Inconsistent video playback behaviour across slides when published

Hi, Nic. Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

So sorry you're at this roadblock, and I'm sure it hasn't been fun to troubleshoot because of those inconsistencies. A few questions to help us figure out what's happening:

• Have you been able to identify a common denominator among affected viewers, such as a browser or OS?
• Since you're publishing for Web, try testing the file in another Web Server environment like Tempshare. Simply drag the published zip output into the box, and Tempshare will do the rest. 
• Lastly, with your permission, I'd like to test your .story file in a similar environment to investigate the playback behavior and will delete it after troubleshooting. If you need to keep the project private, please use this upload link.

Thank you for the reply - I haven't just disappeared... but am having a deal of trouble with internet thanks to local storms at the moment... Tempshare is great, thank you for this, it has given some clues as it now shows different inconsistencies when publishing.

I am guessing but it may, just may be my cohorts publishing within dropbox instead of locally then copying to dropbox rather than it actually being an articulate issue, but I need some time to chip away at this (and some stable net!)

I am currently stuck in a loop trying to upload with the upload link given - once I do the captcha it just drops me right back to the same upload page I was at, with all the same info I put in, with no errors (no blockers enabled etc). No idea what the issue is there?

Hey there, Nic.  I hope you're out of the loop by now.  🙃 Publishing to a shared drive or environment can cause some weird things, so please let us know if publishing locally instead resolves any of the errors!

If you're having trouble uploading your file, you can still open a case with us here, and we'll work out some way of testing your file if necessary.  We're happy to help, however we can!

OK some more information from investigating:

On the slides that fail to play the video, in looking in the zip file created, the video file count does not match the amount in the original .story. In fact, it is missing the amount that fail in the presentation which is pretty interesting. So if it was meant to have 15 slides with video, and 6 don't work, you can only find 9 video files in the zip. When publishing no feedback or error is given.

But the major discovery is that if the publishing destination is to a LOCAL drive it works perfectly, and all video files are present and work fine.

The random videos go missing when the publishing destination is to a DROPBOX folder.

In both situations, the file sources (the .story) are FROM a DROPBOX folder - all locally cached with the dropbox application.

This behaviour will be apparent to any viewer/client due to the video file being missing within the zip file.

This is repeatable across several .story files we have (at least 4 right now).

The publishing settings are basically HTML5 with flash fallback and Tin Can API and Classic Storyline Player.

Regards

Hi, Crystal

Yes, publishing locally seems to be the the thing that we needed to be doing. That article is one I found when initially searching but is quite light on detail on the kinds of issues you may encounter, such as mine.

One of the problems is that I work in a cross-country team, so having a product that does not play well "online" is rather problematic. I can work with it but it isn't ideal.

Thank you!

Hi Nic,

You can always upload a copy of your .story file to a cloud or server once you've saved and closed it. That would allow others in your team to access it, they'd want to download the file and open it locally. 

Yep, that is what we do, but it just keeps adding steps to our workflow... so it now is:

create locally->save to cloud-> review (different site) then publish locally->save published zip to cloud->push to web server

whereas the ideal would be

create on cloud ->review (different site) then publish to cloud -> push to web server

One of the major reasons for this is versioning: files across local machines tend to get out of sync, where revised files etc gt missed or lost.

I am not after anything fancy like team editing... I don't know where the issue lies (dropbox or articulate) but it is frustrating. Like I said, I can work with if if I have to, but I really would rather not as it is a broken workflow.

As a contract worker cloud is pretty much the only option available to me (as opposed to a corporate network share which would take care of the issue I'm sure). I doubt I am the only one faced with this issue - and I really highly recommend updating the page here:

https://articulate.com/support/article/create-edit-and-publish-articulate-storyline-courses-on-your-local-hard-drive

with some better detail on the issues that might arise, as I honestly had no idea that what I was seeing related to the issues I was having.

regards

Thanks so much for sharing that insight, Nic. We're continuously exploring new features, and customer input is extremely valuable in that process. I'll be sure to share your thoughts with our Product team.