Video encoding during publish

Sep 06, 2016

A .story file with 4 mp4 videos.  Usually, when I publish, the entire course publishes in about 30 seconds.

Occasionally, the publish dialog takes much longer and shows "encoding video ..." for each video.

Strange thing though, deleting the temp folder, closing Storyline and relaunching seems to have no bearing on whether we get the "Encoding mp4 video".

So... sometimes the course publishes in 30 seconds, other times 5 minutes, and it all boils down to the "Encoding video" surprise when I publish.

Any ideas?

Sam

26 Replies
Susi B

Hi Sam,

I work with mp4-files too, usually more than 4 and I can confirm that it takes more time with media files in it. Audio and video files in your project extend the output time. But I wouldn´t delete the temp files. Sometimes you publish your course, take a look through it and you find a mistake. Once there is a temp file for your project it (seems to me tho) publishes faster. But still it takes a lot more time with media files in it.

And little "pro" tip: Save your file before publishing, with our very big files (up to 1-2 gb) we have sometimes the issue of publishing the file and during this it closes spontaneously. But I think we really push storyline to its limits sometimes. :D

Greetings,

Susi

Sam Carter

There's a side issue that publishing with mp4 video will occasionally abort Storyline. The fix I found elsewhere in the forum was if you're running DropBox desktop, Pause it. Something about DropBox locking the output folder can cause Storyline to abort.

Still, I'd like to know why the publish time sometimes takes so much longer when the mp4s need to be encoded and not other times.

Sam

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Dragos,

What version of Storyline are you using? 

Could you share more about the specs of your system? Also is anything else running while Storyline is trying to publish? Are you publishing to your local drive or a network/shared drive? 

If you'd like to share a copy of your .story file with us, we can also give it a try and test publishing it on our end. You can upload it using the “ADD ATTACHMENT” button at the bottom of the reply window.

If you’d prefer to not share in the public forums you’re always welcome to share with our Support Engineers here. They’re available 24/7 to assist! 

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Jason,

It's been a while since we've seen any conversation around this topic here.

It looks like Pausing Dropbox worked for a couple of users and we did not get a case from Dragos to take a closer look.

  • Are you consistently running into an issue?
  • Is it with all video files in all projects?
  • What version of Storyline are you using?
Sarah Keis

I am having an issue that any stories that I have created today are hanging 1/4 of the way through the "Preparing to encode video..." process. Same computer, same types of scenes etc  Thought it might be a bug so I noticed there was an updated version of Storyline 360 available so installed that. Nope.

Any stories I created before today are publishing today just fine.

Ren Gomez

Hi Dag,

Sorry to hear you're running into this publishing issue! You may be coming across a bug we have reported in Update 36 for Storyline 360 where publishing to video gets stuck under certain circumstances.

Can you try to revert back to an older version of Storyline 360 and see if you run into the same issue there? This will help us confirm if it's related.

Looking forward to hearing back!

Michelle M

I'm  so glad I found this thread. This morning I published a new version of a very complex course which contains 24 videos. The update was just to correct some typos etc,  but several of the videos were not playing when I uploaded the new version to my LMS, though they worked perfectly in the previous version. The bottom fell out of my stomach - this it just what you need right before leaving for your holidays!

Luckily this thread solved the issue for me - I reverted to the previous install of Articulate 360 (3.46.23620) and all the published videos are now working correctly in my LMS system.

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing what you experienced when publishing using the latest update. I'm glad to hear that reverting solved the issue in the meantime.

Since you're publishing to LMS and not to video output, it sounds like you may have run into a different issue.

With your permission, I'd like to take a look at your .story project file and publishing using the latest version to investigate what's happening. You can share it publicly here, or send it to me privately by uploading it here. I'll delete it when I'm done troubleshooting.

Michelle M

Hi Leslie,

I've uploaded the .story through the link you provided. Unfortunately the story is quite large and I can't remember exactly which videos weren't working (I've been off work the last few weeks so only saw your comment today) but please do let me know anything you find out. Obviously I want to avail of all the latest updates to 360 but I'm too afraid to update it again at the moment!

Ellen Slavitz

I am also publishing to video with an embedded video and getting the "Encoding Video" message. And the video, which should end up between 5 and 10 minutes, is taking hours and hours to publish: today it's been going for around 6 hours and is still not finished. Any ideas what might be going on an how to fix it?