I remove all the swf animation files to my course and replaced them with either AVI videos or GIf files so that they will preload. I also attempted to add a pre-loader slide with a 6 sec delay to allow time for the videos in the beginning of the course to load faster.
I have notice two problems so far.
(1) The beginning of my game still runs a little slow.
(2) The all of the avi videos all look a little fuzzy.
The videos look clear on my pc, but once they are imported into articulate storyline and publish, they look fuzzy.
First, you'll want to link to the story.html file, rather than the story.swf file. Try uploading your course to Tempshare and see if that improves the performance of your video.
First - gotta say it - love the "dancing" professor. Very nice touch :)
I'm also guessing that these are some of the animated files you're referring to. Is that right? I don't notice any blur, that it may be because I haven't seen the originals.
Does the blur occur for you when previewing in Storyline, or just after publishing? Try checking your publish quality settings and see if that helps improve the quality.
If that doesn't help, are you able to share the .STORY file here, or one of the original animation files?
I have the course on the custom setting and the video and Image quality is at the max rate. The course previews great in storyline, but when publish it looks blurry.
The Gif Files load very smoothly, crisp and clear.
However the AVI files are coming out blurry.
The AVI slides are the following:
Beginning Intro
The Slides that show how many points you need to advance to the next level
The "You Lose Pages"
The "You Win Pages"
I normally view the course in the html version and it still comes out blurry.
I was going to try to find the files in course output and rename the originals to match up with the output name and upload the originals to my server, to see if that will clear it up.
I have actually been struggling with the video the entire weekend. I tried MOV, AVI, mp4 and others. The only one that show clear are SWF files, but they don't preload :( and not iPad friendly
The second clearest format was AVI - uncompressed.
All of my videos and gif files are export at the exact size needed in storyline. I tried it in two versions 1024X 768 and 720 X 540 and got the exact same results.
I would do the entire thing in GIf but I can't control the loops and it does not consistently start and stop on the frames that it's should.
I don't mind sending .story file directly with you Christine, I will just need to save a different copy excluding a lot of the math problems.
The course is about 163 slides.
I am a beginner to storyline and do this as a hobby and to improve my personal website for children so they can for free.
I am new to storyline this only my second course but I have learn a lot from looking at the tutorials on this site.
If you'd like to save some time and share the original file, you're more than welcome to send it over to us in a support case. We'd be happy to take a look and see if we can find a way to improve the quality for you, or at least share some suggestions that may get this running a little smoother for you.
You'll be able to attach the .STORY file on the second page of the following form:
Please be sure to include a description of your issue. Please also include the URL for this thread in the form. Also, please share the case number with me. You're welcome to do so here, or in a private message. This way I can follow the progress of the case and update this thread.
If you're able to share the smaller version here, that's perfectly fine too.
Also, it's already a pretty impressive course for your second project. Well done! I'm sure that your efforts are also appreciated by the children that have access to these types of learning games. Keep up the good work!
When you are customizing the player template, be sure to set it to optimal size. This will prevent the video from being resized in the published output which is what is likely causing the blurriness.
We are having a similar problem with video stalling / playing back slowly.
Am I right in thinking that video on the first slide of a course would be an issue?
Could you explain how the course 'loads' i.e. Does it download enough to start playing, and then continue to download in the background whilst the user works through the content?
It may be due to the type of video that you're using in the first slide. If you take a look at the first article above, you'll see that some formats won't stream progressively and some formatting issues may keep certain formats from functioning the same as others.
I used Storyline's built in screen recorder to make 3 demo videos. I changed the setting to high quality but for some reason, 1 of the 3 videos is still blurry. I re-recorded it a number of time to see if it would get better, but no success. Why is the one video blurry?
You can also try exporting the screen recording as a video and then using the exported video in your project rather than the recording. Instructions on exporting can be found here: Link. It will still be compressed when you publish, but then you can replace the compressed file with the original following the instructions found in this thread: Link
So I am coming here 4 years after this was last discussed but just in case anyone else comes here for help I wanted to bring up what I found out.
