I exported a QuickTime video with Alpha + RGB setting in after effect and when I Imported it to Storyline 3 (Lastest version) instead of transparent I got a black background. ( Using HTML5 output and chrome)
I'm looking for a solution to this?
Is Storyline capable of importing transparent videos or No It Just Can't?
I think this should start being added to your high list of priorities Articulate. Besides, you don't want to be "that" authoring tool company that "says" you're doing versus actually doing something about it.
Look at this data:
26 Total responses since 2 years ago
18 in the last year (69% of responses)
14 responses in the last 6 months (77% of responses within 6 months)
8 response in the last month (57% of responses within a month) [That doesn't include a post I made recently about the same issue before I found this one.]
According to staffer, Ren Gomez, "We don’t have plans for this feature right now, but we'll continue to monitor requests for it and update this discussion if anything changes." I think the requests warrant Articulate actually doing something now. Besides, why would you offer this as a .flv solution back in the day but give up on it as an HTML5 solution? Is it that you can't make it work OR you don't want to? Most of the solutions that the user community presents are created workarounds by the community. Is there a published list of bug fixes that the community can see?
Based on street estimates, Articulate has an estimated revenue of 75M, I certainly believe that you could take Justin Kliegman's advice and hire a programmer to complete this ASK for less than a 1/1000th percent.
SO, to the community, I encourage everyone of us to create individual "enhancement/bug fixes/improvements/feature suggestions" and see if the company actually listens. The old adage "squeaky wheel gets the oil" should prevail here.
I want to be able to add transparent video with RGB+A into Storyline using HTML5. Currently, the video is converted by SL and it removes the transparent BG. Adobe is sun-setting Flash in two months and this feature should have already been on the list to complete.
I got a transparent video to display properly in Storyline by inserting it as a webm file inside of a web object. This works well in Chrome on Windows. Can someone please check to see if this works in Safari or on IOS at all?
I've updated the project with a longer video (I finally figured out how to create a transparent webm file) and I showed how Storyline variables can be updated with the video playhead time and the video end status.
Thank you for sharing your research and the feature request you submitted. When using an FLV was proposed as a solution, the End-of-Life for Flash was not a consideration.
You're right - some of our solutions presented by the staff and the community are workarounds. This has proven to keep our course designers moving forward while we work on building features into Storyline that our users are asking for.
Adding new features is not a quick process for any application, especially for one as complex as Storyline 360. We drive our feature roadmap mainly behind Customer Impact. The first hurdle with Transparent Videos is that it has not received the 'impact push' from our users as those features currently on our public roadmap.
Bugs are not public-facing. Our ELH Team has instant access to our bug database and shares any information with the community as "real-time" as possible.
A few weeks ago I received an email with "news" from articulate, the updates were from last year. A well-designed application can be constantly updated and add new features, especially for a company as large as Articulate.
The issues is really browser support as mentioned - which was one of the benefits of flash - common experience across browsers.
Can a javascript library like seeThru or similar be added to the SL export to increase browser support for alpha channel videos such as .webm and .mov? That's what is does.
I export my character from Adobe Character Animator as an Alpha Channel which exports as a .mov file
I then bring this into Adobe Premiere Pro
Then in Adobe Premiere Pro I bring in any video or image that I would want my "character" to be standing on top of as they talk/present within the piece.
Then I export it out of Adobe Premiere Pro a a MP4 and then bring into Storyline.
It is a added step and consumes time but it is the only work around I have found at this time.
We need this too. This seems to be a really useful function. I know we will need this for just about all of our upcoming product training. I thought it worked in a previous course I completed earlier this year, but I bet I ended up just matching the slide background. This is frustrating. Please get someone on this. I just wasted half a day again messing around on it. It's a lot of work for me to created the motion in CAD, export it, import it into Premiere to create the transparent video, export that media again, and import into SL360. I just did this for 5 product parts, and now I am realizing I can't even use it (again - my bad for that). VERY FRUSTRATING!
I just saw in another post string someone request that you and a chroma key tool...maybe that is an even better Idea...for me, this would save a bunch of steps. I could record the motion and go right into SL360 to remove the background of the video. Come on, what do you say! Push it through...we deserve a nice big Christmas present...we've been good all year! ;-)
Updating this thread. Can we get an update on Storyline 360 feature support for transparent background videos? Lack of browser or HTML5 support is clearly no longer an issue. WebM format is supported by almost all browser versions now. https://caniuse.com/webm. This would be very powerful enhancement to Storyline. Thanks for consideration.
I agree, this would be a huge help in many projects most when using animated characters that need transparent background that are created in other software.
Hi people, I am working on a project which embeds videos with transparent backgrounds. Neither Quicktime nor AVL with Alpha channel can show the transparent backgrounds in Articulate storyline. I am wondering if there's any update or so? I will be highly appreciated it.
As I mention 3 months ago, this is already a submitted feature request. Base on the obvious interest above, it would be nice if there was a way for Articulate to update the community on status of feature requests that are NOT already approved and on the docket (plan). I am not suggesting status for every possible feature request, I'm sure there far to many... but at least for these common sense requests. Thank you.
64 Replies
Could someone send me an .flv file with alpha transparency that I can use for testing?
I think this should start being added to your high list of priorities Articulate. Besides, you don't want to be "that" authoring tool company that "says" you're doing versus actually doing something about it.
Look at this data:
According to staffer, Ren Gomez, "We don’t have plans for this feature right now, but we'll continue to monitor requests for it and update this discussion if anything changes." I think the requests warrant Articulate actually doing something now. Besides, why would you offer this as a .flv solution back in the day but give up on it as an HTML5 solution? Is it that you can't make it work OR you don't want to? Most of the solutions that the user community presents are created workarounds by the community. Is there a published list of bug fixes that the community can see?
