When I try to embed a video from YouTube I get a 'device support error' in Articulate Storyline 2. The attached thumbnail is shown and the video fails to play.
Any ideas why this is happening? Have YouTube changed the way embedded videos are streamed to external locations?
Thanks again for doing this. It's working for me as well in your environment. I'll check in with my LMS team to see if they have an idea. We have used Web Objects successfully before in our SL modules, which is why this case is baffling to me. Putting YouTube videos in as web objects would be a fine alternative for us if we could just get them to work right. Thanks.
For your info we received a reply from Google on that feature request page Articulate set up, here it is. Articulate please take note and now take action to make your software compatible with youtube new API and think up some way of easily adapting old content to the new API.
I was discussing this with a colleague this AM, and we did some additional testing, and it seems to also occur with YouTube web objects, Storyline content and placed in SCORM Cloud (an industry standard for testing LMS content) but only when we viewed in Firefox. Is that the browser you're seeing it in? Also, this only seems to occur prior to playing the video - once you start playing it you can hover outside the frame without a problem. I also was able to hover back inside the frame to see the video and click play.
I didn't and haven't experienced the behavior in Chrome at all - so if you're seeing it in another browser other than Firefox, please let us know. At this time, I'm going to share this behavior and set up with our QA team so that they can investigate further.
We've researched this topic further and reached the following conclusions:
Utilizing web objects is the proper approach to add a YouTube video because it is supported in all output types. More details on that process can be found in this article for Storyline and this article for Presenter. Please note the various optional parameters you can set to tune how the video functions within your course.
As noted elsewhere in this thread, YouTube videos in projects published prior to Google's API change are NOT impacted. Therefore no action is necessary for that content to function properly.
Google is not going to reverse their actions so we are going to stop advocating for that approach.
For those of you who must use the embed code option, we did find a workaround. It requires a few steps and isn't an officially supported approach but nonetheless I thought I'd share.
You'll need to ensure that the video is properly sized prior to grabbing the embed code from YouTube as it can't be resized on the stage within Storyline or Studio.
I just don't understand. A setting must not be correct. About half of the participants in this thread are having luck, the other half no luck. I am having no luck myself. I just tried Brian's hack and that didn't work for me either. I know Ashley was publishing to Articulate Online earlier. Is everyone else doing the same? We publish mostly for Web and a little LMS sometimes. I tried publishing to a different server (thinking it might be our LMS) but I had the same negative outcome.
Thanks for replying. Unfortunately, we have thousands of customers that have inserted Youtube videos into their online courses using our software. Even if we migrated the software to use version 3 of the API, it would require hundred of thousands of existing courses to be opened in the Articulate software, videos reinserted, courses republished and re-uploaded to the Web. The decision to display a youtube message instead of the video not only impacts courses created in the Articulate software, but also impacts other educational software companies. I did a quick search and found this:
I hope that you'll reconsider the decision to break videos included in multiple years worth of existing educational content.
While I understand the approach and agree its hard to retrospectively update all content everywhere - I am very disapointed with Articulate for just fobbing us off with these fixes which are working only for half of us. Contrast this with iSpring who have now had their software patched since 9 june as far as I can see so they can use the v3 API and get their work done while at least in my case I have had to just stop embedding videos from youtube completely as I have enough headaches without trying to work through such convoluted workarounds as
Here's a radical concept - how about patching the software and putting us all out of our short term misery instead of trying to move a mountain by forcing google to do something it clearly is unwilling to do? It seems both Articulate and Google have adopted the approach of 'its my way or the highway' on this issue.
Patch the bloody software so we can get back to our normal work flow.
If you are having an issue with inserting web objects as outlined here for Storyline 2 and here for Presenter, please submit a case and we will be happy to help you out.
We have chosen to move away from using the API because they can simply change it at anytime and we can't control that. This means that if we chose to use the new version of the API, we are simply addressing things as they are now and not offering a solution that is permanent as they could then change the API and then break things again.
We discussed every available solution and we believe that inserting YouTube videos as a web object offers the best solution as it places no dependencies on the YouTube API and is fully supported in HTML5. Brian did offer a less elegant solution that we do not support, however; that is not the solution we are recommending or endorsing which is why we added this to the forums versus a knowledge base article.
I tried to follow suggestions on using Web Objects but when I publish it, it shows a blank screen. In edit mode, I can double click and start the video. I used Chrome to view the published version in our LMS. Can someone direct me please. I want to have this up and running soon for the students. See attached print screens.
