Videos and Shapes

Jul 22, 2022

I am working on a package in Storyline3 where I have a video and at certain parts of the video I have shapes and text appearing,  if I pause the video, the shapes and text appear at the wrong time as they don't pause with the video.  Does anyone know if there is any way that when the video pauses it also pauses any shapes/text etc?

Thank you

1 Reply
Joe Hauglie

Nikki, without seeing an image of your timeline or project, it's a bit challenging; but you may consider trying one of these options.

First, create some offscreen object - just a shape of your choice. Then create a state for that object (color change?) and link the state change (a trigger) to a cue point in the video timeline - so, for example, at the 2-minute point, you set a cue point that tells the offscreen object to "change state."  Then create a second trigger to show the shapes you are describing but make that trigger dependent on the state of the offscreen object. 

The net result is that the shapes won't appear until the offscreen object changes state, which won't happen until the cue point is passed, so regardless of how long the video may pause before the cue point, the shapes will be delayed until after that happens.

Second, as you can probably guess, is to skip the offscreen object and just trigger the shape appearances to various cue points. If the video pauses before the cue point passes, the shapes won't appear unexpectedly.

The upside to the first option is that you are essentially tying the shape appearance to a second event (the state change for the offscreen object) that itself is tied to the cue point(s). So the dependency makes it more likely that you'll not see the shapes until you want them (at some point in the video). The downside to this approach is that you are manually creating something that should be otherwise automated in Storyline. 

Good luck!

Joe H