Videos freezing randomly

Jan 03, 2019

Leah Ricker
By Leah Ricker

Hi. I've been struggling with 2 videos built by a vendor that need to be included in our LMS. I created a Storyline 360 module with both videos added. They are each 30 min in length (I know that's not ideal for a number of reasons). The issue I'm having is with the videos freezing in random places. We decreased the size of the files to MP4s because the original MOVs were huge, but we're still having issues with random freezing. 

I'm wondering if it is browser related - so far, the people seeing this behavior were using Chrome.

One thing the vendor brought up is the bitrate. Does anyone know if there is a maximum recommended bitrate?

Thanks

34 Replies
Katie Riggio
over 5 years ago01/03/19 at 10:55 pm (UTC)

Hi, Leah. Welcome to the community!

I'd be happy to work closely with you to find out why both videos are freezing. A few questions to help us narrow down the cause:

  • What version of Chrome are you and your team using? An easy way to grab this detail is to go to http://supportally.com/ 
  • Is the Video Compression feature enabled or disabled on both MP4 videos? If it's turned off, Storyline will publish what's given with no maximum bitrate. If it's turned on, the maximum will vary per video since Storyline will handle the compression.

  • Would you be able to share your .story file with me here? Feel free to add the project as a comment by using the Add Attachment button in your reply or send it privately via this link. I'll test in another LMS environment and let you know what I find!

I'll be here!

Brian Aucoin
over 5 years ago01/07/19 at 4:56 pm (UTC)

Thx for your help Katie. Leah works on my team and I think she just provided the source mp4 video files also. To give you a sense of our audience, this LMS course will be going out to over 30, 000 staff which we have done before in our LMS system ( SABA) with other courses so we want to solve this freeze issue before we deploy. 

 

 

Katie Riggio
over 5 years ago01/07/19 at 5:47 pm (UTC)

Hi there, Brian. Thanks for this handy insight, and confirming receipt of both .MP4 files!

To keep you in the loop, I've enlisted the help of our Support Engineers so we can do a deep dive here. I'll follow the case along to share any relevant insight here – and let me know if I can help add your contact to the follow-up emails. 😊

Brian Aucoin
over 5 years ago01/09/19 at 6:38 pm (UTC)

Katie,

We met with the SABA content consultant to look at the video freezing issue with Google Chrome. The Sl360 settings look good and the mp4 files we use in the SL360 are at the lowest compression for decent video quality so he thinks the issue may be with hardware acceleration in Chrome ( http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2618854/google-chrome-freezing-playing-youtube-videos.html)  

That browser adjustment didn't fix the issue and we are evaluating the embedded video option ( hosted either on Vimeo or Warpwire) in the SL360 project but that present issues with video quality and control.

Is it worth building and publishing this content in Storyline2 vs 360 to see if a "old fashioned" project works better? We haven't encountered this issue before across our 1000+ courses..now this one has a longer mp4 video than most but not the longest or largest . Those longer/larger mp4 files were published in SL2.

Katie Riggio
over 5 years ago01/09/19 at 8:23 pm (UTC)

Hello, Brian. Appreciate you circling back with this update from SABA!

I've been keeping a pulse on Leah's case with one of our support rockstars, Renz, where I see he recommended to compress the videos further or to split them into smaller videos so they won't need any additional resizing. I'm going to share your LMS' findings with him so we can look into other approaches, as I would hate for you and your team to rebuild the project!

Also, Storyline 2 publishes Flash first with the ability to include the HTML5 output. I'm curious if the issue may lie in just the HTML5 output. Talk soon!

Stefanie Orzechowicz
almost 5 years ago06/21/19 at 3:38 pm (UTC)

Hi, I'm also having an issue with embedded videos freezing at random times. I have not personally been affected by this issue, but it is being reported by some of our employees. We require them to use Chrome. I have attached the Storyline file for one of the affected trainings.

Katie Riggio
almost 5 years ago06/25/19 at 1:36 pm (UTC)

Hi there, Laura!

Sorry you're at this obstacle. I can appreciate that it's frustrating when only a few learners are experiencing freezing while you're unable to replicate the behavior on your end.

