Screen Recording Quality Lower when placed in Slide

Sep 27, 2018

I have a series of courses to complete which will feature .mp4 screen recordings created in powerpoint.  These recordings look great when created, and even when saved from powerpoint as a .mp4 file.  However, when placing this video into storyline 360 the video quality diminishes to the point that they are unusable.  When i go to adjust compression, the option is greyed out and I am unable to change that setting.  

What i watch the .mp4 file in a media player i can go full screen without any  of the "blurriness" which happens when i put the file in storyline.  

Any advice on how i can best get this .mp4 to work? 

5 Replies
Tom Kuhlmann

What's the resolution of the video compared to the resolution of the course.

Are you saying you created the screen recordings in PowerPoint? How are you getting the MP4 out of PPT? Are you saving the file as MP4 or extracting it some other way.

Generally, you'l always have degradation when you scale a video down. This much more apparent in software videos than a movie.

The ideal is to record a video that doesn't need to be scaled. Obviously that presents problems if you have to record a fullscreen UI. But if you record a video at 2560x1440 and squeeze it into a course that's 724x540 it's not going to look crisp.

One thing I try to do is set my monitor to the lowest resolution possible (that works for the software) and then set the app the fullscreen. Then do the recording. 

Tom Kuhlmann

Review will probably have some lower quality compared to when you view the final published output because it's in the browser and the course can be scaled up and down.

A few extra tips: 

  • Assuming you get the course to match the resolution of the video, you can set the classic player to a locked position which will preserve the quality.
  • Some people set the video to open in a new browser window which lets the person scale the video up/down to their monitor

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.