Another publishing gifs thread

Jun 29, 2021

Hi - I've built a course and all through the testing, etc. the 6 gifs I have in the opening title slide have worked perfectly fine. Preview, publishing to Review, no issues. Publishing for Web and for LMS no issues when viewed locally.

The issue is when the Web and LMS files are uploaded to a web site or an lms - the gifs either take waaaay too long to load, or the slide just plays out with no visuals or audio and advances on cue.

I've read several threads about Storyline sort of sucking when it comes to gifs in the past - I'd like to know if there's something I'm missing or if it still is less than ideal.

6 Replies
Tom Kuhlmann

Without seeing your GIFs, it's hard to know what's happening. My first guess is that the file size is really large and that is impacting the playback.

Generally, GIFs can become very large files and will not load as fast as other content, which is why they play fine locally but bog down when playing online which is dependent on how the content is being served and received over the network. I had someone recently say their header GIF in Rise wasn't playing well and when he shared it, it was almost 1.5 GB. It didn't work for his course, but it was the best looking GIF I've ever seen. :)

Also, there are many ways that GIFS can be encoded which impacts their playback. So you can always look at how the GIF is made and encoded and play around with options.

Many people are using alternatives to GIFs now. That may be something to consider. This blog post does a good job explaining some pros/cons and viable alternatives.

Jennifer Clarke

Hey Tom - Thanks for the quick response. I'd first like to apologize for my tone - I was very frustrated because this project had already been signed-off on, but since I wasn't involved in the testing, it's possible those who were didn't even know there were gifs to see in the first place.

I ended up doing a screen video of the animation and it worked fine. The gifs weren't huge file sizes - they were short and highly compressed because I new that'd be an issue. I'd chosen gifs because I could make them overlapping circles, colourize them and give them transparency as a way of client-branding the title slide.

I'll check out the blog post and @MathNotermans suggestionsas well.

Cheers, and stay cool out there!