Storyline Example: Generating Closed Captions

So, could you take this one step further and make the CC part of the master template and then add a toggle button on the player??

Will have to test that out..

The CC and toggle button are both part of the master in this case. To add a toggle button / tab to the player you'll have to pulse through a JavaScript trigger to change a variable since, at the moment, adjust variable isn't available in the trigger list for tabs.

I'm using this trigger to open a help overlay:

var player=GetPlayer();

player.SetVar("helpTrigger",true);

You should be able to use something like this to force a variable change and toggle a variable every time the external pulse is pushed in through JavaScript. It's sure to change the variable on every tab click event:

var player=GetPlayer();

var currentTime=new Date();

player.SetVar("toggleTrigger",currentTime.getTime());

Just listen to toggleTrigger and change a true / false variable to control the visibility of the cc overlay.

OK - that was easy Updated the demo and source link above to function from a player tab.

This looks like a great way to get the narration to display at the right time instead of having way too much stuff in the notes panel and risking people reading the notes and missing the on screen activity.  Unfortunately I'm really a novice at Storyline, and not a programer, so I'm having some trouble figuring out how this works in the story file.  I see that it does, but I don't understand how the little blue CC boxes that are off to the left of the screen correspond with the cc text seen on the timeline.  Any chance you could walk us through with a screen recording?

Hi, Joyce - 

Here's a quick screenr explanation of how it works.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/204930000

Thanks for sharing!

Steve...

That is so elegant, so clever, so useful, and so simple to do!

Brilliant!

Many thanks for posting

Bruce

Thank you so much!

Thanks, Steve, for sharing.   Very instructive.

Completely Awesome!!

 How do you get the captioning to continue running when the user clicks to a new layer on the slide?  It will show if you click the "CC Toggle" button twice on the new layer, but will not continue to display automatically.

Hi, Joyce - 

Since that runs as a layer on the master slide, any new layers will hide that layer unless you uncheck "hide other layers". I'll see if I can modify this to just exist on the base layer to prevent this issue. Should be able to simply use hide / show. 

This is awesome Steve!!! Thanks so much! Can't wait to try it!

Wow, Steve! I've been playing with this also. It's so very cool. I do have a question (you probably knew that ;-()

I'm new to triggers and variables, so it took me a while to "get" what you'd done with the rectangles. I understood why they were offstage; I understood positioning things on the timeline for different entrances and exits; I've used that same process before, but I didn't know where the text went. Finally, after poking around, I got it.

But my question is, how would I ever know to do that? How did you know to come up with that?

What does Value stand for when it's blank as it was here (so that we were able to type our text in)?

What does the Operator =Assignment and =NOT assignment mean? I understand what they're doing here; and in fact they're doing the opposite for me, since I have the transcript layer turned on by default.

I said in another thread, I feel like this is a brand new language and like most language learners, I understand it when I see/hear it, but I have difficulty creating novel constructions.

Probably too many questions for most community members. :-(

Thank you - thank you - thank you! This helped SO MUCH!!

Hi Steve! Is there a way to change the text on the player tab, from Toggle CC to just CC? Or, is there a way to add a CC button where the progress bar and next/previous buttons are? That would be fantastic!

Cannot add the CC button to the progress bar / back / next buttons but you can modify the text on the player tab or on slide buttons easily

Hi Steve

This template is brilliant. I needed to add captions to a video that had an audio commentary but no captions / subtitles. I'm now able to publish videos with these. To all I'd strongly recommend following the link on previous posts to the short video Steve posted on how to get the best out of this template.

Next time you're in the UK, I'll buy you a pint or three!

Cheers, Mike.

Sweet, Mike! Glad it was useful. This method makes it relatively simple to add closed captions and to change and adjust the appearance of the captions in one spot. It's really not more difficult than generating something like a DXFL file with a tool like Magpie.

This is great, Steve! Thanks for the info and instructions.

I have one question, though, about adding cue points. I have my screencast on one slide and now I'm trying to put in cue points for the video. When I play the slide, though, in Storyline (not Preview or Publish but in the slide editing mode), I don't see the video actually playing so I can't determine where to set my cue points. Is anyone else having this problem? When I pause the video, it shifts the video to show where it stopped but I can't get it to play for me so I can place my cue points. Does this make sense?

Any help would be appreciated!

Great idea Steve;  simple and elegant.  I like the way you can paste text snippets into copied trigger states...

Thanks!

Thanks!  I copied what you did and it works great except for one thing. In my version, the CC button flashes each time I go to a new screen.  Yet, it yours it doesn't. Do you know why this would happen? 

Thanks again.

Is there a space between the beginning of the timeline and the CC button? Only reason I can think of. 

I thought that too, but it's right at the beginning. 

I thought it may have something to do with the order of the triggers, but I can't move the CC button triggers up in the Triggers window to test that theory.