New in Storyline 360: Text to speech, object editing improvements, and more

Hello,

Is there any way to slow the narration down a little in the Text to Speech function?

Hi,

I'm new to 360 and using the Text to speech functionality.  Is there a way to control the speed of the narration?  The feedback I am receiving is that the narration is too fast.

Thanks,

Mark

Hi there, Mark. Currently, the text and the voice are editable. We're always looking to offer more, though!  I'll submit a feature request for you to have more editing capabilities with the TTS feature.

Thanks for the question!

Oh finally able to work with positions on the ribbon. Thank you! Been waiting years for that! Love it.

Now, let us have the same granularity in the cropping tool ;)

Hey Soren,

I cannot promise to understand the details or the use-case for that request, but we are working to understand and manage feature requests better. I'd encourage you to share your thoughts here if you'd like.

Yes please! Adding my vote for If-Then-Else!

Replay during preview is not working correct any longer. First pass is fine, but when I click Replay, timings are off. First half second of the sound is cut off on 2nd replay, videos do complete as expected, pause slide timings are off. IT basically doesnt work. 

You need to close preview and re-do the action to get an accurate Preview playing back.

When using Replace video and replacing with a file name that is similar to the original file name, Storyline does not refresh the file, it merely continues using the old file. If you rename before using Replace video, the file is actually replaced as expected.

Hello Leslie! I am using storyline 3 and I would like to know if these new features will apply to SL3 later?

I like the random variable very much but I still can try it...

Thank you!

Hi Owen,

They are exclusive to Storyline 360 right now,  and the next software update for Storyline 3 (coming soon) will allow you to open Storyline 360 project files that have random number variables. However, you won't be able to edit existing random number variables or create new ones in Storyline 3. Stay tuned for details!

In the meantime, you can make a Storyline 360 project file that has random number variables compatible with Storyline 3 in either of these ways:

• Open the project file in Storyline 360 and change the random number variables and triggers to static values.
• Open the project file in Storyline 360 and delete the random number variables and triggers.

Hi Ashely,

Thanks for your explanation.

I understand but still feel pity for this situation, so I made a feature request today.

Again, thanks for your prompt reply.

This is my question as well. I have used T2S to generate English dialogue but then would like to copy and paste a different language into the Notes box to generate closed captioning in another language.  I can copy paste each line  from the options Edit captions window. But is this the best way? It is further complicated that I don't know Burmese :(

Jim, it should work, but the subtitles may not be accurately lined up with the meaning.

There are some rules for how subtitling should be done, but if you only have minimal animations it should be OK.

Also wanted to add how great the latest update is!! Keep up the good work Articulate!

@Virak Yang - i find adding commas slows the text down a little, as grammar (quite rightly) dictates the speed and flow of the text to speech. It might be worth adding in extra commas to slow down the audio. 

Alternatively you can also export the audio and use something like Audacity to add gaps/pauses manually.

While it's a great thing that the product is being actively developed, with each update i get the sense that the primary target audience is not the professional content developers. Instead, it's geared toward a more generic audience that includes secretaries and hobbyists and everyone who needs basic e-learning stuff done in an MS Office-like environment. The forced resemblance of the GUI to Office apps wouldn't be an issue if the workflow didn't follow the same concept. Coming from a Flash/html/css/js background i desperately miss a few basic features and considering the direction of the development i see very little chance to have them in the foreseeable future:
- the ability to save custom styles (not the same as Style Painter which is a mile away from a replacement to this feature)
- an asset library for reusable resources
- sort of a symbol-like workflow, along the lines of Flash, that would allow items to have an internal timeline (building a basic looping animation is right now a pain in the)
- a more granular control over animation, e.g. i'd need to rotate instrument dials a lot, and not just 90 or 180 degrees but custom values
- constraining paths to incremental values (45 or 90°) if you hold Shift or something
- adjusting properties of items through scripts (e.g. i'd need to animate colors and transparency all the time)

and the list goes on. Now that there are two very similar products (3 and 360) you might want to make a clear distinction and keep one of them for the generic audience and turn the other into a truly professional tool. The first step in this direction could be losing the Powerpoint UI and introducing a proper dark UI with floating property windows (see Adobe apps) and then adding some serious tools and scripting.

I personally rejoice that Flash is now a thing of the past, it was awesome but it expired. The sad thing is that right now there's absolutely nothing out there to replace it. For us, it was a management decision to switch to Storyline 360 and now i find myself struggling hopelessly to get things done that used to be straigthforward and no-brainer in the Flash-era.

I wish you guys all the best with the development and i hope that you'll consider some of the suggestions above.

Hi Veprea, I'm totally with you on the symbols, they'd be a really useful addition to SL.

Have you considered submitting a feature request?

Hi David,

yes i have, but as i said, right now this doesn't seem to be the direction Articulate chooses to go. My guess is, they are afraid of losing business due to a steeper learning curve. Instead, they have now 2 millions smileys and whatnot in the asset library. It's another feature that attracts more hobbyists who don't vector draw their resources but download stock. Frankly i don't have high hopes but it may even turn out all right in the end. We'll see. Until then, i'll pimp up my animgifs.

Congratulations on the new features of Storyline 360.
Text to speech is really interesting.
However French voices are not good quality, and this is unusable for the moment. Is there a plan in the near future for improvements with more natural and exploitable voices?
In any case, thank you for the continuous improvement efforts.

Bonjour Jean-Marc,

Pourriez-vous nous dire exactement ce que vous reprochez aux voix françaises ? Avez-vous des exemples précis de problèmes que vous avez rencontrés ? 

Merci d'avance de vos réponses !

Also have to agree with Veprea. Completely understand that Storyline is a rapid development tool, and its probably going to continue to cater to a less technical crowd. But if there isn't room for more customization, more advanced users will find themselves hitting the technical ceiling and moving onto other products.

There have been some really useful features added since Storyline moved to the 360 subscription service for continuous updates, but not at the rate that can keep up with current eLearning trends. In fact many of the how-to posts I've seen on this forum and around the net are how to work around the restrictions and limitations imposed by Storyline.

More companies are going to external vendors to design and develop customized eLearning from scratch in HTML5 and JS, and they're developing some great things. While Storyline doesn't need to do everything that these custom-built sites can do, it could really benefit from affording added flexibility to developers.

As Veprea said, why is animated rotation limited to 90 degree increments? It sounds like having a custom value box at the bottom of the animation dropdown should be relatively easy to add. The only reason I can think of why Articulate have not implemented something as basic as this is because it interferes with making Storyline's UI as streamlined as possible.

Hi Trina,

Tried the new Text to Speech and think it works great! I have one question. Is it possible to adjust the speed and timing of the speech. For example, if you would like to have a few seconds pause in between statements or sync with some animations? Do you need to go into audio editor afterwards to do this?

Hi Doug. Glad you found some time to take Text to Speech for a spin. I've seen several folks in this thread mention using spaces or commas in the text to slow down the pace of the narration. Hope that tip helps you out!