Video format

Apr 09, 2013

Bert Casier
By Bert Casier

I have an issuu with videos that I want to use in a Storyline project. The videos are transparent, so the background of my project is visible underneath the video

The result is nice in the flash-player where it uses a generated flv-file, but not in the mobile player, where the video-part has a black background, and the background of the project doesn't blend with the video.

My solution was to bake in a part of the project background in the video itself, so no alphachannel was needed, but now Storyline generates an mp4 file. The problem here is that the flash player doesn't handles the colors very well, the video is played a bit darker than the original file. So now in the flash player you see a color difference in the video background and the project background. The mobile player does a good job here.

I did some additional test in Flash CS6 and noticed that Flash plays nice with FLV files, only the mp4 files are not correctly rendered, colors are a bit darker. Problem is Storyline automaticaly converts all videos with an alphachannel to MP4.

Is there a way to let Storyline only use the FLV-version with background baked in for the flash player, and the MP4 version with background baked in for the mobile player ?

Another solution would be to make 2 versions of the project, one with the transparent FLV for the flash player version and another with an mp4 file fo the mobile player, but that's double work, and we need to make 100s of those projects!

Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated

4 Replies
Peter Anderson
11 years ago04/09/13 at 9:17 am (UTC)

Welcome to the community, Bert!

You're right about how Storyline encodes videos based on the file format of the videos and the publishing options you choose:

Imported File Type Flash Player Mobile Player HTML5 Player
MP4 Re-encoded to MP4 Re-encoded to MP4 Re-encoded to MP4
FLV (no alpha channel) Encoded to MP4 Encoded to MP4 Encoded to MP4
FLV (alpha channel) No change No change Encoded to MP4
SWF No change No change Not supported
All other file types * Encoded to MP4 Encoded to MP4 Encoded to MP4

And I think it would make a nice feature request to have Storyline present you with an option as to whether or not you'd like the videos to be encoded. 

In the meantime, an unsupported workaround you may want to try, is replacing the published output video with your original video. I describe how it might work over here. 

Good luck

Bert Casier
11 years ago04/09/13 at 11:19 pm (UTC)

Hi Peter

Thx for the answer. That would seem like a solution, but we are planning to make 100s of lessons, with multiple movies. We can't replace all those movies easily, we would also have to repeat these steps every time we make a change and republish the project.

We could make a script with an automated replacement of the movies, the only problem here is the naming of the movies gets lost. Is there a way to know what the name of the generated movie will be when you import a movie?

That would be a real time-saver for us!

Peter Anderson
11 years ago04/10/13 at 9:36 am (UTC)

Hi Bert, 

Just heard back from the incomparable Brian Batt. Looks like a script might be a longshot:

You can get close, but we randomize it. For example, I imported an MP4 video and here's what it's named in the output:

"video_6bJYzN7DHWd_30_48_640x266.mp4"

Syntax for video is:

video_randomGUID_videoqualitynumber_audioqualitynumber_dimensions.mp4

==================

They won't be able to predict the randomGUID. The videoqualitynumber depends on the quality you choose (9 video quality = 26, 5 video quality = 30). The audio quality number pretty much matches the audio bitrate.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.