YouTube unsupported devices prompt

May 07, 2015

Hi All,

I use Storyline 2 extensively as an Instructional Designer in Higher Ed in Ireland. I also use Studio for less complicated projects. As of 10pm GMT last night all of my attempted YouTube embeds from iframe embed codes yielded an unsupported device response. This is one of our most frequently requested features simple as it is. Has anyone else run into this issue? I had hoped that the latest update, focused on accessibility granted, would have remedied the issue but regrettably no.

All suggestions and advice gratefully recieved,

Patrick Kiely

University College Cork

patrick.kiely@ucc.ie

4 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi all,

We've received an update from our QA team that I wanted to share here:

YouTube videos that were added to Articulate content via Insert > Video > Video from Website aren't currently working.

You'll see this message where your videos should be:

YouTube is upgrading to a newer version, which is not supported by this device or app. To learn more and see where you can watch YouTube, visit www.youtube.com/devicesupport

Google changed support for the YouTube API, which prevents videos added in this manner from playing in Articulate content. We've asked Google to reconsider their decision (Google Data Issue 7146).

In the meantime, we recommend adding YouTube videos as web objects instead. As an added benefit, YouTube web objects are supported in Flash, HTML5, and Articulate Mobile Player output.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

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.

Steps:

  1. Take the original embed code
    <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TrcT7sseLZI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  2. Grab the URL: https://www.youtube.com/embed/TrcT7sseLZI
  3. Go to www.tinyurl.com
  4. Create a short URL from the URL in step 2
  5. 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>
  6. Insert that code as video from site

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. 

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