Forum Discussion
Animated GIF--Loop Just Once?
I created an animated GIF in Adobe Fireworks. It's a gauge with a needle that moves from the 6 o'clock position to the 12 o'clock position, using 16 frames ('states' in Fireworks parlance). I set the animation to run just ONCE; the needle rotates from 6 o'clock and stops at 12 o'clock. I tested the animated GIF in my Web browser and it works as expected.
When I insert the animated GIF onto a Storyline slide, however, the animation loops forever. It loops in Preview mode and also when I publish to Web (HTML) output.
Does Storyline recognize and respect the 'looping' setting contained within an animated GIF file?
Hi, everyone!
I have some great news to share. We just released an update for Storyline 360. In Build 3.90.32850.0, we’ve included important fixes and new features. One of the bugs we’ve fixed is:
- GIFs didn't replay on revisited slides that were configured to reset to their initial states
Launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer to take advantage of this update, and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You’ll find our step-by-step instructions here!
This is an excellent workaround, Bob. Thanks for this.
I realise this forum thread is 2 years old, and that feature request you submitted has not yet been addressed.
I will submit a feature request now also, and hopefully the next update to Storyline will be able to recognise the loop setting in an animated GIF. This would save a lot of mucking around.
Thanks Kuriko for submitting the feature request. Generally the updates have dealt with bug fixes or other elements, and the new version of Storyline would deal with feature requests and new elements being added. You can see the listing of all our updates and fixes here, and we're currently on Storyline Ver 1, Update 6 Build 1407.2208.
Hi all - I've just imported an animated GIF into SL2, and it's not recognising the loop setting - i.e. my design colleague set it to only play once, but SL2 is looping it. Any ideas other than the workaround above, which I have in my back pocket if all else fails?
Thanks
Nope. Doesn't appear that Storyline 2 was fixed to recognize/honor the looping setting of animated GIFs. Best bet still seems to be setting the final frame of the GIF animation to a large value (like 5 seconds), then setting Storyline to take the animated GIF off the screen anytime during that final 5-second frame.
Hi Anne,
As Bob mentioned, this is still not an element of Storyline 2 - so you'll want to use the workaround mentioned above.
I am running into this same issue as I have three different gifs that show a building being taken down or rebuilt or demolished and they all seem to start looping during the entire slide rather than when they appear on the timeline.
This is really tricky to get the timings just so on this and I find it very unpleasant that such an expensive piece of software isn't updated for what is clearly a known bug.I guess you are a really nice guy. It is not unpleasant, but ridiculous and unacceptable that animated GIF still don't work in Storyline. This bug (and not feature request) is known for more than two years.
I really love Storyline but unfortunately a couple of really annoying bugs are never adressed.
Hi Joseph and Ashley,
The workaround above was OK, to a point, but Storyline also continued to considerably slow down the frame rate. Instead, we used an interim solution that ended up being our fix of choice: we turned the GIF into a little MP4. Problem solved!
Don't know if this is an acceptable solution for you, Joseph.
Anne
Anne, I hope you don't mind me asking, but what did you use to turn the GIF into an MP4?
Hi Joseph
Sorry not to reply sooner, but I had to ask my colleague in our publishing studio, and then I was out of the office all day yesterday. She tells me she used Adobe Media Encoder CS6. I don't know if you get this as a separate product, or whether it's a part of the Adobe InDesign suite, which we use for all our desktop publishing. The images were originally created in Illustrator.
Thanks Anne for sharing that workaround here and I'm glad you found a solution that'll work for you.
The problem isn't just that the gif won't stop, but also that it won't start when it appears on the timeline.
I have had to create a workaround by creating a one-frame gif timed to come in when the first gif should cycle once, but this is inexact and visually disruptive. Considering I have three gifs in the same slide to show three types of construction (building being redone, building being torn down to a frame and rebuilt and a demolish for parking lot), this really needs to be more precise.
If there was a good tool for converting gifs into mp4s that would be great, but too many of them are filled with spyware or don't do what I need. Any recommendations?I ended up using Articulate Replay and it worked very well, thank you.
