When I insert a video onto SL the option to change compression is grayed out and set to "Automatic". I don't want SL to compress my videos. How do I get this to show up as an option?
I'm sorry to hear you're having an issue with video compression.
You can only turn off compression for videos in MP4 format created with baseline, main, or high profiles. All other videos will be compressed when published.
Good day! Currently, only the MP4 format is supported for uncompressed output. This applies to the three most common MP4 profiles: baseline, main, and high. You may check this guide for additional details.
The option here is to reencode your video if this does not meet the above criteria. I hope you find this information useful.
"ID" is correct on this. Though I had to modify the idea to make it work. Instead of creating a new scene (which didn't work for me), I had to open a new instance of Storyline and import the video there. Once I had the settings and sizing set there, I could copy & paste the slide into my original project, delete the original video and copy the new one over to the original slide (I only had one trigger to recreate). Then I just deleted the slide with the duplicate video.
I agree this is a glitch that needs fixing (having just spent much of my day rendering and re-rendering videos). I hope Articulate, which is very good about everything else, can prioritize this fix for the next update.
Sadly for me, Randall's steps above didn't work either. I created a new project (ie. new instance of Storyline) and imported the video and was able to change the compression to None but after copy/pasting that slide into my original project, the video within the slide reverts back to greyed-out "Automatic".
In the end I had to copy my other slides to the new project to keep the video the way I wanted it. Lucky for me this is just a short test project. If I was at the end of a large project with lots of triggers, I woulda been STUFFED!
BTW, I originally had control over the video's compression settings, after I first imported it, but they became locked out after I started to publish the project to Web (for testing). I cancelled the publish part-way through, as it was taking far too long and I realised I hadn't changed the video's setting... but it then became locked. So, perhaps the publish process sealed my original document's fate!
I agree that this is a bug and a HUGE TIME WASTER if you don't get it right the first time. I also hope/request the developers take time to fix this issue.
I have created videos with "High" profile set in Camtasia. I still do not have the option to turn off compression for my mp4 video imported into Storyline 360. What other settings are supposed to be configured for "high" profile? The link in Tyler's comment had no details.
I have mp4 video that fits the guidelines for Compression: None, but I need to crop it in some slides to show only the speaker. When I crop the video within Storyline, the Compression option is greyed out, so I am getting the poor quality Automatic compression on these slides. The cropping feature is definitely convenient, but does it negate my compression options?
I am also having no luck with Randall and ID's solution. Very frustrating!
I found another work around to try. Luckily I had a video that already had compression set to 'None' in my project so I copied that video to the slide, right clicked the video then selected 'replace video'. I got the new video with no compression attribute assigned to it. Hope this saves someone a few hours.
This bug is maddening. Randall and ID's solutions did not work and I cannot try Sasha's as I do not have an uncompressed video in my project. Why would I be able to get the option when I import into a brand new storyline project but not in the project I want to import the video into? It makes no sense
Hi Dustin, yes, it's maddening that this bug is still active! It plagues me with pretty much every project, but I have always managed to work around it, with some added effort.
I created a 1 slide project that I keep as an empty shell where I can import the video and then set its compression to None. I then copy it from there and paste it into my active project. However, most of the time, the video pastes in as "Automatic" and loses the "None" setting so I have found that if I close all open projects and then try again, the compression of "None" stays after I have pasted it into the freshly opened active project.
I hope that helps you!
Articulate, please fix this bug once and for all!!!!!
Thanks for commiserating, Brett! For future readers of this thread, the ONLY thing that worked for me was opening up and new Story file and literally copy/pasting each scene over to the new file one by one. I had a bunch of reformatting to do but at least the videos were uncompressed.
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EDIT: After posting this I finally found a workaround. It's insane that it is necessary STILL but this workaround from the original Storyline still works as of Jan 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF45aiGHPf4
I am having this issue with all of my videos created using Clipchamp. I have tried converting my files to .avi and .mov and also converting the both a baseline and high profile MP4. No matter what I do, the moment I import videos that are anything but the 360 content, the compression option is automatic and greyed out.
This is a deal breaker for my company, and we have paid $1200 AUD for a program that will not work for us if our screen shot videos of our custom software look like potato quality. Help!
WOAH, I've just had this issue AGAIN, even though it was supposedly fixed in the April 18, 2023 (Build 3.75.30269.0) update - "Fixed: The video compression setting was disabled when it should have been active."
Today, I opened an older project to make some updates and re-publish it and I noticed that it was taking AAAAAGES to save and realised it was encoding video. I stopped it and went to the video slide and saw that the Compression setting was greyed out and set to "Automatic". I tried all of my previous tricks (eg. creating a NEW project, importing the video and applying the "None" setting, then copy/pasting the video (...NOPE) and then the slide across to my old project) but nothing was working. I even tried closing all Articulate projects and opening just the one project but it still wouldn't allow me to set the value. In the end, I was going to reboot windows and try one last time (before I resorted to the dreaded 'copy all slides over to a new project then fix everything that went wrong' process) so I closed ALL apps & Explorer windows and decided to re-open Articulate one last time, before rebooting, and I was able to successfully re-import the video and change the setting to "None".
