videos not playing in iOS10

Sep 29, 2016

Hello,

I have imported a series of .mp4 videos into a storyline course, exported it for LMS (both SCORM 1.2 & 2004). It plays fine on all browsers and devices, apart from iPad that runs in ios10. I've tried all of different settings for playing the video (automatically, from trigger etc.) but non of these seem to work.

It has been tested on our internal LMS (1.2), SCORM CLOUD and also our clients LMS. We have had no problems with this previously (running in iOS9), although it seems in the last week our client has updated their iPad to iOS10 which has resulted in this issue being raised.

I have the latest version of Storyline (update 10: 1607.1221) and iOS (10.0.2). Can you help me in any way with this? We are at a final stage of developing a course and this is a major problem for us.

Thanks.

Alex

29 Replies
John Mathes

Hey Alex,

I just want to chime in that I'm having the same problem. Update 10 of Storyline, variety of recently published courses. Works great on MacOS Safari, Chrome on MacOS, IE 9/10/11, Chrome on Windows and mobile Safari on iOS 8 and 9. 

I found this article where apple explains changes to video play/auto play in Safari on iOS 10. https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_10_0.html

Most of the courses I've done in this year have an intro slide with audio and then an mp4 video. Subsequent slides have audio.

The audio works on the intro slide. When the course gets to the video it shows the placeholder image and the timeline continues... But the video doesn't play. From that point on in the course the audio doesn't load, rendering some of the courses unusable.

About half my users do their training on iPhone or iPad and until this is fixed (fingers crossed for Storyline 2 Update 11 :)) we're telling people not to upgrade to iOS 10. At some point people will have to upgrade for other job functions...

Is there a workaround I haven't figured out? I've even tried replacing the story.html with the story_html5.html to take flash support out of the mix and it doesn't make a difference.

Thanks!

John Mathes

Hello,

This is the first four slides from a recent course. We use Moodle and the I have the course set as a Single SCORM activity, new window. The audio will play fine on the first slide, but the video won’t play and then the audio doesn’t work for the rest of the course.

It works fine on MacOS Safari and Chrome, and Safari iOS 8 and 9.

I’m happy to provide the zip’d output/SCORM package as well if that helps :)

Thanks!

 

Blair Anderson

Hello all,

We previously encountered the same issue as John described above.

For any individuals delivering modules from a Moodle LMS, there is a confirmed issue in the iOS 10 Safari browser which affects the delivery of media files within a module. Essentially the necessary session information is not being passed to the LMS, preventing the delivery of the media files (specifically video in our case) within a module.

More information can be found here: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=340465

Update: For all those with Moodle 2.0+, please refer to the solution provided here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-56129?focusedCommentId=430767&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-430767

 

John Mathes

Ok, good to know. Thanks Blair!

So I just tried hosting the video on another server and inserting it in the slide via an embed code. That worked on MacOS Safari but not mobile safari. IE it showed the standard html5 player but didn’t seem to load the video behind it (play button blinks when you tap it).

Is there any known workaround?

Or even better an ETA for a Storyline update to resolve/workaround/make the problem go away?

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi John,

First, it seems that you've replied via email and as such your signature is included here and you may want to edit the post to remove that. Second any attachments or screenshots you include won't be uploaded.

As far as the issue, as folks like Blair shared it was an issue with iOS and their moodle version. We've yet to identify a bug within Storyline related to the video playback in iOS. If you're able to replicate it in another hosting environment such as a web server or an LMS like SCORM Cloud we're happy to investigate further but it's not something our team has seen yet. You can always let us know that here or reach out to our support engineers directly by messaging them here. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Alex,

Sorry if I introduced more confusion - but my last response was for John. You mentioned contacting our Support engineers but I didn't see if you shared a case number. You would have received an automated email immediately after submitting here with that number. I think I was able to find it based on your name listed here, and Vevette responded earlier today - you'd see an email from Support@articulate.com.  Since you shared it privately I don't want to share here, but Vevette did upload to SCORM Cloud and was able to view on her iPad with iOS 10 normally. She did share the following as well:

"If you're not able to view the video, could you try clearing your iPad's browser history and Website data to see if it helps? 
Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data "

John Mathes

Thanks Ashley!

I uploaded it to SCORM cloud and it worked fine, so after some more investigation based on what Blair had said, I tracked down the affected line in Moodle. 

For anybody else, in moodle/mod/scorm/lib.php there is a call to require_login() and that seems to be failing. In our case we determined that it wasn't really necessary to validate a users security after they've launched the SCORM package, so...

I commented out that function call and the problem went away. Obviously this wouldn't work for everyone but it worked for us.

 

Jenny Crow

Hi all, what I have found is that if it is a Storyline file and just has video files it in then it works on the Puffin browser. Unfortunately the audio for some strange reason doesn't play on Puffin. I have managed to get Storyline files with just audio working on Chrome / Safari (via adding the trigger in the first audio slide). The challenge now is that I have some Storyline with audio and video in them! Any ideas for these? I have tried adding a trigger to the video slide and that doesn't work. I am using Storyline with Moodle.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Jenny,

The puffin browser is not one that we offer support for. If you're viewing the content in one of the supported browsers here (please note the different ones for Flash vs. HTML5) it should all work as expected. You'll also want to ensure that you're testing the published content by uploading to a web server/LMS as detailed here. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Khoon,

The issues with iOS10 and videos not playing is something that we've seen a few users mentioned and when we've tested it out it was something specific to their LMS. You may want to look at testing it in another environment such as SCORM Cloud which is an industry standard for LMS testing. You can review the directions here to help you go through that testing. 

Adam Kenworthy

Hi Victoria, You also having similar issues with your modules?

We are continuing to see ioS 10 playback issues. Just recently we tested the same module on ioS10 and a previous ioS version (ioS 9).

ioS 10 device had playback issues, freezing as well as error messages.

ioS 9 Ran the module as expected, Android and windows seem to be running as expected also.

So it seems there is something with ioS 10 causing issues.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Victoria and Adam,

From our testing and what we've heard from other community members here, it seems to be something specific with iOS10 and how certain LMSs are playing with the videos inside courses. I know another popular LMS Moodle confirmed this as a bug and one that they were actively fixing. So you may want to look at connecting with your LMS Team for more specifics and any action that they plan on taking.