The quality of your video directly depends on the size of your slides, also known as the "Story Size". If you have slides that are smaller then the dimensions of your video it will become squashed and blurry when you publish. Even though it looks fine while you are building the project. If you are able to increase the size of the slides this should fix the issue.
We were not able to do this as we had many markers thought the many story lines we just created that we would have had to go through and reposition. So our work around was to have the video open in browser and not in the slide when you click the video. However the video still sat in the slide looking gross.
As far as I can tell you cannot use a marker to make a play button that opens the video in the browser. They only work for videos that play in the slide. So our compromise was to right click the video and set a poster frame that was an image of a play button. We had videos if varying dimensions, but since the video is not playing in the slide we changed the dimensions of the in slide video to match the play button image. Changing these does not have any effect on the video that opens in the browser once the user clicks. The only downside is that the play button gets a bit grainy like the video preview. But this is much less noticeable.
On a side note, when working with a poster frame in a published story line i kept seeing an issue where the "play button" would disappear when the slide was kept open for the duration of the video. We got around this by extending the timeline of that slide and then dragging the video layer out to the new duration. My best guess is that this is caused by a coding conflict where the time line and the video end at the same moment. Cause once I added just an extra second of duration to the timeline of the slide the key frame would no longer vanish.
19 Replies
Hi Janell,
First, you'll want to link to the story.html file, rather than the story.swf file. Try uploading your course to Tempshare and see if that improves the performance of your video.
Let us know...
Thanks!
Hi Janell,
First - gotta say it - love the "dancing" professor. Very nice touch :)
I'm also guessing that these are some of the animated files you're referring to. Is that right? I don't notice any blur, that it may be because I haven't seen the originals.
Does the blur occur for you when previewing in Storyline, or just after publishing? Try checking your publish quality settings and see if that helps improve the quality.
If that doesn't help, are you able to share the .STORY file here, or one of the original animation files?
Thanks!
Christine
Hi Peter and Allison.
I have the course on the custom setting and the video and Image quality is at the max rate. The course previews great in storyline, but when publish it looks blurry.
The Gif Files load very smoothly, crisp and clear.
However the AVI files are coming out blurry.
The AVI slides are the following:
Beginning Intro
The Slides that show how many points you need to advance to the next level
The "You Lose Pages"
The "You Win Pages"
I normally view the course in the html version and it still comes out blurry.
I was going to try to find the files in course output and rename the originals to match up with the output name and upload the originals to my server, to see if that will clear it up.
I have actually been struggling with the video the entire weekend. I tried MOV, AVI, mp4 and others. The only one that show clear are SWF files, but they don't preload :( and not iPad friendly
The second clearest format was AVI - uncompressed.
All of my videos and gif files are export at the exact size needed in storyline. I tried it in two versions 1024X 768 and 720 X 540 and got the exact same results.
I would do the entire thing in GIf but I can't control the loops and it does not consistently start and stop on the frames that it's should.
I don't mind sending .story file directly with you Christine, I will just need to save a different copy excluding a lot of the math problems.
The course is about 163 slides.
I am a beginner to storyline and do this as a hobby and to improve my personal website for children so they can for free.
I am new to storyline this only my second course but I have learn a lot from looking at the tutorials on this site.
Janell
Good morning Janell,
If you'd like to save some time and share the original file, you're more than welcome to send it over to us in a support case. We'd be happy to take a look and see if we can find a way to improve the quality for you, or at least share some suggestions that may get this running a little smoother for you.
You'll be able to attach the .STORY file on the second page of the following form:
Articulate Support - Submit a Support Case
Please be sure to include a description of your issue. Please also include the URL for this thread in the form. Also, please share the case number with me. You're welcome to do so here, or in a private message. This way I can follow the progress of the case and update this thread.
If you're able to share the smaller version here, that's perfectly fine too.
Also, it's already a pretty impressive course for your second project. Well done! I'm sure that your efforts are also appreciated by the children that have access to these types of learning games. Keep up the good work!