I'm also unable to reproduce any issues in the published output on SCORM Cloud/Chrome 75, but I won't give up until we sort what's happening! Let's see if we can find a trend:

  • Where did you host the published output?
  • What version of Chrome are the affected learners using? 
  • What happens when they view my published output link on their machine?
Katie Riggio
almost 5 years ago06/27/19 at 2:03 pm (UTC)

Thanks for this extra detail, Laura. Hm, this is a tough one! 🔎

To help us dig deeper:

  • Next time you hear a report from another learner of this problem, could you share what version of Chrome they were using? If several folks are seeing random freezing on Chrome 74, then the source of the issue could lie there. 
  • Another thought is that the issue may be in how the .MP4s were encoded. I'm curious if re-encoding the video files could help – we like to a free video converting tool called HandBrake: https://handbrake.fr/

Let me know what you think!

By the way, it looks like you may have replied via email where your contact information came through. This Peek 360 video will show you how to edit it out if you'd like!

Travis Creed
almost 4 years ago07/16/20 at 12:25 am (UTC)

Hi Katie,

I have a similar situation. An induction module built by a vendor in Storyline360 with approx 30min of video content within. These MP4 videos within Storyline randomly glitch and freeze. We cannot control what our 2500 contractors per year choose to use as a browser, they typically use Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari (iPhone). Regardless, on my laptop (Lenovo T470s) the video freezing/glitching is still completely random. I'm using both Chrome 83.0.4103.97 and IE 11.0 to test.

Video compression is set to automatic, video quality (in publish properties) is set to '1' (lowest quality) and the videos have been cut into different scenes/slides so they are each approx 1-3 min long. These videos would have been encoded by Adobe Premiere Pro.

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you, Trav.

Lauren Connelly
almost 4 years ago07/20/20 at 12:36 pm (UTC)

Hi Travis!

So sorry that the videos in your project are freezing! Let's get this sorted out.

It sounds like videos are freezing when viewing the course in a browser. Have you uploaded the course to an LMS or website?

We'll want to take a look at the affected file to determine a fix. If you're comfortable attaching your project to this discussion, please use the Add Attachment button. If you'd instead share the file privately, here's a secure upload link. We'll take a look and reply with our findings!

Vincent Scoma
over 3 years ago11/24/20 at 3:25 pm (UTC)

Hi Claudia,

Thank you for reaching out! 

I am sorry that you are hitting a snag with your project freezing on you. Is this issue happening in other browsers as well? 

If you are comfortable sharing your file with us, we're always more than happy to help! You can share files using this private upload link here. We'll let you know our findings and will delete them after having a closer look!

Pamela Roeper
3 years ago02/03/21 at 8:41 pm (UTC)

I am also having an issue with a video freezing or cutting off towards the end. The mp4 is fine and I have replaced it a couple of times. I have also checked any trimming. Nothing. Any clues as to what is happening is greatly appreciated (this is the only slide I am having a problem with in a very large project).

Pamela Roeper
3 years ago02/03/21 at 9:14 pm (UTC)

Thank you, Russell. I was getting so frustrated. I replaced it numerous times. I even redid the slide from scratch. Nothing worked.

The only thing that worked for me was going into Premiere Pro and re-encoding and re-rendering that little video. So, I am guessing that is where the issue was. Premiere always has its own gremlins to deal with. :-)

Pamela Roeper
3 years ago02/03/21 at 9:47 pm (UTC)

No. I did try it that way as well (I am too lazy to have to adjust the position of things...  so that is a feature I like to use). As a last ditch effort I did try a whole new slide. But the only thing that worked for me was to redo in premiere pro. Maybe if I would have had more patience it would have eventually worked, but I am always on unrealistic deadlines. 

Krzysztof Ostrowski
over 2 years ago09/08/21 at 8:06 am (UTC)

Hi,

My organization facing similar issues with freezing learning content published with LMS. We have tried numerous ways of having it solved by analyzing from perspective of prepared videos, damaged SCORM packages and issues with LMS itself - for now still progressing with LMS vendor to find possible reasons of such situation. We have observed that actually we got 2 main kind of issues: corrupted video files (usually damaged audio paths) and "SOMETHING" with LMS. Once we are able to solve issues with video itsefl by re-rendering videos again, we have no idea what can be wrong with LMS. We are sure that there is something wrong with our LMS, because during process of investigation we have ruled out browsers factor (we mainly testing on Chrome, but have tried on other ones as well, btw. IE perfecty dealing with corrupted video files, so "the force is strong with this old one"), we have tested same content which randomly freezing published with scorm cloud (not our LMS) and observed no issues, so the only guilty one is our LMS. Hope that further investigation will give some results and finally allow to publish longer videos content. Maybe some of you struggled with similar LMS related issues?

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