Quickly changing the end time of a slide

Nov 21, 2013

Is there an easy way to change the end time of  a slide.  I have to import some audio files that are large.  Some about 5 minutes.  But my slide will only be say, 60 seconds.  After i have cropped the audio file to trim it down to 60 seconds my slide still is 5 minutes long.

I have to go to the end of the slide and drag the timeline alllll the way back to 60 seconds.  Is there a faster way to do this?

Thank You

21 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Stephen and welcome to Heroes!

Unfortunately there isn't an easier way, as the timeline automatically adjusts when you add a longer file such as audio or video. It is a common feature request though.  The other thing you could do, is do all your editing of audio files in one Storyline file and then export those updated files out and into your working file. It's still another step, but it may ease some of the frustration and ensure that you're not impacting other timeline elements. 

Trainer Trainer

NO MORE ENDPOINT DRAGGING....

1) Right-click to "Cut" the shortened audio/video clip.

2) Delete the slide with that forever away end point (ugh..so annoying).

3) Insert a new slide.

4) Right-click to "Paste" the trimmed audio/video clip and bam! New end point.

Articulate peeps: Please create an "edit end point" feature (sort of like the edit timeline feature for the actual audio/video clips) as so often we are trimming things down in the slide and would like to have the end point either automatically adjust to what is actually on the slide (duh) or allow us to quickly edit the ending point. I trimmed a 23 min video down to 60 seconds and would have hated to drag my endpoint 3000 seconds - which drags super slow, btw...Just sayin...

Alyssa Gomez

Hey Heather,

Thanks for letting us know what you'd like to see! Our product team loves hearing ideas from the community, so I'll pass yours along. 😁

In the meantime, here's a handy way to quickly shorten the duration of the timeline: click and drag the end of the timeline to the left, and hit the left arrow key on your keyboard. The timeline will jump back to the object with the longest duration on your timeline.

You can also use CTRL+Mousewheel to adjust the timeline zoom.

James Long

this seems like a fairly basic ask that could potentially save people like me a ton of time when we are mass producing video slides of varying lengths. It's easier for me to delete the 45 minute video slide and create a new slide for the 15 minute video than it is for me to spend several minutes just dragging a slider. would love to be able to right click the timeline and "end here" or something. Maybe even a right click option on a cue point.

Leslie McKerchie

Hello Amir and welcome to E-Learning Heroes. 😊

I'm not sure if I'm following your question, but it sounds like you would like to know how to manually adjust the length of your timeline?

  1. Grab the end of the timeline.
  2. Begin to drag it back.
  3. Hit the left arrow key while continuing to drag the timeline.

If that's not it, just let me know what I can help you with.

Math Notermans

What really misses in the Storyline timeline is some option to select and scale down/up parts of your elements so that timing stays relatively intact, but the duration of your total elements changes up or down...I dislike the timeline in Storyline very much and don't use it ever. Mainly due to the fact that changing timing ( if you have a lot of elements ) is terrible.

John Jennings

Yes, there is....if you grab the timeline at the end, press shift, the timeline will snap to the desired position.
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Vanessa Ek

Hi all. I wish this short cut worked. I often copy and paste items within the same module. If I copy a shape from one slide, where it showed for 3 minutes with a "show until end" setting, for example, and paste it into another slide that is only 1 minute long, there doesn't seem to be a way to pull the end point back to the one minute mark, other than click and dragging it back, which is time consuming for longer slides. I had an instance of this today, and even zooming out to make the timeline shorter, it took minutes of just dragging that end line. Please add my name to the list of people who would like to see this feature.

Lauren Connelly

Hi all!

I am jumping into this discussion to share that we just released Storyline 360 (Build 3.63.27628.0) which includes changes to the timeline.

New: Create slides faster with time-saving upgrades to the timeline. Multi-select objects and move them all at once. Choose where pasted objects appear in the stacking order or even paste them into an existing group. Align objects to the playhead or vice versa. And when the timeline is too long, you can instantly reset it to five seconds or shorten it to the object with the longest duration.

Now all you need to do is update Storyline 360 in your Articulate 360 desktop app!

If you have additional questions, don't hesitate to reach out in this discussion or in a support case.