Zoom regions placed at 0:00 of the timeline don't trigger

Sep 14, 2017

In previous versions of Storyline it was possible to place a zoom region at the beginning of the slide timeline so that a slide could begin "closeup" on an initial focal point and then be zoomed out to reveal the larger picture.

In 360 however, it seems that when a zoom region is placed at the start of a slide timeline it doesn't trigger.  Only when the zoom region's timeline ends does Storyline very quickly zoom in just so that it can zoom out immediately again.

I can "work around" this by placing the zoom region at 0:00:10 of the time line and having the image I want to zoom in on follow it, but this looks quite awkward in comparison to how smoothly I was able to get this effect working in Storyline 2.

As an aside, when I set the zoom region property to "instantaneous" it doesn't seem to trigger at all, regardless of where it is on the timeline.

Has anyone else encountered and/or resolved this?

38 Replies
Carla Kincaid-Yoshikawa

I hadn't had a chance to check some of the functions I used to use for Zoom until now (and just downloaded an update, so that may have made a difference) but it looks like you can (once again) do more than recent posts indicate. I tested several things I had been able to do with earlier versions of Storyline, and they all seem to be working again. Now, the zoom doesn't have to be for the whole length of the timeline to be maintained across two slides. As long as the "show till end is set" you can start a zoom anywhere on a slide's timeline and have it continue and hold with a zoom that starts at the very beginning of the next slide. As noted above,  each slide's zoom has to be manually created (same size and position---I use the guides to help). As long as the second's slide's zoom starts at the very beginning of the slide's timeline, it will hold the zoom position from the previous slide (not zoom out and in). You can also (once again) set up two contiguous zooms of different sizes and/or positions on one slide, so that the first zoom flows smoothly into the next one, and set the second zoom up to "show till end" and merge into the same size/position zoom on a third slide, or create a new size and position zoom on the third slide in a series with a smooth flow between the zooms (as before, the zoom on the third slide must start at the very beginning of the slides timeline. (If there is even a nanosecond of space between the timeline start and the start of the zoom, you will get the zoom out/in movement rather than a smooth transition.) This also means you can end a zoom that has been carried over into a series of slides at any point on the timeline, not just at the beginning or end of a slide. At least, this is what my brief, preliminary tests showed. These capabilities have been really important to me in creating software simulation/demonstration trainings, so I'm really glad to have them back again. A "great to have" addition would be the ability to copy a zoom from one slide to another---a feature I hope Articulate is working on (put in a link to the feature request page and I'll put in a request.

 

Stefanie Kreindl

Sorry I didn't want to write a novel therefore I postet just the very short Version. Carla's experiences are right I created the zoom effekt in the same way:

Zoom effcet over 2 slides:

  • 1. slide: zoom can start anywhere but must last till the very end
  • 2. slide: zoom must start at the very begining, but can end anywhere

Zoom effect over several slides:

  • Start and end slides as described above
  • Slides inbetween: zoom area must last over the whole timeline

And finaly as already mentioned: Size and position must be the same on all slides where the zoom region should be the same

Chris Clift

Well 9 months on from the last post and it appears the same situation exactly still exists in Storyline 3. My animations did work, then for one reason or another they broke somewhere in between saving and adding in other elements. Perhaps the zoom regions shifted very slightly, but I'm using guides to line them up as accurately as I can and can't get them to work again. Interesting, the fall back of using Flash/HTML5 fallback works, but as stated by other contributors, this is not an ideal work round, far from it!!!

I have exactly the same miss givings as many of the contributors of this thread as an Instructional Designer who's primary output is Software Simulations and all I can say is, when it's working I know it works well, but it is all too easy to break......come on guys, you fixed it for 360 (or so the posts would suggest)....don't forget about us on S3, who for security reasons can't use cloud based software (ie 360) and please fix this issue,,,,it's been well over a year and the problem hasn't gone away yet!!!!!

Crystal Horn

Hi there, Chris.  I'm sorry you're seeing some issues with animations and zoom regions.  We released a fix for both Storyline 360 and Storyline 3 for the original issue of zoom regions not working when placed at the beginning of the timeline.  It sounds like that might not match the problem you're having, though.

Would you be willing to share your file with us so we can see exactly what's happening?  We'll do our best to diagnose the problem and let you know some next steps.

Joyce Hensen

I'm looking for a fix to this problem. I'm updating a course in 360 that I originally built in a previous version. In my scene the first slide zooms into a section of the slide. The following slides should STAY Zoomed to the exact same place for the rest of the scene. This isn't working. The zoom doesn't trigger for the subsequent slides if set to begin at .00. 
If I shift the start of the zoom to begin at .01, it will zoom, but it will also make the user seasick. Short of completely rebuilding the slides with larger graphics (so zoom isn't necessary) is there a way to make zoom work in 360 from the opening moment of the slide?

Joyce Hensen

Thanks for your reply. I decided to rebuild the scene with larger graphics as it's been a persistent problem (over 3 years) that doesn't seem to have a solution. Now the scene only zooms to the area on the first slide, I revised the rest of the slides in the scene so that it looks like it's still zoomed in without needing to use the zoom feature. It was time consuming, but it's done now.

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Steven,

As Crystal shared above, this was an issue that was corrected. 

Since you're seeing it now, we'd be happy to take a look.

With your permission, I'd like you to share your project file with our support engineers to investigate what's happening. You can share it privately by uploading it here. It will be deleted when troubleshooting is complete.

Steven Caban

Hi. I posted a new discussion after my reply to this older string. I got an answer that was very helpful. It seems Zoom will not work at the 00 mark if you have a transition on the slide. I took out the transition and the zoom works at the start of the slide. I guess this makes some sense but a person may actually want a transition along with the zoom. In my case, it did not matter.

Thank you,

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