Thanks Leslie. I read it. I'm using an LMS in Chrome which was able to show videos in the past. According to what I read, it should work. Not sure what else to do. I will attach the .story file. The video is in slide 1.9 as a layer.
Thank you for the details and for sharing your file. I was actually able to reproduce this issue in SCORM Cloud and see that this issue has been filed with our QA Team already.
I will add this thread for their awareness, but do not have a solution to share at this time as it seems the HTML5 output has the same issue.
Our team is looking into this and I will update when applicable.
Our LMS uses https:// when launched. Now I did find a solution, I think which links to your comments, Chad. When I open Web Object in Storyline, it shows the prompt "http://" where I need to put the URL. I changed it to https://, and it worked !!! I am going to try it again just in case I've gone blind from the past few hours. Ha!
One issue that has popped up in my testing is being able to play the video using keyboard controls. I can navigate to the web object by tabbing, but hitting ENTER or SPACEBAR doesn't do anything. Any advice?
If you are viewing this on the desktop version (flash), the tab ordering is all confined to the flash. Storyline is not smart enough to have the focus jump into the web object so that you can focus on specific YouTube controls. Once you click to start the video, the focus is inside the web object and you will notice that you can tab through the controls in the YouTube player (might have to tab a couple times), but as soon as the focus is not inside the web object it starts using the tab order in the Storyline flash.
HTML5 publish appears to not have any tab order on the storyline content, but you can get tab through the elements in the web object without clicking into the player first.
103 Replies
Hi Ashley,
Thanks again for doing this. It's working for me as well in your environment. I'll check in with my LMS team to see if they have an idea. We have used Web Objects successfully before in our SL modules, which is why this case is baffling to me. Putting YouTube videos in as web objects would be a fine alternative for us if we could just get them to work right. Thanks.
For your info we received a reply from Google on that feature request page Articulate set up, here it is. Articulate please take note and now take action to make your software compatible with youtube new API and think up some way of easily adapting old content to the new API.
QUOTE: This site is using flash player that was deprecated a while ago. (https://developers.google.com/youtube/flash_api_reference)
And if you see support video, you must be using Data API v2 which was announced to be turned down on March 2014 (http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/04/bye-bye-youtube-data-api-v2.html)
You should adhere to migration guide (https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/guides/implementation) to use Data API v3 and play videos with iframe API (https://developers.google.com/youtube/iframe_api_reference) UNQUOTE
Hi Lee,
I was discussing this with a colleague this AM, and we did some additional testing, and it seems to also occur with YouTube web objects, Storyline content and placed in SCORM Cloud (an industry standard for testing LMS content) but only when we viewed in Firefox. Is that the browser you're seeing it in? Also, this only seems to occur prior to playing the video - once you start playing it you can hover outside the frame without a problem. I also was able to hover back inside the frame to see the video and click play.
I didn't and haven't experienced the behavior in Chrome at all - so if you're seeing it in another browser other than Firefox, please let us know. At this time, I'm going to share this behavior and set up with our QA team so that they can investigate further.
We've researched this topic further and reached the following conclusions:
For those of you who must use the embed code option, we did find a workaround. It requires a few steps and isn't an officially supported approach but nonetheless I thought I'd share.
Steps:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TrcT7sseLZI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://tinyurl.com/p9gm4d5" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>You'll need to ensure that the video is properly sized prior to grabbing the embed code from YouTube as it can't be resized on the stage within Storyline or Studio.
I just don't understand. A setting must not be correct. About half of the participants in this thread are having luck, the other half no luck. I am having no luck myself. I just tried Brian's hack and that didn't work for me either. I know Ashley was publishing to Articulate Online earlier. Is everyone else doing the same? We publish mostly for Web and a little LMS sometimes. I tried publishing to a different server (thinking it might be our LMS) but I had the same negative outcome.
Hi Guys
I saw Articulate posted recently on the google bug page referenced earlier the following:
#18 bb...@articulate.com
Hi uluk...@google.com,
Thanks for replying. Unfortunately, we have thousands of customers that have inserted Youtube videos into their online courses using our software. Even if we migrated the software to use version 3 of the API, it would require hundred of thousands of existing courses to be opened in the Articulate software, videos reinserted, courses republished and re-uploaded to the Web. The decision to display a youtube message instead of the video not only impacts courses created in the Articulate software, but also impacts other educational software companies. I did a quick search and found this:
iSpring Solutions: http://community.ispringsolutions.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5382
I hope that you'll reconsider the decision to break videos included in multiple years worth of existing educational content.
