Improper Actions of Button and FLV videos on Slides

Jun 20, 2012

Hi there,

I'm sending out a mini SOS to the community. I've designed a "Chose Your Own Adventure" type of scenario in Storyline where the learner is firstly watch an embeded flv video providing the frame up for the course. At the end of this, three button fade in giving the learner 3 different options to select from.

Depending on which button they click, it will play a different slide. At the end of this slide, another 3 buttons fade in giving the learner a 2nd decision point to select the option they think is most appropriate. At the end of this 3rd series of slides, the course comes a conclusion with the learner either having to start again (because the outcome wasn't satisfactory) or they will finish successfully.

Each of the slides have a couple of small SWF videos providing some path-based animation onscreen. These were developed in Flash.

The problem I am experiencing, is when I Preview or Publish the entire project, I am able to get through to the end but....

1) On some slides, the tiny SWF videos won't start playing.

2) If I get to the end of the "Try Again" scenario, the entire project start again (as expected). The option buttons fade in at the right time but when I click the appropriate option (either the same one as I did the first time through or one of the other two), the appropriate slide doesn't load and the button is no longer selectable. The mouse hand simply becomes a standard mouse pointer.

I have checked through the project a number of times and checked the triggers on these buttons. Naturally, I've also previewed every slide on its own and they always work perfectly - playing the SWF videos. But when I preview the entire project, it doesn't work reliably and I'm stumped.

I have some pretty tight deadlines to deliver a demo of this. My fallback is to keep developing in Flash but I wanted to use Storyline as it's a standard that the Instructional Designers in our company will soon be using.

Any assistance/ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Mal

4 Replies
Nancy Woinoski

Any chance you can upload the story file so that we can take a look? It could be any number of things so it is often hard to tell what is going on unless we can see the file.

Sometimes issues occur because of the trigger order - SL executes triggers from top to bottom.

How did you insert the Flash files? Did you use the video option or the insert Flash option? - if you used the insert Flash option try using the video insert instead.  I'm sure you have checked this already, but make sure the Play Video setting  is "Automatic"

How did you create the buttons? Did you use the Storyline buttons or create your own - from your description of the button behavior is sounds like they are going into the disabled state the second time you visit the slide.

One thing you might want to check is the slide properties - check the revisiting option and change the setting to "Reset to Initial State"

This often fixes problems like the ones you are having.

Mal Owens

Hi Nancy,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I was away yesterday but am back now.

To answer your questions:

1) I inserted the swf files using the "Insert Video" option.

2) To my knowledge, all of the videos commence automatically - and this is their behaviour the first time around.

3) I created the buttons using the Storyline template - "Button 2". It's interesting what you said about them potentially going into a "disabled" state on the 2nd run through because what I've noticed is that once I select the button (and the mouse turns to a pointer rather than the hyperlink hand/finger), the preview simply stops. It doesn't move to the intended slide. But then I click "Reload" at the top left and the intended slide then loads as expected. Strange.

4) I have changed each slide to "Reset to Initial State" but this hasn't fixed the problem.

I have attached the project to this message. Naturally, the assets and the text boxes I'm using aren't anywhere near finalised...my first goal was to get the interface working. (This is a disclaimer over the quality of the media!)

Any further direction you can provide would be greatly appreciated Nancy.

Kind regards,

Mal

Nancy Woinoski

Hi Mal - I took a look at your file and can't figure out the problem. I can't even get it to run through to the try again scenario. The first slide seems to work correctly but when I make a selection to jump either slides 1.2, 1.7 or 1.6 I get stuck because the Select buttons do not work.  Further more, if I select the Listen buttons first they work, but if I click a Select button first and then try to the click a Listen button they do not work. It is weird because as far as I can see, they are just basic buttons with simple triggers.

The tiny swfs seem to play ok in the published output - I just published the html version (not scorm).

If I get some time later today, I will play around with it some more.

Mal Owens

Hi Nancy,

Whew! That's a relief that you're experiencing the same behavior. Please feel free to pull it apart as much as you want, but don't feel compelled in any way! Due to the deadline of the demo,  I'm going to finish the interface in Flash for now and if we can get Storyline working, then I'll redevelop it at that time.

Thank you so much for your willingness to assist!

Kind regards,

Mal

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