Why did this issue return again???
I'm dropping this note in here in case this happens to someone else and they come looking for help.
Yeah, this is driving me nuts. I'm trying to update multiple older projects (created in '21 and updated last year) and every one of them is giving me grief with the greyed out/locked-in "Compression: Automatic" issue. I'm having to close all Articulate files, re-open just the single file that I'm trying to change and then I have to re-import the video afresh and set the compression.
I'm having this issue too, and it's driving me CRAZY.
I'm breaking a course I built in March into five smaller courses. Compression is turned off on all the videos in the original course. For each new course, I copied the original file and deleted the slides I didn't need. But I just noticed in all of those new course files, compression is turned on on all the videos and the dropdown is grayed out. I tried replacing the videos, but it still won't give me the option to turn off compression.
I also tried importing the video slides into a new file, but same issue - compression is on and the dropdown is grayed out.
If I open up a new file and insert the videos, I can turn off compression. However, I added captions to all of these videos in the original course (~20 across 5 courses), so if I import these videos into a new file to turn off compression, I have to redo all the captions. Not happening - I didn't bill this customer thinking I would be spending extra time re-inserting the captions I put in the original course.
I've resorted to the method Natasha posted (replacing all the video files in the story_content folder in the SCORM package), but this isn't sustainable long term (nor should it be necessary) if I have to go back and update these files in the future.
I'm sorry to hear you've hit this snag with video compression in your Storyline course! I appreciate all the details you've included, and it's a great idea to open a case as well. I see that Mick is requesting a screen recording of the issue.
We can continue troubleshooting through your support case to help keep all information in one spot, but let me know if I can help with anything else!
19 Replies
Hi Jeni,
I'm sorry to hear you're having an issue with video compression.
You can only turn off compression for videos in MP4 format created with baseline, main, or high profiles. All other videos will be compressed when published.
You can read more about video compression here: Storyline 360: How to Adjust Video Compression.
Hi Jeni,
Good day! Currently, only the MP4 format is supported for uncompressed output. This applies to the three most common MP4 profiles: baseline, main, and high. You may check this guide for additional details.
The option here is to reencode your video if this does not meet the above criteria. I hope you find this information useful.
Forget all the 'science' SL give you about formats. It is a bug that has been there for years despite many posts.
SL remembers the settings if there was a video there originally. Try this if you want to replace a video:
1. Create new scene with blank slide
2. import video - You can now set compression to 'none'
3. Adjust size/position etc. to match original.
4. Copy and paste to correct slide, copy any triggers etc. from original video.
5. Delete original video.
"ID" is correct on this. Though I had to modify the idea to make it work. Instead of creating a new scene (which didn't work for me), I had to open a new instance of Storyline and import the video there. Once I had the settings and sizing set there, I could copy & paste the slide into my original project, delete the original video and copy the new one over to the original slide (I only had one trigger to recreate). Then I just deleted the slide with the duplicate video.
I agree this is a glitch that needs fixing (having just spent much of my day rendering and re-rendering videos). I hope Articulate, which is very good about everything else, can prioritize this fix for the next update.
Sadly for me, Randall's steps above didn't work either. I created a new project (ie. new instance of Storyline) and imported the video and was able to change the compression to None but after copy/pasting that slide into my original project, the video within the slide reverts back to greyed-out "Automatic".
In the end I had to copy my other slides to the new project to keep the video the way I wanted it. Lucky for me this is just a short test project. If I was at the end of a large project with lots of triggers, I woulda been STUFFED!
BTW, I originally had control over the video's compression settings, after I first imported it, but they became locked out after I started to publish the project to Web (for testing). I cancelled the publish part-way through, as it was taking far too long and I realised I hadn't changed the video's setting... but it then became locked. So, perhaps the publish process sealed my original document's fate!
I agree that this is a bug and a HUGE TIME WASTER if you don't get it right the first time. I also hope/request the developers take time to fix this issue.
I have created videos with "High" profile set in Camtasia. I still do not have the option to turn off compression for my mp4 video imported into Storyline 360. What other settings are supposed to be configured for "high" profile? The link in Tyler's comment had no details.
Hi, Kathy.
Thank you for reaching out! I'm happy to provide more details.
Here are the steps from the article Tyler sent a few months ago:
Let me know if this works!
I have mp4 video that fits the guidelines for Compression: None, but I need to crop it in some slides to show only the speaker. When I crop the video within Storyline, the Compression option is greyed out, so I am getting the poor quality Automatic compression on these slides. The cropping feature is definitely convenient, but does it negate my compression options?