Based on street estimates, Articulate has an estimated revenue of 75M, I certainly believe that you could take Justin Kliegman's advice and hire a programmer to complete this ASK for less than a 1/1000th percent.
SO, to the community, I encourage everyone of us to create individual "enhancement/bug fixes/improvements/feature suggestions" and see if the company actually listens. The old adage "squeaky wheel gets the oil" should prevail here.
Here is the link for your convenience https://articulate.com/support/contact/feature-request
I've added mine just now...
I want to be able to add transparent video with RGB+A into Storyline using HTML5. Currently, the video is converted by SL and it removes the transparent BG. Adobe is sun-setting Flash in two months and this feature should have already been on the list to complete.
Good luck!
I got a transparent video to display properly in Storyline by inserting it as a webm file inside of a web object. This works well in Chrome on Windows. Can someone please check to see if this works in Safari or on IOS at all?
http://andersonelearning.com/demo/Transparent_Video/story.html
P.S. Thanks to W Gill for sending me a transparent video file to test with!
I've updated the project with a longer video (I finally figured out how to create a transparent webm file) and I showed how Storyline variables can be updated with the video playhead time and the video end status.
Hi W Gill,
Thank you for sharing your research and the feature request you submitted. When using an FLV was proposed as a solution, the End-of-Life for Flash was not a consideration.
You're right - some of our solutions presented by the staff and the community are workarounds. This has proven to keep our course designers moving forward while we work on building features into Storyline that our users are asking for.
Adding new features is not a quick process for any application, especially for one as complex as Storyline 360. We drive our feature roadmap mainly behind Customer Impact. The first hurdle with Transparent Videos is that it has not received the 'impact push' from our users as those features currently on our public roadmap.
Bugs are not public-facing. Our ELH Team has instant access to our bug database and shares any information with the community as "real-time" as possible.
A few weeks ago I received an email with "news" from articulate, the updates were from last year. A well-designed application can be constantly updated and add new features, especially for a company as large as Articulate.
https://articulate.com/support/article/Articulate-Storyline-360-Version-History
Most of the new features are about things the community doesn't ask for, and they focus on fixing their own bugs.
How we ignore your request: https://articulate.com/support/article/How-We-Manage-Feature-Requests
I think part of the problem is that creating transparent videos that work across different platforms and devices is very difficult without Flash. I did get it working in Chrome on Windows but was unable to get it working in Safari. https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/transparent-video-working-in-chrome-on-windows
The issues is really browser support as mentioned - which was one of the benefits of flash - common experience across browsers.
Can a javascript library like seeThru or similar be added to the SL export to increase browser support for alpha channel videos such as .webm and .mov? That's what is does.
.webm - current support - https://caniuse.com/webm
javascript library seeThru - https://github.com/m90/seeThru
I'm using Articulate Storyline 3 and also hoping to find a way of using video/gif layers with transparency. Have there been any new developments? 🤞
Hi Neil,
Thanks for the follow-up! We don't currently have any updates to share on using transparent videos.
I'll be sure to add your plus one to the list and let you know if our plans change on this feature.
Hi Mark,
What I have ended up having to do..
I export my character from Adobe Character Animator as an Alpha Channel which exports as a .mov file
I then bring this into Adobe Premiere Pro
Then in Adobe Premiere Pro I bring in any video or image that I would want my "character" to be standing on top of as they talk/present within the piece.
Then I export it out of Adobe Premiere Pro a a MP4 and then bring into Storyline.
It is a added step and consumes time but it is the only work around I have found at this time.
Just thought I would share.
We are also hoping to see this feature it's more than a little frustrating :(
I would like to add my vote, thank you.
Adding my vote as well. All these work arounds that may/may not work and no native support for specific codecs is definitely troublesome.
We need this too. This seems to be a really useful function. I know we will need this for just about all of our upcoming product training. I thought it worked in a previous course I completed earlier this year, but I bet I ended up just matching the slide background. This is frustrating. Please get someone on this. I just wasted half a day again messing around on it. It's a lot of work for me to created the motion in CAD, export it, import it into Premiere to create the transparent video, export that media again, and import into SL360. I just did this for 5 product parts, and now I am realizing I can't even use it (again - my bad for that). VERY FRUSTRATING!
I just saw in another post string someone request that you and a chroma key tool...maybe that is an even better Idea...for me, this would save a bunch of steps. I could record the motion and go right into SL360 to remove the background of the video. Come on, what do you say! Push it through...we deserve a nice big Christmas present...we've been good all year! ;-)
Updating this thread. Can we get an update on Storyline 360 feature support for transparent background videos? Lack of browser or HTML5 support is clearly no longer an issue. WebM format is supported by almost all browser versions now. https://caniuse.com/webm. This would be very powerful enhancement to Storyline. Thanks for consideration.
I agree, this would be a huge help in many projects most when using animated characters that need transparent background that are created in other software.
Hi people, I am working on a project which embeds videos with transparent backgrounds. Neither Quicktime nor AVL with Alpha channel can show the transparent backgrounds in Articulate storyline. I am wondering if there's any update or so? I will be highly appreciated it.
I would also like to see this feature added.
I also like to see this feature added
Agree, please add this feature.
As I mention 3 months ago, this is already a submitted feature request. Base on the obvious interest above, it would be nice if there was a way for Articulate to update the community on status of feature requests that are NOT already approved and on the docket (plan). I am not suggesting status for every possible feature request, I'm sure there far to many... but at least for these common sense requests. Thank you.
Please add this feature.
Has this been resolved? when importing videos with a transparent background into SL, the background turns black.