Improvements in Storyline 3...

Hey Eric, 

I'm excited to hear you're giving Storyline 3 a test drive! We've made some nice improvements that’ll help you get more done and reach more learners:

• Responsive player: The new responsive player adapts to mobile device screens automatically, so your courses look perfect, with no extra work for you.
• Closed captions: Make your courses more accessible for all of your learners by adding closed captions.
• Built-in dial interactions: Turn up the interactivity with new dial interactions that make it easier than ever to let learners explore data.  
• New triggers and motion paths: With new triggers and motion path options, you can easily create exciting and engaging games.
• Enhanced HTML5 output: Your courses will look and run better than ever before with our completely rebuilt HTML5 engine.

Now on to the features you mentioned in your original question...

• Lightbox close button: The lightbox has a default red "X" close button, but I can see how the option to modify it would give you greater flexibility. I'll definitely bring that up to our Product Development Team!  In the meantime, try creating a custom lightbox effect using triggers and slide layers.
• Unused variables: Purging unused variables at the press of a button is a cool idea that would certainly make life easier! I'll bring this one to our team, as well. 

• Automatic Compression: Storyline 3 supports uncompressed MP4 videos in published output. This applies to the three most common MP4 profiles: baseline, main, and high. If the Compression property is grayed out, it means your video was created with a different profile or has been edited with the built-in editor.

If you haven't already, take a peek at how Storyline 3 stacks up against Articulate 360. If you'd like to further discuss the options that are right for you and your team, our Success team has got you covered. 

Hi,

Thanks for the response. It's a shame that the light-box cross is still something that is being passed to the development team - looking back over the forums this is a feature that has been discussed since Storyline 1. 

Automatic compression - I agree that we can change the compression setting but as you state this only works if the video has the MP4 profiles you mention, however this still means that most videos that are made would need to be run through 3 party software such as Handbrake so the profile can be adjusted (as suggested by many on these forums, again going back to at least Storyline 2)

There are some nice features in 3, I was just hoping that some of the niggles that crop up on here would have been looked at as well.

Hi Eric, 

I thought it might be helpful to share more about what happens when you submit a feature request, so here’s our process. Not every request makes it into the next version or update, and as that article lays out it could be for a number of reasons.

But please, keep letting us know what is truly crucial and important to you and will make your course development easier - as we're always evaluating new ideas and older ideas that haven't been implemented yet!

Hi Eric,

Hey, could you share a bit about how you'd like to see video handled? Our goal is to make sure that video will be friendly and play across as many browsers and devices as possible. Hence the reason that any non-mp4 video will be converted by Storyline. So if a user uploads a .wmv to Storyline, we convert it to .mp4 so that the video would play on, say, an iPad. This is where the compression settings come in and shouldn't require any additional work in a 3rd party tool. You should just be able to upload, say, your .mov file and Storyline will do the rest.

The only time you'd really be in a third party tool such as Handbrake would be to, as you say, output to .mp4 with the correct profile. But this would typically only be done so that you can tell Storyline not to compress the inserted video at all. Otherwise, Storyline would do that encoding to .mp4 work that Handbrake would typically do.

Or is it that you want Storyline to do the encoding, but want more control over the compression?

I hope this helps shed some light. And I'd love to hear more about your pain points with the video.

Thanks!

Mike

Hi Ashley,

Thanks for the info! Interesting to know

Hi Mike,

Yes it's pretty much just about being able to import a video and not have storyline decide the compression for me. To be able to import any type of video is a great feature, and having storyline convert to the .mp4 format is also really useful, but, it's the compression that gives me issue. Whatever video format we record in or want to import the quality is great but as soon as it goes into storyline the quality reduces. And as mentioned the wat around this is to use third party software.

So, current features are great, but it would be so much better to let us, the users, determine the compression (without having to worry about what profile the video has).