Hi, Heather.
Thank you for reaching out!
You are correct: when using the Storyline video editor, the video is compressed, and the profile is no longer baseline, main, or high.
Are you able to import the cropped version from your initial video editor?
I am also having no luck with Randall and ID's solution. Very frustrating!
I found another work around to try. Luckily I had a video that already had compression set to 'None' in my project so I copied that video to the slide, right clicked the video then selected 'replace video'. I got the new video with no compression attribute assigned to it. Hope this saves someone a few hours.
This bug is maddening. Randall and ID's solutions did not work and I cannot try Sasha's as I do not have an uncompressed video in my project. Why would I be able to get the option when I import into a brand new storyline project but not in the project I want to import the video into? It makes no sense
Hi Dustin, yes, it's maddening that this bug is still active! It plagues me with pretty much every project, but I have always managed to work around it, with some added effort.
I created a 1 slide project that I keep as an empty shell where I can import the video and then set its compression to None. I then copy it from there and paste it into my active project. However, most of the time, the video pastes in as "Automatic" and loses the "None" setting so I have found that if I close all open projects and then try again, the compression of "None" stays after I have pasted it into the freshly opened active project.
I hope that helps you!
Articulate, please fix this bug once and for all!!!!!
Thanks for commiserating, Brett! For future readers of this thread, the ONLY thing that worked for me was opening up and new Story file and literally copy/pasting each scene over to the new file one by one. I had a bunch of reformatting to do but at least the videos were uncompressed.
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Hi,
EDIT: After posting this I finally found a workaround. It's insane that it is necessary STILL but this workaround from the original Storyline still works as of Jan 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF45aiGHPf4
I am having this issue with all of my videos created using Clipchamp. I have tried converting my files to .avi and .mov and also converting the both a baseline and high profile MP4. No matter what I do, the moment I import videos that are anything but the 360 content, the compression option is automatic and greyed out.
This is a deal breaker for my company, and we have paid $1200 AUD for a program that will not work for us if our screen shot videos of our custom software look like potato quality. Help!
WOAH, I've just had this issue AGAIN, even though it was supposedly fixed in the April 18, 2023 (Build 3.75.30269.0) update - "Fixed: The video compression setting was disabled when it should have been active."
Today, I opened an older project to make some updates and re-publish it and I noticed that it was taking AAAAAGES to save and realised it was encoding video. I stopped it and went to the video slide and saw that the Compression setting was greyed out and set to "Automatic". I tried all of my previous tricks (eg. creating a NEW project, importing the video and applying the "None" setting, then copy/pasting the video (...NOPE) and then the slide across to my old project) but nothing was working. I even tried closing all Articulate projects and opening just the one project but it still wouldn't allow me to set the value. In the end, I was going to reboot windows and try one last time (before I resorted to the dreaded 'copy all slides over to a new project then fix everything that went wrong' process) so I closed ALL apps & Explorer windows and decided to re-open Articulate one last time, before rebooting, and I was able to successfully re-import the video and change the setting to "None".
Why did this issue return again???
I'm dropping this note in here in case this happens to someone else and they come looking for help.
Yeah, this is driving me nuts. I'm trying to update multiple older projects (created in '21 and updated last year) and every one of them is giving me grief with the greyed out/locked-in "Compression: Automatic" issue. I'm having to close all Articulate files, re-open just the single file that I'm trying to change and then I have to re-import the video afresh and set the compression.
I'll now lodge a support request...
it can be done direct in the .story file (= .zip) with a text editor
/story/story.xml
replace all
with
but better let support do this
I'm having this issue too, and it's driving me CRAZY.
I'm breaking a course I built in March into five smaller courses. Compression is turned off on all the videos in the original course. For each new course, I copied the original file and deleted the slides I didn't need. But I just noticed in all of those new course files, compression is turned on on all the videos and the dropdown is grayed out. I tried replacing the videos, but it still won't give me the option to turn off compression.
I also tried importing the video slides into a new file, but same issue - compression is on and the dropdown is grayed out.
If I open up a new file and insert the videos, I can turn off compression. However, I added captions to all of these videos in the original course (~20 across 5 courses), so if I import these videos into a new file to turn off compression, I have to redo all the captions. Not happening - I didn't bill this customer thinking I would be spending extra time re-inserting the captions I put in the original course.
I've resorted to the method Natasha posted (replacing all the video files in the story_content folder in the SCORM package), but this isn't sustainable long term (nor should it be necessary) if I have to go back and update these files in the future.
Any update on fixing this issue, Articulate?
Hi Danielle,
I'm sorry to hear you've hit this snag with video compression in your Storyline course! I appreciate all the details you've included, and it's a great idea to open a case as well. I see that Mick is requesting a screen recording of the issue.
We can continue troubleshooting through your support case to help keep all information in one spot, but let me know if I can help with anything else!