Thanks,
Christine
Thanks Christine,
I submitted a support case, below is the case number.
Case Number: 00329092
Reference ID: ref:_00D30Txo._50040QXFDo:ref
Thanks again for you help.
Janell
Great, thank you Janell. We got it :) You should be hearing from us soon.
Christine
Have there been any good reasons presented for the blurriness?
I have the same problem, videos are clear when recorded, blurry when published.
TIA
Hi Harry,
Can you tell us a little more about what's happening for you, please?
What type of videos are you inserting into your project? Have you tried all of the suggestions posted in this thread?
Here's how Storyline encodes movies you insert into your courses, based on the file format of the videos and the publishing options you choose:
For a list of supported video file formats, click here.
See also:
Thanks!
When you are customizing the player template, be sure to set it to optimal size. This will prevent the video from being resized in the published output which is what is likely causing the blurriness.
Hi all,
We are having a similar problem with video stalling / playing back slowly.
Am I right in thinking that video on the first slide of a course would be an issue?
Could you explain how the course 'loads' i.e. Does it download enough to start playing, and then continue to download in the background whilst the user works through the content?
Thanks for your help!
Hi there Paul,
Here's some information that explains how content is loaded in your Storyline courses:
It may be due to the type of video that you're using in the first slide. If you take a look at the first article above, you'll see that some formats won't stream progressively and some formatting issues may keep certain formats from functioning the same as others.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
I used Storyline's built in screen recorder to make 3 demo videos. I changed the setting to high quality but for some reason, 1 of the 3 videos is still blurry. I re-recorded it a number of time to see if it would get better, but no success. Why is the one video blurry?
Thanks in advance for your help
Hey there Sarah :)
Sounds a little bit odd - what's the difference between the three videos? Is the one coming out blurry any longer, for example?
Also, when does the video appear blurry for you? Does it look blurry when you're previewing the course, or after you've published it?
Thanks!
Hi,
Still having blurry video problems. As others have said...looks good in preview but once published, not so good.
I'm referring to video made with the RECORD SCREEN feature in Storyline.
Regards,
Harry
Hi Harry,
Have you set your recording size to something different than your Story size?
You could also customize the player template, and lock the player to its optimal size. That should optimize the quality of the screencast.
Also, you can change the quality publish settings as shown here:
You can also try exporting the screen recording as a video and then using the exported video in your project rather than the recording. Instructions on exporting can be found here: Link.
It will still be compressed when you publish, but then you can replace the compressed file with the original following the instructions found in this thread: Link
Thanks Owen for sharing those, I had a brain lapse moment and didn't share those methods!
So I am coming here 4 years after this was last discussed but just in case anyone else comes here for help I wanted to bring up what I found out.
The quality of your video directly depends on the size of your slides, also known as the "Story Size". If you have slides that are smaller then the dimensions of your video it will become squashed and blurry when you publish. Even though it looks fine while you are building the project. If you are able to increase the size of the slides this should fix the issue.
We were not able to do this as we had many markers thought the many story lines we just created that we would have had to go through and reposition. So our work around was to have the video open in browser and not in the slide when you click the video. However the video still sat in the slide looking gross.
As far as I can tell you cannot use a marker to make a play button that opens the video in the browser. They only work for videos that play in the slide. So our compromise was to right click the video and set a poster frame that was an image of a play button. We had videos if varying dimensions, but since the video is not playing in the slide we changed the dimensions of the in slide video to match the play button image. Changing these does not have any effect on the video that opens in the browser once the user clicks. The only downside is that the play button gets a bit grainy like the video preview. But this is much less noticeable.
On a side note, when working with a poster frame in a published story line i kept seeing an issue where the "play button" would disappear when the slide was kept open for the duration of the video. We got around this by extending the timeline of that slide and then dragging the video layer out to the new duration. My best guess is that this is caused by a coding conflict where the time line and the video end at the same moment. Cause once I added just an extra second of duration to the timeline of the slide the key frame would no longer vanish.
Hi Jason and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :) Thanks for chiming in to share your findings and solution with the community.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.