Overlapping sound in layers & Check boxes in states

Feb 10, 2024

Hi Heroes.

The brilliant @Walt Hamilton helped me with the first iteration of this design. Now I've added sound to the project and it's fine as long as you don't do anything out of the ordinary. But we know users aren't like that. 

Is there a way to make the sound of one layer stop when another layer begins? I know you can do that for the base layer BUT some of this sound is triggered by a state change, and the layer change comes from a checkbox. 

I have been asked to 

  1. Make it so the sound won't overlap with rapid-fire clicking
  2. Make the checkboxes show after the option is clicked. 

Ideally, they would show on the state change but the insert interactive objects is grayed out in the state change. Any ideas? 

Choices

6 Replies
Jean Marrapodi

I figured out how to get the checkboxes to show on the changed state of the option box. I made them hidden then added a trigger to change their state to normal when the option box is clicked. But I still haven't figure out how to prevent the sound from overlapping if they don't wait until the sound file has finished playing. 

Here it is in preview: https://360.articulate.com/review/content/b50b369a-608e-4ae1-90f1-50700a7e958b/review 

Joe Hauglie

It's relatively simple: Add a trigger to "stop the audio" when whatever option box is clicked. Here, I did the same thing for a Continue button:

Because I have a lot of audio clips, and most slides have multiple layers, I renamed the standard "Text-to-Speech" title with something unique. So you probably should do that step first. Then, add a trigger to each of your "option boxes" that tells the software to "stop [playing] the audio" when that option box is clicked.

That should work.

Jean Marrapodi

Thanks Joe! I never thought to rename my audio. That's a great idea. I've done that, but the audio I want to stop doesn't show in the trigger list.

My audio that's causing problems is on the state change that shows when you click the option cover. I added this using Insert Audio when I was in Edit States. I was able to rename it now by right-clicking and calling it Option 1 Audio.

I went in and renamed all the other audio files. BUT!!!! Option 1 Audio doesn't show in the dropdown of the trigger panel. Do you have any ideas how I might access that?

Option 1  Audio placement

 

Available Audio files

Joe Hauglie

From what I can see, it looks like the audio is still on the base layer. While that may be what you want, it may also be what is causing the issue you're having. 

I would suggest that you try putting the audio clips on separate layers that are triggered to play/appear when the various checkboxes are enabled. If that doesn't work, then I suggest you reach out to Articulate directly.

Jean Marrapodi

Thanks for trying, Joe! I tried it as separate layers but it won't see the items on the other layers to set them to stop audio when x is clicked. I also tried putting in a variable that trips when it's played, then asked it to stop if the variable on the other layer changes but that didn't work. My final attempt was to put the options text and its audio on a separate layer and mark the pause the base layer (which works for the other layers too!). This works to stop the sound but the learner can't see the three options at one time to choose between them. <sigh>

I think it's time to ask Articulate support on this one! Thanks again for your help. 

Jean Marrapodi

Between Articulate Support (thank you!) and my boss, we figured out how to make this work.

You need to place the audio on the base layer with a trigger calling it to play when the option was clicked. What I didn't know, is when you do that, the audio file visually changes, and it doesn't play within the timeline. Instead of seeing the sound waves, you have an outline of the sound icon like this, and it jumps to the beginning of the timeline. This happens when the trigger is attached to the file. 

Audio variant visually

 

Then to make sure the sound files never overlapped, I had to add Stop Media, which changes to Stop Audio for the other options in the event the learner clicks another before it finishes playing.

Start  and stop audio triggers

I also needed to do the same thing for the checkboxes to prevent overlapping sound if they were clicked.

When the checkboxes were clicked, they opened a layer. To keep the layers from overlapping in their sound, I selected them all and chose pause base layer, which stops them from interfering with each other. I suspect this is redundant as I'm typing this out, but I also added a stop audio set of triggers on each layer. I think doing it at the checkmark likely did this. 

Stop audio triggers on the layer

 

PHEW! That "great idea" was a lot of work. But I appreciate Walt, Joe and Support's help getting to this point.