I would like to see if there are any tricks to speed up a Storyline 3 presentation. Not speeding up the audio, but the time to load a slide. On my PC (Intel I7-4790 @3.6 GHz with 32 GB ram) and my laptop (Surface Pro) the loading of slides is several seconds each. Especially on the laptop I turn off all possible background applications but this is still quite slow.
Loading time can definitely be influenced by processor speed as well as internet speed, so I would start by exploring these areas. Also, are you publishing your courses for Web, LMS, or something else?
If you're able to share a sample project with us, we're happy to look at the loading speed with you in a similar environment and let you know what we find! 🔎
I would like to run it both on PC and on the web, and I tried to keep all the videos as compact as possible. It appears it runs faster from Chrome on my PC then from "Start_Story".
Still a long lag on my PCs. So any optimizations suggestions would be great ! And I would love to hear your suggestions!
Good afternoon, Philippe. I appreciate you sharing your file!
In addition to processor and internet speed, a hosting site's bandwidth for the published output also affects loading time – do you experience any lag with my published Web output here? Also, keep in mind that the larger the files are, the longer it may take to load.
Additionally, check out these similar discussions. Lots of excellent insight and advice there!
Well currently i have about 770 slides but it is far from finished. I hate to break it up because i like the convenience of SEARCH so that the user can go anywhere for uncommon terms. I have not removed unused master slides but i suspect their contribution to the total file size is pretty small.
I have not tried to view this over the internet even for the web version as i live in a place with very slow internet (6 Mbites/s !!!). But even on my pc and laptop it feels slow.
As you look thru the files i send you, do you see any inefficiencies ? Things that could be corrected ?
Thanks for your follow-up, Philippe! Ah, I was going to suggest breaking the project up into smaller segments to help improve the performance. 😅
Also, Tom Kuhlmann's How Long Should My E-Learning Course Be? has many nuggets of gold. While I don't have much experience with managing large courses, I have seen other folks in the community discuss tips around similarly sized courses who can hopefully chime in to assist.
Dear Community: Do you have any tried-and-true advice you follow when you need to optimize a large course?
I'm also having load-time problems. A quick google search confirms that a lot of other people are as well. 40 slides. 11mb total file size. A lot of white space. No videos/audio. 100mb/s download speed. 16gb of ram. 2.3ghz processor. SSD. The article about how storyline 360 supposedly loads assets/slides does not seem to be true. I can wait 20 minutes after opening an eLearning, click next, and it has to load for a second before advancing to the second slide. Any fixes? Or some way to turn off the black overlay, 3-dot loading animation?
Can I ask what exact browser you are using and where the content is being stored? Any possibility of me observing the course? Is this course in an LMS?
For another completely unrelated possible SL360 issue, I recently have been observing SL360 courses download "under the hood" with a browser sniffer and, for my testing, the content was preloading exactly as described by the Articulate support article.
Some things that are also possibilities outside the preloading. May or may not apply to your situation but I'll throw them out for general knowledge.
1. ) I've observed times when a course has preloaded correctly but when a slide is accessed it takes some seconds to display--just like you describe. For those instances, I determined it was taking the browser time to process loading the content for display from cache, either with something causing issues in the browser (like an bad extension) or an "overburdened" PC with too many other things going on.
2.) A lot of folks have content on file servers like Dropbox, SharePoint, or OneDrive or on network drives, etc. Such services are notoriously slow in delivering content as they were designed to be file servers and not web content servers. I'd avoid these things if at all possible and use a true web server instead (or LMS) but I understand why folks are forced to use them. They just have to accept file servers may mean slow courses to learners at times.
3.) Networks, especially ones with high latency or, in the case of external courses, firewalls that let things in "slowly."
4.) I have no direct experience here but I sometimes wonder if antivirus/malware software cause issues sometimes.
1. My computer is not overburdened. I can reboot it either in Mac or Windows with only the browser active (Safari, Chrome, Chrome for Windows, Edge), and still have the same issue. No extensions except ad blocker in Chrome for Mac.
2. To be sure, I tested it as a local file stored directly on my computer AND uploaded a draft to the Articulate Review platform. Problem does not occur locally. Could it be Articulate's servers? That said, I've seen this same issue in pretty much anything we've ever made, even if hosted on our website.
3. Good, home network. 100mb/s down; 10 up. No traffic except for me.
4. No antivirus.
I would say generally, it's not preloading the slides fast enough, even if it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. Usually, the load takes less than a second, so a super quick solution would be just to remove the loading animation. Is that possible?
I've not seen downloading issues with Review 360 but I'll test it later this AM.
Would you be willing to share a course on Review 360 privately with me? If so, email me at gerrywaz@gmail.com with a URL and password (if any) and I'll look at things under the hood.
Not sure about removing the loading animation. Never looked into that.
Just did a quick test of a course that's over 176 MB with narration and eight videos in it and I'm getting just great response with the content on Review 360. Everything is preloading as it should "under the hood," things are three slides ahead of what I'm currently viewing in Google Chrome. When moving to a new slide, it comes right up and starts playing immediately.
