Some videos not playing after publishing

Nov 02, 2018

Hi All,

I tried searching for an answer, but couldn't find any that relates to my issue.

Using Storyline 3, I am importing a MP4 video to be published as HTML5 to LMS. I add 6 seconds to the length of the video to act as a buffer for the slides (only two slides, first one being the video and second one being a slide with a link to a short quiz). I change the video titles accordingly. I preview in Storyline 3 before I hit publish and it works fine.

Next, I click on publish and it does it's encoding and so on. When it completes it asks what format to save it as, I click on preview first to test it and the video no longer plays. It just shows the first frame and nothing else. I try clicking on the video, but it does nothing.

I have done the exact same thing on other videos and some play fine while most seem to not play at all.

Any ideas? Do I need to install other encoding codecs for it to work? I'm on a brand new Windows 10 install so I don't believe it to be any software corruption.

Thanks.

3 Replies
Katie Riggio

Welcome, Steven! 👋

You've come to the right place for help, and smart move to also open a support case! While our team carefully analyzes these steps, we'll need your help with some more key details:

We're standing by!

Steven Louie

Hi Katie,

Thanks for the reply.

  • When I try to view the published output, all I see is the first frame of the video.
  • Uploading it to LMS produces the same result (stuck on first frame and video does not play).
  • I did manage to find a workaround for my case after trying many things to try and isolate the cause. So I don't think you will be able to reproduce it... see below.

Workaround I have:

  1. Publish to C: drive first instead of where the files are (in my case it's a Dropbox folder saved in "Downloads\Dropbox\(a few other working folders)"). Preview and it works fine.
  2. Without quitting Storyline3, publish the story again, but to where you actually want to save it this time. Preview again and it works fine. (I do notice that it does not try to re-encode the video)

With that in mind, I'm thinking it may be a problem caused by too many characters in the file path which Windows does not like and as a result is causing issues with the encoding of the file. The base path (where the files are stored) is already 119 characters long (spaces included). File names of the stories range from 30 to 55 characters long.

Your thoughts?

Katie Riggio

Appreciate this extra insight, Steven!

I think your hunch is spot-on. Be sure to always save and publish Storyline projects on a local hard drive (typically the C: drive), as working on a network drive or an external USB drive can cause erratic behavior like such. Check out these best practices to avoid wonkiness when creating, sharing, and publishing Storyline projects!

Nice job on nailing down the culprit(s), and we're here if you have any more questions!

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