Using Video vs Storyline Animation

Sep 09, 2015

Hi Everyone,

As a video guy, I'm feeling limited and slow with a series of slides that are simply narrated with animation. I'm curious what downsides you guys can think of for me dropping video in the slide instead. I could go so much faster and have much more beautiful effects  using final cut pro or after effects. I know size will be a bit of an issue .. Any other worries?

Thanks!
Bill

6 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Bill,

I'll defer to the community for more thoughts but did want to point out a few things that you'll want to keep in mind. 

With videos in Storyline, there will be some automatic compression as detailed here, and depending on the videos you include you can remove the compression elements. Storyline will also progressively stream your videos in the published content. 

If for some reason the videos aren't working as expected once you publish, you'll want to review the information here and generally it seems to be a codec issue. 

John Krikorian

Video can be awesome and immensely powerful. However consider this.

You might think about your workflow. I'd got some videos that we've done using various tools and when I need to make a change (as happens often) now I have to go back into video editing, render it out, then take that into Storyline and republish and then re-upload. So my answer is that I've just found it too cumbersome. There has to be some really powerful reasons for me to do something outside Storyline. I can make changes so much easier using the Storyline tool by itself.

Also, look at the instructional design perspective. If you make a video 30% more beautiful, by what % will your learners performance improve?

It might be a better use of time and energy to consider ways of increasing interactivity with the content. If you can increase interactivity 30% in your course, I suspect that your learners will get further than with a "sit back and watch" video with cool effects.

Best of luck! :)

 

Graham Betts

I work for Navy and we are always integrating animation and video. My projects always use a range of tools and media. In the past I have used animation as opposed to video when I have had to explain discrete concepts with a small animation and explanatory text. I often include a slider where the user can move the slider to watch how a particular concept works with explanations, arrows, text, labels as required. I do this in Flash. As you said file size is very important with online media.

However there are some things where a short video clip explains very complex tasks. At this point I use a video clip. Interactivity is a big one with video but tincan allows a range of interactivity with the video as well.

The timeline in Storyline can be used to fade things out or in but I am using Storyline one and do not have access to path based animation. You're using Storyline 2 so my understanding is you should be able to garner much more functionality similar in some regards to Flash.

Storyline is very powerful once the possibilities are understood. It is a very easy program to get up and running with but is very malleable and in that way can be very complex and allow very complex solutions. We found Captivate to be very clunky.

Remember we use a range of tools including Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects and audition, and a range of various other tools depending on our need. I develop what I can in Storyline but I find video and other tools have their place.

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