshooting, was that I was using Storyline's default 16x9 resolution settings of 720x405.  It was the drastic scaling of the video that caused the blurs.

My fix was to change the "Story Size" in the Design tab to a custom size of 1600x900.  Then deleted the imported videos from the project, and re-inserted them.  Problem almost solved.  With much less scaling on import, the videos now looked great!  Unfortunately, the player interface's text (in the Menu and the Resources link) and other elements, like seek bar buttons, were uncomfortably tiny.

Since I could find no option or information on adjusting the interface font sizes, I adjusted the Story Size down to 1200x675.  The interface text was now of acceptable size, and the videos still looked fine.  Even after publishing, when I shrink the browser window, the videos remain clear.

I hope that helps,

George

Judy Nollet
9 years ago02/19/15 at 8:25 pm (UTC)

When you insert an MP4 video into Storyline 2, there's an option for telling the program to NOT compress at all. However, it only works with MP4s encoded with the h.264 codec. See this thread for more info:

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/storyline-2-where-s-the-setting-to-prevent-video-compression#

Here's another option for SL1 or SL2: use Handbrake, Format Factory, or other software to convert your .MOV file to a high-res MP4. After you publish your course, go to the story_content folder, which is where the published videos are stored. SL renames them with meaningless file names. All the names start with "video_" so they'll be at the bottom of the file list. Rename your high-res MP4 exactly as SL has the originally published video named in the story_content folder, then replace the SL-compressed MP4 file with your renamed high-res MP4 file. When the course plays, it'll play your high-res file.  Yes, that's a lot of work. But it does let you control the final resolution.

If you have more than 1 video in a given course, be aware that their new names in the published course may make them appear in a different order in the file list than they appear in the course. In other words, don't assume the first video in the list is your first video in the course, and be careful when renaming the high-res replacement files.

Judy Nollet
9 years ago02/20/15 at 2:05 pm (UTC)

You're welcome! That tip is actually something I discovered working on a course that was translated into multiple languages. We used the swap-the-videos-in-story-content trick to insert the captioned videos for each language. It would've been a lot more work to insert the captioned videos into every translated story file and adjust them all with the original specs & triggers. As long as the renamed replacement video is the same length as the original, this trick works.

Duane Dickey
7 years ago04/05/17 at 6:35 pm (UTC)

George,

Big thumbs up for your suggestions!

I followed your suggestions regarding:

"change the "Story Size" in the Design tab to a custom size of 1600x900. Then deleted the imported videos from the project, and re-inserted them. Problem almost solved. With much less scaling on import, the videos now looked great! Unfortunately, the player interface's text (in the Menu and the Resources link) and other elements, like seek bar buttons, were uncomfortably tiny. "

Looking for a middle ground with the great resolution of the videos, I went with the 1600 x 900 design custom setting.

The text in the menu (as well as the player controls) shrank to very small font: (see "before" pic)

To compensate for this, I went into the Player Properties/Colors & Effects and changed the Player text size to 150%. This is what it looks like now. Almost the best of both worlds. (see "after" pic)

There is still the problem of not being able to change the width of the Menu tab to accommodate for larger text, but I selected the "menu text wrap option" found in the Player Properties/Menu/Options area. (see "menu text wrap option" pic.

Hope this helps.

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