Play Video Media Trigger Doesn't Work?

Mar 02, 2015

Very basic slide setup (see below). I want a video (mp4) to start when the user clicks the video icon.  Video format is set to play video in a new window with controls beneath the video.

When I add the trigger SL adds a "black box" to the slide ???? Not sure why, but it's there. So I resize it as video is formatted to open/play in a new window = I don't care about the black box size on the slide, I then hide it behind the icon. I purposefully left one edge of the box visible so I can click on it ... because

After publishing the story (video doesn't play in preview mode), clicking the icon does NOT start the video ... only clicking the video "black box" starts the video?

Ok what am I missing here? 

6 Replies
Russ Lowder

Hi Ken,

I've had similar issues doing the same thing. I expect the black box is actually the video (or rather an image representing the video). When you set the video to play in a new window SL defaults to play the video when it is clicked - thus effectively disabling the icon click.

The way we get around this is to insert and play the video in a new layer. Then an icon or picture can be used to execute the video which then opens in the slide, but in the new layer. In the layer it can be as large or small as you need it to be. We also include and "Exit X" to get out of the video if desired. The click actually opens the layer and the video is set to run automatically.

Here's a couple screen shots showing the layout. Hope this helps.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Ken,

This seems to be by design, in the sense that the black box you're seeing is a place holder for the video as Russ mentioned, and the only way to launch it to play is the user clicking on it. If you wanted it to be a different image based in your example, did you look at the option to "set poster frame":

Use this option to assign a placeholder image to your video. When prompted, browse to the image you want to use.

  • This is especially useful if you've configured your video to play only when learners click it. The poster frame will be visible to learners until they click it to play the video.

If you'd like to see a different behavior please feel free to share your thoughts in the form of a feature request here. 

Jason Livesey

So I am coming here 2 years after this was last discussed but just in case anyone else comes here for help I wanted to bring up what I found out.

When working with a poster frame in a published story line i kept seeing an issue where the "play button" i made would disappear when the slide was kept open for the duration of the video. We got around this by extending the timeline of that slide and then dragging the video layer out to the new duration. My best guess is that this is caused by a coding conflict where the time line and the video end at the same moment. Cause once I added just an extra second of duration to the timeline of the slide the key frame would no longer vanish. Hope this helps someone!

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