Pause While Recording Video Screencast Does Not Do What I Expect
Oct 07, 2016
I am recording video screencasts of a proprietary web application that is used to submit financial transactions. I have done this before for other applications, also proprietary.
I write my speaker's notes separately from the recordings. For one of my scenes, I have nearly 60 slides. When I recorded the video screencast, I ended up with 193 slides for a video that is 7m 11s in duration. During the recording, I pressed Pause. I needed to create a sample file that would be part of the demonstration. I forgot to do it before I started the recording. When I was done, I resumed recording like nothing had a happened.
I knew that I would have extra slides that needed to be removed because clicking on drop down menus produces at least two actions: 1) display the list of items in the menu and 2) select the item in the menu. To speed up my work, I record the start and the end frames of each slide, so that I can change one slide and delete the other.
While doing this, I noticed over 50 slides in one of the scenes had gibberish values. I ended on frame 9316 on slide 130. I started on frame 9362 on slide 131, but its end frame was 0, the beginning of the video. The frame numbers did not return to normal until slide 184 (start frame: 9593; end frame: 9698).
I want to know what I need to do differently.
- I use Internet Explorer as my web browser.
- I use kiosk mode (F11) to maximize the application on screen.
- I hide my taskbar before I start recording.
- I maximize the size of the video to full screen on my laptop (1366 x 768).
- I have a second monitor connected to the laptop (where I dock Articulate Storyline).
If I do not want to record mouse clicks and keyboard commands while the video screencast is paused, do I need to work on the second monitor?
Is there a way to 'turn off' recording actions, like mouse clicks, while paused, if I must work on the laptop monitor?
I have five more modules with similar recording requirements. Also, I have to repeat everything in French. I want to reduce or to limit the amount of time that I spend editing these step-by-step videos.
Any help, tips, and suggestions will be appreciated.
Thank you.
12 Replies
Hi Michel!
I just did a brief test of recording, pausing, opening another program, performing some action, unpausing, performing some action - and I'm not seeing the activity during the pause within my slides.
What version/update of Storyline are you utilizing? I was utilizing Storyline 2, Update 11.
Hello Leslie,
I am using Storyline 2, Update 10. I have not had a chance to request assistance from our IT help desk to download and install the update.
I might perform a test using Microsoft Word as the application to record, so that I would be able to share an attachment that does not contain proprietary and sensitive information.
Sounds great Michel.
I'm having the same issue. So you do a recording using Storyline but if you click the pause button, then complete a step, pause it, click here and there or drag anything, then un-pause it and publish it ALL of the screens have been recorded. It may not show the actions you did while it was paused but a blank or some random slide of your recording will be there. So If I wanted to record 10 slides, I end up with 100 because I placed the recording on pause and did something else on another screen. I'm assuming there is no real solution for this?
Hello Nancy,
I have not had a chance to revisit this issue. I have not needed to do much recording of videos with Storyline since last year.
I will assume (big assumption) that there is a list of actions stored that Storyline uses when it creates the individual slides for each "action." If it is possible to tear out the actions that are unnecessary, then it might be possible to limit the number of slides that are created.
I just wish that I had more time in the evenings to play around with these ideas, because I have tons of them to try out.
Sorry that I could not be of more help at the moment. Perhaps there have been some advances that I am unaware of that Storyline has released in updates to the software.
Hi Nancy,
Since this is an older thread, I'd like to start fresh. What version of Storyline are you using? Once you let me know what version you're using, I'll do a test and let you know what I find out!
Hi Alyssa,
I'm using Storyline 2, Update 12 I believe. If you look through the attachment, and upload the recording (This may take awhile as it has around 150+ slides) you will see a good amount of duplicate slides with hot spots clicking on empty space or random areas and no real link. It's unfortunate, because it only gets this bad because the pause button records anyways.
Thanks, Nancy. I do see the duplicate slides in your file, and I saw the same problem when I tested a screen recording in a new file.
I don't see that this issue has been reported for Storyline 2, so I appreciate you bringing this up here. I'll bring this to my team and get it logged as a software bug. If I get any more information on this, I'll be sure to let you know!
I apologize for all of the trouble this bug has caused you, and thanks again for bringing this to our attention!
Thanks Alyssa I appreciate it.
Hello, I don't think this bug has been fixed. I just did the same thing Nancy did a year ago and came to the same frustrating issue with the actions not being recorded correctly after clicking the pause button. Hours and hours wasted, unfortunately. And Action Fine Tuner won't fix the issue. Any idea how to solve this? Thank you.
Hi Fund II InternX,
It looks like you're on a trial of Storyline 360, is that right? We're seeing the same problem in Storyline 360, and I'm really sorry you encountered that. As soon as we get this resolved in a future update, we'll come back to this discussion to let you know.
Hello everyone,
Great news! We just released another update for Articulate 360, and included a few important fixes that you'll see in the release notes here.
The item you'll be interested in is:
Fixed: Screen recordings kept capturing data when the recorder was paused.
Just launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button for Storyline 360. Details here.
Please let us know if you have any questions, either here or by reaching out to our Support Engineers directly.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.