Forum Discussion
Audio Delay When Published But Not When Previewed
I have a slide with audio that should begin playing when the timeline on the slide begins. When I preview the slide, it works as it should. When I publish the course, the audio is delayed by 10-15 seconds.
I tried creating a new slide, duplicating the original one, re-recording the audio. Same issue. It works in preview mode, but not publish mode. The course has been uploaded to our LMS and the delayed audio issue still exists.
Help! Please.
45 Replies
I suppose in typical Articulate fashion there is still no resolution to this after 2 years. Just send in your project, we'll take a look, and you'll never see anymore about it? Excuse my frustration, but this problem has been a thorn in me for much longer than 2 years. It's frustrating to precisely synchronize visual and audio elements only to see them play unsynchronized. It reflects badly on the developer, making them look careless and sloppy. It's worst when playing from Articulate 360, but seems to also happen when playing from a local drive, though not as pronounced. The only thing that helps is to let course play for several seconds, and then scrub the play head back to the beginning to start again. But asking the viewer to do that is unreasonable. Seems like adding an adjustable buffering function might be worth trying.
Hi RobL01!
I'm sorry for the ongoing frustration you've experienced regarding the playback of your Storyline course!
Syncing audio and visual elements is a crucial part of building a course, and I completely understand how difficult it is when the playback doesn't match what you see while editing. Especially when you've invested time and effort to get everything perfectly aligned. We never want you to feel like your issues are going unnoticed, and I'm sorry if that has been your experience in the past. When behavior is intermittent or environment-specific, it can take longer to identify the root cause.
The playback desynchronization you’re seeing is not the intended behavior of Storyline. The fact that the audio and animation sync improve only after buffering or after manually scrubbing back, suggests that the issue may be related to how the browser or device handles media loading in your specific project. When publishing from Storyline, have you already tried setting the video quality to Adaptive? This setting can be found under Publish Properties > Quality.
This option can help improve video quality during playback and reduce buffering for learners.
I'd also like to connect you with our support engineers so they can investigate further and guide you toward a clear path forward. I've opened a support case on your behalf and sent you an e-mail with an upload link you can use to share your .story file privately with our team.
We can continue the troubleshooting through your case!
I am experiencing the same issue, even when I am previewing a slide from my local drive, not even published in Review or in a LMS. How can you explain this delay when I am working localy?
Hello KarineMorris669,
I see that you've opened a support case and that you're working with my colleague Lianne. You're in excellent hands! We'll continue the conversation over in your case, so everything is in one spot.
This happens intermittently in my projects and has for years. It seems like the default behavior is for a slide to start playing as soon as it downloads the base visuals on the slide, even if it isn't done downloading the audio or other heavy elements. For people with slow connections, this can result in the slide being mistimed (obviously, in the case of animations and such that are based on audio timing, or when there are different pieces of audio in sequence and they start overlapping each other because the first one is delayed).
It would be nice if there was a toggle to tell the presentations not to start playing a slide until all elements are downloaded. I'd rather the learner sees a loading bar moving between slides rather than it seeming to load quickly, but then having obvious timing issues.I am experiencing this issue for the first time in six years of using Storyline. In the timeline view, the audio is in perfect sync, but as soon as I try to preview it in the browser, there is a delay in the audio only. I haven't even gotten to the point of publishing into Review 360 or the LMS yet. Additionally, it is only happening on one slide in the project. I recreated a new version of the same slide, created a different audio track and the same issue occurred. Another troubleshooting point - this slide has layers. When I created the new version, the audio played fine in the preview with no delay, but after I added in the layers, the delay occurred again. This is not the only slide with layers in this project, though. Unfortunately, there is proprietary information in my project, so I can't upload it to have the developers look at it. Can you recommend any other actions to try?
Hi KanuMendoza,
Thanks for reaching out!
Recreating the slide and testing new audio was a great place to start. Have you tried importing the entire course into a new Storyline file, then recreating the slide again?
Something that stands out to me is that this is the only slide with layers where the issue occurs. Do the other slides have audio? Is there something that differentiates this slide from the other slides?
Also, if you publish the course to Review 360 or to Web, does the issue persist there as well, or only when previewing?
Please feel free to follow up with this information here or privately in a case. We're happy to help get this figured out!
Hi Kelly - thank you for the response and troubleshooting tips. All slides in the project have audio, and all the triggers for the problem slide are set identically to the other slides that have layers. The only difference that I can determine is that the slides that are working fine have more layers that the one with the issue. I will try the new .story file option to see if that works and I'll also publish to Review as a test both before and after for comparison. I'll let you know if it works or not.
