Player pause button - pausing audio but not timeline
Jan 29, 2019
By
Sarah Cook
Hi there
I have a course where an audio voiceover file sits on the base layer, and different layers appear and animate at different points of the audio.
When the player hits 'Pause' on the Storyline player, the audio pauses (on the Base layer), but the timelines of the additional layers keep playing so that they are all out of sync.
I tried selecting 'Allow Seeking: Yes' on the individual layers - this paused the animations on the additional layers but not the audio on the base layer.
Is there a way to fix this? I have attached one slide from this project as an example. I'm using Storyline 360.
Thanks!
8 Replies
Hi Sarah,
I have attached a simple example where I have used a short screencast video on the base layer and included notes and text-to-speech on two other layers. The technique I have adopted is to Pause and Resume the timelines in each layer when the Pause and Play buttons are pressed on the video layer. The result is that the video, text-to-speech and notes all pause and then resume at the same time whenever the appropriate button is pressed, ensuring they remain synchronised.
Hope this helps. :)
Thanks for the quick reply Ned. Unfortunately for my current project, I've used the Storyline player - and I've built 16 modules using it, so it would be a lot of work to go back and create custom play buttons for each screen!
The next project I do I think I'll stick to custom play and pause buttons.
Hi Sarah,
It looks like I was 16 modules too late ! Hopefully it will at least provide some ideas for the future. In the meantime, I will have a look at your file and see if there are any suggestions I can provide.
Hi Sarah,
Take 2 !
Although this may still be a lot of work as I don't know how many slides will be affected, have you considered publishing the slides where you have this issue as videos and then inserting those videos into new slides ? This effectively plays your entire slide, including all layers, as a single video. As a result, when you hit the Pause button on the Storyline player, everything stops at the same time and then resumes when you press Play
The attached file is a video version of your original. As an added bonus, it also appears to be considerably less Mb in size.
Wow, thanks Ned for working on this for me!
This actually works perfectly - yes it'll be a lot of work if the client wants to go that way, but at least there is a workaround.
Can I ask you which program you used to create the video?
Thanks again!!
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
This may be a lot easier than you think as you won't need any extra software.
All you need to do is to select Publish from the Storyline toolbar and select the video option. Next you select an appropriate directory (it will probably automatically create a new sub-directory within that that will then hold your video file), then select "Entire Project" in the Publish Properties and select the slide you want to convert. All you then have to do is to select the Publish button and you're done !
Once you have your finished video file, just import it into a slide just as you would for any other video file. It should already be in the same format size-wise as the rest of your course and so it should blend in seamlessly.
Happy converting !! :)
Thanks again Ned, this is really useful. I do worry sometimes that all the triggers and timings might get buggy, this is another way to avoid that once the client is happy with the course.
I appreciate you taking the time, thanks again.
Sarah
No problem Sarah, happy to help anytime.
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