MP4s on iPad - playback
Apr 09, 2013
We developed a small prototype lesson with a couple MP4s. it worked great for both desktop and mobile delivery. The lesson has to be SCORM-compliant so the App Player is not an option.
We then built-out the piece much more fully - about 80 slides, 5 of which have a couple video clips linked to simple interactions (i.e. "show me how to").
The output plays great on the desktop.
On mobile (iPad with 6.1), launched from the LMS, the output crashes the browser by the third slide, before it gets to the video. That third slide is a pretty simple 'click here to see an image' slide.
If we immediately navigate to the first video slide, we seem to bypass a crash, and the lightbox appears, but none of the video plays.
If we bypass the LMS and play the piece directly from a web link, we don't get any crashing, but the video still doesn't play.
If we open any of the videos directly with iPad Safari, they play fine (so the mime types are set). They just won't play in Storyline on the iPad...
We uploaded to the Articulate test area - no video from there either. No video from SCORM cloud either.
SO, our next steps:
re-output the video to smaller sizes (reduce framerate/audio quality) - in case it's a 'videos too big to handle' thing (current are 7mb each on average).
re-ouput sections of the lesson - in case its a 'lesson too long/complex to handle' thing.
Create a test piece with just three slides and one video.
Any other test suggestions to figure out the cause?
Any SOLUTIONS?
Articulate posted something about 'crashing' but I can't find it now....to be addressed in future release. So when's that next patch?! Project is due EOM 
Thanks,
Erik
7 Replies
Hi there Erik,
Thanks for all of that information! Out of curiosity, have you tested the course in the Articulate Mobile Player? I know you won't be able to distribute your course using the app, but I'm just wondering if the same issue occurs there as well.
Also, if you haven't already, please try to make sure that Private Browsing is disabled in Safari. You may find that Articulate Storyline's HTML5 output doesn't load as expected in Safari when the Private Browsing feature is enabled. Please review the following article for more information:
HTML5 output doesn't load correctly in Safari with Private Browsing enabled
What version of Storyline are you currently running? To find this information, click on "Help" and "About Articulate Storyline". If you're not running version 2 (1212.1412), please download and install Update 2 from the link below. Once you've finished installing, republish your course, upload it and test it on your iPad. Does the same thing happen?
Articulate > Download Storyline Update 2
Let me know if you're able to see a difference in the videos after taking those steps.
Thanks!
Christine
Hi Erik,
Be advised that "HTML5 Output Crashes in Mobile Safari"
http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=yy2orwo4qrah
Also, regarding the videos not playing...are your slides set to auto-advance?
Christine - can you confirm that the videos (or the slides they are on) would require an on-click action from the user to play in iOS?
Regards,
John
Hi Erik,
Correct, for HTML5, media must be triggered by the user to play properly. Also, if there are any overlapping media files, that would be an issue in HTML5 as well. Here's a handy chart illustrating the limitations.
My concern is the crashing, however. I'm not sure changing that functionality would fix it - but it may :) That may resolve the issue when John is launching the course outside of the LMS, but the crashing that's occurring when it's hosted there tells me there may be an issue with loading the content all together.
Thanks for sharing that link, as well, Erik :)
Thank you both for the replies!
More/replied info...
The videos had been displayed in lightboxes, setup to auto-play. That seemed to be a problem (they wouldn't play).
We pulled them out an put them into custom layers, which seemed to fix the issue... We didn't think to try not setting auto-play so that may be a good troubleshooting step for future/others. For now, in custom layers, the videos do auto-play.
Some of the video files used the Apple h264 codec and others used the MainConcept one. We had the videos all resized (a bit smaller), reduced the framerate from 29 to 24fps, reduce audio from stereo to mono, and used the MainConcept h264/mp4 codec on all. Not sure if that helped, but videos are at least a bit smaller.
We're waiting to get another iPad to test on, in case the issue is hardware. But we did test on an Android Tablet (Toshiba Thrive with 4.0.4 [ICS] - and used three different browsers (native, Firefox, Opera) and the lesson played pretty much great on all three, sometimes using the Flash plugin (native/FF) and sometimes HTML5 (Opera). Good stuff there - whether through a direct web link or the LMS, only small issues like window sizing and text clarity. Nice.
Private Browsing is off on the iPad Safari browser.
Articulate Storyline 1212.1412
No overlapping media files (but most audio/video set to auto-play)
No auto-advancing slides
SO hopefully the crashing does not require the lesson to be broken-down. That would stink. Hopefully it's cause the iPad sucks...and another will work, or customers will use an Android tablet...
(but I look forward to a Storyline update that will ideally address it overall).
Thanks!
Hi there Erik!
Great detective work! Sounds like you've made quite a bit of progress with this and I'm happy to hear that there was some improvement :)
Let me know how it goes with further testing.
Thanks!
Christine
I have Privacy disabled and video will not play no matter what we do
Good morning David,
Thanks for checking that. Can you tell me a little more about what's happening with your course?
If you're viewing your course on the iPad, are you publishing/viewing for HTML5 or the Articulate Mobile Player?
Are you hosting your content on an LMS? If so, which LMS are you using?
If you're currently viewing your course in HTML5, are you able to publish for the Mobile Player for testing? Does the same thing happen with your videos through the app?
Also, what happens when you try to play the video? Do you see anything at all (blank page, black placeholder, single screen of the video, etc.)?
Let me know when you get a chance!
Thanks,
Christine
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