I need to go out and run some errands but will do some more testing when I'm back.
Also, at home, I have a high-speed gigabit connection with Comcast.
It might also be time to file a ticket with Articulate Support.
Just emailed you. Thanks for taking a look. Sequential. It's not really a course yet. Just a skin. No more interaction than navigating forward and backward.
Was wondering if this thread was still active? I have the same problems, my programme gets progressively slower. I'm going to try changing the slide order to see if that helps. At the moment I'm hosting on my own PC and viewing through the web browser (chrome).
Any I'm mainly jumping between 3 slides. Any ideas how to get Articulate to pre load the PREVIOUS slide?
Or other suggestions to improve performance. I've typed all this while I wait for the next slide to load...
We're happy to help! Are you only seeing the delay when viewing the course in a web environment?
If so, we'll want to take a look at the affected course. Would you mind sharing it with us privately? We'll test the course on our end and then offer further troubleshooting steps. Here's a secure upload link.
Running as an exe is not much faster then from chrome and when I present I need to click the next slide 5-10 seconds before it appears which is really annoying.
If articulate is just good for a couple slides it would be very frustrating, my courses with Director, which were 3-8 GB were much faster!
Actually I ran it with as HTML and as exe on my laptop a Surface 6 with everything else stopped out on my desktop, a pretty fast machine. In the desktop it is ok, on the surface it is very slow.
Would you mind sharing the link where the course is hosted? I'd like to test it out on my end using different environments. Here's a private link where you can share the website link!
It is simply on my hard drive not on the web yet as the presentation is not finished yet. I ran it a few times during meetings on my laptop and that's when it was frustratingly slow.
Ah, thanks for the update, Philippe. We certainly recommend testing in the course in the environment it was published for. When you view a Storyline course on your local hard drive, you'll encounter security restrictions from the computer, web browser, Flash Player, and network that can cause various features of the course to fail.
How is the preview functionality working for you? I'd recommend using that if you're not finished and ready to publish.
34 Replies
Hello, Philippe. Great question!
A quick pro-tip that Storyline preloads slides to prevent interruptions for a smooth playback. More on how course content is preloaded here!
Loading time can definitely be influenced by processor speed as well as internet speed, so I would start by exploring these areas. Also, are you publishing your courses for Web, LMS, or something else?
If you're able to share a sample project with us, we're happy to look at the loading speed with you in a similar environment and let you know what we find! 🔎
Thanks Katie
This is the beginning of the course, you can download it here as a presentation:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=14FOnw7VF-eWws11feXfz94guc9BiH2eQ
and here as a story file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sFEz4vPE4dZlQSIHQsAYrsm4qb2hm8W3
I would like to run it both on PC and on the web, and I tried to keep all the videos as compact as possible. It appears it runs faster from Chrome on my PC then from "Start_Story".
Still a long lag on my PCs. So any optimizations suggestions would be great ! And I would love to hear your suggestions!
Thanks so much!
Good afternoon, Philippe. I appreciate you sharing your file!
In addition to processor and internet speed, a hosting site's bandwidth for the published output also affects loading time – do you experience any lag with my published Web output here? Also, keep in mind that the larger the files are, the longer it may take to load.
Additionally, check out these similar discussions. Lots of excellent insight and advice there!
Let me know what you think!
Thanks Katie
Well currently i have about 770 slides but it is far from finished. I hate to break it up because i like the convenience of SEARCH so that the user can go anywhere for uncommon terms. I have not removed unused master slides but i suspect their contribution to the total file size is pretty small.
I have not tried to view this over the internet even for the web version as i live in a place with very slow internet (6 Mbites/s !!!). But even on my pc and laptop it feels slow.
As you look thru the files i send you, do you see any inefficiencies ? Things that could be corrected ?
Thanks for your follow-up, Philippe! Ah, I was going to suggest breaking the project up into smaller segments to help improve the performance. 😅
Also, Tom Kuhlmann's How Long Should My E-Learning Course Be? has many nuggets of gold. While I don't have much experience with managing large courses, I have seen other folks in the community discuss tips around similarly sized courses who can hopefully chime in to assist.
Dear Community: Do you have any tried-and-true advice you follow when you need to optimize a large course?
I'm also having load-time problems. A quick google search confirms that a lot of other people are as well. 40 slides. 11mb total file size. A lot of white space. No videos/audio. 100mb/s download speed. 16gb of ram. 2.3ghz processor. SSD. The article about how storyline 360 supposedly loads assets/slides does not seem to be true. I can wait 20 minutes after opening an eLearning, click next, and it has to load for a second before advancing to the second slide. Any fixes? Or some way to turn off the black overlay, 3-dot loading animation?
Hi, Curtis! Just to confirm, you mean when viewing a published course in your browser?
That’s right. Thanks for looking into it.
Cool. :)
Can I ask what exact browser you are using and where the content is being stored? Any possibility of me observing the course? Is this course in an LMS?
For another completely unrelated possible SL360 issue, I recently have been observing SL360 courses download "under the hood" with a browser sniffer and, for my testing, the content was preloading exactly as described by the Articulate support article.