While I understand the approach and agree its hard to retrospectively update all content everywhere - I am very disapointed with Articulate for just fobbing us off with these fixes which are working only for half of us. Contrast this with iSpring who have now had their software patched since 9 june as far as I can see so they can use the v3 API and get their work done while at least in my case I have had to just stop embedding videos from youtube completely as I have enough headaches without trying to work through such convoluted workarounds as
Take the original embed code
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TrcT7sseLZI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Grab the URL: https://www.youtube.com/embed/TrcT7sseLZI
Go to www.tinyurl.com
Create a short URL from the URL in step 2
Replace the tinyurl with the new one in the embed code like this:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://tinyurl.com/p9gm4d5" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Insert that code as video from site
My head is spinning just reading it!!!!
Here's a radical concept - how about patching the software and putting us all out of our short term misery instead of trying to move a mountain by forcing google to do something it clearly is unwilling to do? It seems both Articulate and Google have adopted the approach of 'its my way or the highway' on this issue.
Patch the bloody software so we can get back to our normal work flow.
Thomas
Hi Lee.
If you are having an issue with inserting web objects as outlined here for Storyline 2 and here for Presenter, please submit a case and we will be happy to help you out.
Hi Thomas.
We have chosen to move away from using the API because they can simply change it at anytime and we can't control that. This means that if we chose to use the new version of the API, we are simply addressing things as they are now and not offering a solution that is permanent as they could then change the API and then break things again.
We discussed every available solution and we believe that inserting YouTube videos as a web object offers the best solution as it places no dependencies on the YouTube API and is fully supported in HTML5. Brian did offer a less elegant solution that we do not support, however; that is not the solution we are recommending or endorsing which is why we added this to the forums versus a knowledge base article.
This post was removed by the author
I tried to follow suggestions on using Web Objects but when I publish it, it shows a blank screen. In edit mode, I can double click and start the video. I used Chrome to view the published version in our LMS. Can someone direct me please. I want to have this up and running soon for the students. See attached print screens.
Hi Daniela!
If a web object is missing in your published Articulate Storyline course, see this article for reasons and solutions.
Thanks Leslie. I read it. I'm using an LMS in Chrome which was able to show videos in the past. According to what I read, it should work. Not sure what else to do. I will attach the .story file. The video is in slide 1.9 as a layer.
Hi Daniela!
Thank you for the details and for sharing your file. I was actually able to reproduce this issue in SCORM Cloud and see that this issue has been filed with our QA Team already.
I will add this thread for their awareness, but do not have a solution to share at this time as it seems the HTML5 output has the same issue.
Our team is looking into this and I will update when applicable.
Hello Daniela,
By chance does your LMS use HTTPS:// when the course is launched? If so, you might need to use https:// in the web address of the youtube web object.
Our LMS uses https:// when launched. Now I did find a solution, I think which links to your comments, Chad. When I open Web Object in Storyline, it shows the prompt "http://" where I need to put the URL. I changed it to https://, and it worked !!! I am going to try it again just in case I've gone blind from the past few hours. Ha!
Thanks Chad !
Thanks Chad!
One issue that has popped up in my testing is being able to play the video using keyboard controls. I can navigate to the web object by tabbing, but hitting ENTER or SPACEBAR doesn't do anything. Any advice?
-Kyle
If you are viewing this on the desktop version (flash), the tab ordering is all confined to the flash. Storyline is not smart enough to have the focus jump into the web object so that you can focus on specific YouTube controls. Once you click to start the video, the focus is inside the web object and you will notice that you can tab through the controls in the YouTube player (might have to tab a couple times), but as soon as the focus is not inside the web object it starts using the tab order in the Storyline flash.
HTML5 publish appears to not have any tab order on the storyline content, but you can get tab through the elements in the web object without clicking into the player first.
Thanks. Maybe adding a hidden link to the video might be best then. What do you think?
No Youtube for you!
Hi Aroldo!
Thanks Leslie, I was just kidding, remembering that "Nazi Soup" line from Seinfield. As you see, I am very old!
By the way, it is sad learning that YouTube has changed policies; but anyways we may endup using other provider.
Greetings from Guatemala.
Since Youtube has changed it´s API, I guess I am going to use Vimeo to upload videos. Any concerns?
Tnx
I totally missed the joke Aroldo :) Just be sure that you are following the instructions here.
Technically, Vimeo works fine, see here for an example. Until they change something...
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