Video format question

Jul 03, 2012

Please excuse my ignorance! If we need to support both iPad and regular PC-based browsers with our Storyline course, do we need to use a different video format in the iPad course, and FLV in the PC-based course? Or is there a way to just use one video format for both?

Thanks!

Ellen

15 Replies
Luis Catalán Lebrón

   So, Brian, doesn't matter neither the video resolution nor the volume?

   I mean: I'm converting a video from 34Mb to 1 or 2Mb for the publishing. I'm playing with the resolution, the Fps, the Bitrate and the sound Frecuency.

   Could I embed a 34Mb video on the Storyline and then, when publishing, Storyline will change all the pics, audio and video size/volumen to the most efficient one?

   Thanks Brian!

Mike Enders

@Luis,

Yes, you can simply place the 34mb video file into Storyline and it will convert for you.

@Tim,

The stock canvas size is 720X540 and so your idea to capture at that resolution is good.  

The cool thing is that you can also change the canvas size (Design>Story Size) to a different

aspect ratio.  So, let's say you have a videocentric course and wish to roll with HD video.  You can resize your canvas to match.  I've found good success recording in HD (1920x1080) and then setting my canvas size to 1/2 (960x540) of that to pack the pixels in.  

1. Size your course to 960x540

2. Drop in your HD (1920x1080) video

3. Size it to the canvas (SL will typically do this for you), and Boom!  

Only catch is that you'll need to take the new aspect ratio into consideration when you are designing your course.   

Tip:  Size the canvas before you build your course out.  If you resize later on, not all elements (such as images) will rescale as you'd like.

Gerry Wasiluk

Phil Mayor said:

All videos are converted to mp4s on publish so will play on the ipad, doesnt matter what format you import as the output in iOS freindly format


Hey, Phil.  Not to be argumentative , but I thought the same thing (all videos get encoded to MP4).  However, this Storyline KB article says differently:   http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=es3kzctg3aoq

Brian Batt

Gerry Wasiluk said:

Phil Mayor said:

All videos are converted to mp4s on publish so will play on the ipad, doesnt matter what format you import as the output in iOS freindly format


Hey, Phil.  Not to be argumentative , but I thought the same thing (all videos get encoded to MP4).  However, this Storyline KB article says differently:   http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=es3kzctg3aoq


Hi Gerry,

That page is actually wrong at the moment.  We're currently updating the page.  Should be fixed soon.

Bill Westaway

Hi everyone - my first post!

Is Storyline supposed to convert videos that might be imported Engage or QuizMaker slides? I looked at the published files in a recent project and saw the flv in a standard Storyline slide had been converted to an MP4 but the Engage and QM slides were still FLV.?

Not a major issue for me at the moment but might be further down the road.

I also found with Storyline's video conversion set to max the video was still too compressed. My way around that was to create my own MP4 and place it in the published output folder and just rename it the same as the Storyline file (and deleted Storyline's MP4).

Gerry Wasiluk

Bill Westaway said:

I also found with Storyline's video conversion set to max the video was still too compressed. My way around that was to create my own MP4 and place it in the published output folder and just rename it the same as the Storyline file (and deleted Storyline's MP4).

Neat trick, Bill.   Thanks for sharing.
Yves Pelletier

I apologize for my questions. I'm new with Storyline.

If i understand correctly, Storyline converts videos to MP4 format during publishing.

1. I have a lot of M4V videos that I inserted in my project. Is it better to convert the videos to MP4 before I insert them or does it matter? Will it make publishing faster?

2. Because I have lots of M4V videos, my project is now 1.5GB. Is there a way to reduce the size of the project (.story file) so that it is a lot faster to upload my file to a server online? My project needs to be reviewed once in a while by the client and it takes a few hour to upload. I currently have approximately 30 M4V videos in my project all ranging from 40MB to 1.1GB (about 7Gb worth of videos total). I've tried to convert them to MP4 first down to a third of their size and then inserting them in Storyline but it doesn't seem to change the size of the .story file very much. I'm not sure what is happening inside Storyline.

Gerry Wasiluk

Yves Pelletier said:

I apologize for my questions. I'm new with Storyline.

If i understand correctly, Storyline converts videos to MP4 format during publishing.

1. I have a lot of M4V videos that I inserted in my project. Is it better to convert the videos to MP4 before I insert them or does it matter? Will it make publishing faster?

2. Because I have lots of M4V videos, my project is now 1.5GB. Is there a way to reduce the size of the project (.story file) so that it is a lot faster to upload my file to a server online? My project needs to be reviewed once in a while by the client and it takes a few hour to upload. I currently have approximately 30 M4V videos in my project all ranging from 40MB to 1.1GB (about 7Gb worth of videos total). I've tried to convert them to MP4 first down to a third of their size and then inserting them in Storyline but it doesn't seem to change the size of the .story file very much. I'm not sure what is happening inside Storyline.


My rule of thumb is to start with the best, uncompressed format (if you have it) and then let Storyline do the compression. 

"Start with the best and then compress." 

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