Some things that are also possibilities outside the preloading. May or may not apply to your situation but I'll throw them out for general knowledge.
1. ) I've observed times when a course has preloaded correctly but when a slide is accessed it takes some seconds to display--just like you describe. For those instances, I determined it was taking the browser time to process loading the content for display from cache, either with something causing issues in the browser (like an bad extension) or an "overburdened" PC with too many other things going on.
2.) A lot of folks have content on file servers like Dropbox, SharePoint, or OneDrive or on network drives, etc. Such services are notoriously slow in delivering content as they were designed to be file servers and not web content servers. I'd avoid these things if at all possible and use a true web server instead (or LMS) but I understand why folks are forced to use them. They just have to accept file servers may mean slow courses to learners at times.
3.) Networks, especially ones with high latency or, in the case of external courses, firewalls that let things in "slowly."
4.) I have no direct experience here but I sometimes wonder if antivirus/malware software cause issues sometimes.
Hi Gerry,
Thanks for following up.
I can't share it publicly unfortunately.
1. My computer is not overburdened. I can reboot it either in Mac or Windows with only the browser active (Safari, Chrome, Chrome for Windows, Edge), and still have the same issue. No extensions except ad blocker in Chrome for Mac.
2. To be sure, I tested it as a local file stored directly on my computer AND uploaded a draft to the Articulate Review platform. Problem does not occur locally. Could it be Articulate's servers? That said, I've seen this same issue in pretty much anything we've ever made, even if hosted on our website.
3. Good, home network. 100mb/s down; 10 up. No traffic except for me.
4. No antivirus.
I would say generally, it's not preloading the slides fast enough, even if it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. Usually, the load takes less than a second, so a super quick solution would be just to remove the loading animation. Is that possible?
Thanks!
Thanks, Curtis!
This is a bit perplexing.
I've not seen downloading issues with Review 360 but I'll test it later this AM.
Would you be willing to share a course on Review 360 privately with me? If so, email me at gerrywaz@gmail.com with a URL and password (if any) and I'll look at things under the hood.
Not sure about removing the loading animation. Never looked into that.
Just did a quick test of a course that's over 176 MB with narration and eight videos in it and I'm getting just great response with the content on Review 360. Everything is preloading as it should "under the hood," things are three slides ahead of what I'm currently viewing in Google Chrome. When moving to a new slide, it comes right up and starts playing immediately.
I need to go out and run some errands but will do some more testing when I'm back.
Also, at home, I have a high-speed gigabit connection with Comcast.
It might also be time to file a ticket with Articulate Support.
Is the course you are looking at sequential or does it have a lot of branching?
Just emailed you. Thanks for taking a look. Sequential. It's not really a course yet. Just a skin. No more interaction than navigating forward and backward.
Hi all,
Was wondering if this thread was still active? I have the same problems, my programme gets progressively slower. I'm going to try changing the slide order to see if that helps. At the moment I'm hosting on my own PC and viewing through the web browser (chrome).
Any I'm mainly jumping between 3 slides. Any ideas how to get Articulate to pre load the PREVIOUS slide?
Or other suggestions to improve performance. I've typed all this while I wait for the next slide to load...
Thanks
Hi Allan!
We're happy to help! Are you only seeing the delay when viewing the course in a web environment?
If so, we'll want to take a look at the affected course. Would you mind sharing it with us privately? We'll test the course on our end and then offer further troubleshooting steps. Here's a secure upload link.
I'm looking forward to finding the fix!
After all these months nothing really seems to improve, Lauren could you look at my file too?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xdtxlfj2eeqblc3/Central%20nervous%20system-WEB.zip?dl=0
Running as an exe is not much faster then from chrome and when I present I need to click the next slide 5-10 seconds before it appears which is really annoying.
If articulate is just good for a couple slides it would be very frustrating, my courses with Director, which were 3-8 GB were much faster!
Thanks, Philippe.
I was not able to find a file or case for Allan, but we can pick up where he and Lauren left off.
I'm working on uploading your course now so that I can take a look.
Okay, all published, Philippe. Do you experience an issue with my published output here?
No this is much better than what I managed to get, is there a setting I didn't set properly?
Thanks so much!
Interesting, Philippe.
I simply downloaded your file and then uploaded it to a web server so that we could take a look. I did not change any settings.
Where is your content hosted?
Actually I ran it with as HTML and as exe on my laptop a Surface 6 with everything else stopped out on my desktop, a pretty fast machine. In the desktop it is ok, on the surface it is very slow.
Hi Philippe!
Would you mind sharing the link where the course is hosted? I'd like to test it out on my end using different environments. Here's a private link where you can share the website link!
It is simply on my hard drive not on the web yet as the presentation is not finished yet. I ran it a few times during meetings on my laptop and that's when it was frustratingly slow.
Ah, thanks for the update, Philippe. We certainly recommend testing in the course in the environment it was published for. When you view a Storyline course on your local hard drive, you'll encounter security restrictions from the computer, web browser, Flash Player, and network that can cause various features of the course to fail.
How is the preview functionality working for you? I'd recommend using that if you're not finished and ready to publish.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.