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.
39 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 have solved this on my eLearning's. When you do screen recordings as you know it creates a long video of your workflows and there is a small video on each slides timeline. Once I have the screenshot I want through fine action tuning for that slide I delete the video from the timeline essentially reducing them all to screenshots. This takes the video load off the project and it works smoothly without delay.
But that doesn't help if embedded videos are needed to help explain a process or task.
I've never had an issue with Embedded videos. This is for capturing workflows using Articulate screen recordings for interactive software simulations.
Thanks for sharing your solution in the community, FritzSimonson-4! I'm sure it will be helpful to folks who come across this discussion.
Feel free to share any future questions or discoveries in the E-Learning Heroes Community!
Have a great start to your week!
So the resolution for me boiled down to going into each slide of the project and deleting the screen recordings at the slide level. This fixed the audio lag.
I'm now having this issue.
What do you mean "delete the screen recordings at the slide level?"
Hi RobertNowak-b54,
I'm sorry to hear you're also experiencing an audio delay issue in your Storyline project. I'm happy to learn more about your current setup!
- Are you working on your local hard drive? We recommend this to help avoid experiencing any unexpected behavior.
- Just to confirm, what publishing format are you selecting?
- Do you experience this audio delay when publishing your course to Review 360?
It will be helpful for us to do some further testing if you're comfortable sharing your file. You can upload it here or privately in a support case, and we'll be sure to delete your file once troubleshooting is complete.
Thanks for sharing what worked best for you, FritzSimonson-4! I'm sure it will be helpful for folks who come across this discussion in the future.
Have a wonderful weekend!
I have a case open and we determined the sound works in Firefox but not in chrome and edge. I've asked that Articulate review and compare the developer code screenshots of the success vs failed to see why. Still waiting. Fingers crossed.
No resolution here. I haven't had time to open a case and share a specific course file, although it appears others have. Given how widespread the issue seems to be, I'm hopeful Articulate will test and resolve. Clearing browser cache is not a suitable solution for us - I want our employees to be able to view courses without having to provide manual intervention.
Have any of you solved this? It's now happening in 2 of my courses. I have a case open but I wonder if anyone with previous cases has solved this issue.
No resolution here
Hi DebbieSiguaw,
I'm curious if you can observe the same audio delay if you publish your course to Review 360. Have you tried testing your course there, and if yes, did you run into the same audio delay issue? Do you notice the same audio delay issue when previewing your course? I'd like to see if the audio delay is only observable in certain hosting environments.
This happens everywhere.
Same issue here! Only on my intro slide though. It works in preview, but delayed in Scorm Cloud and in our LMS. I have tried deleting and re-entering audio, creating a trigger to start audio when timeline begins, exporting the text to speech and uploading it as an audio file, putting in a slide prior that auto advances to give it a moment. Nothing works.
Hi StaceyKuehn-eb0,
Thanks so much for reaching out about the audio delay. Sorry to hear you're experiencing that!
I see that you've opened a support case and you're working with our colleague Robert. You're in excellent hands!
We'll continue the conversation over in your case.
Have a wonderful start to your week!
We are also experiencing this issue.
As a workaround, we've found that if we delete and re-import the audio, it fixes it for that slide.
I'm having a similar issue when publishing my course for LMS.
The audio on my first slide is delayed 10-18 seconds. I've tried recreating the slide, giving the audio one second of "space" at the start. Adjusting the output/publish settings. It's delayed in review but apparently that is because of my company's internet settings in Chrome. But now it's happening when I upload it to our LMS. None of my other courses have this issue.
Mine was due to 2 things, 1-an issue within Chrome and my company's settings. This was affecting Review 360. 2- Having multiple scenes in my course. We combined all the slides into one scene and this reduced the delay significantly.
What was the chrome setting that was changed if you don't mind me asking?
Hi Melissa,
Thanks for reaching out!
I understand the audio in your course is delayed when publishing to your LMS and Review. Is this the only course that doesn't play as expected in Review or does it happen across multiple courses due to your company's internet settings?
One thing you can try is testing your course in SCORM Cloud. If it plays as expected there, the issue is likely related to your LMS. If the course doesn't play correctly, it'd be helpful for us to test it for further troubleshooting. You can share your file here if you're comfortable, or privately in a case.
I have the same problem. The audio on the first slide is delayed, throwing off my synchronized bullet points. When I preview the slide, it works as it should. When I publish the course, the audio is delayed by 10-15 seconds. It is also happening on other slides. I have these slides auto-advancing and sometimes the slide advances before the audio finishes. I know if I change the slides to manually advancing, the issue is not noticeable, but my customer does want that. I searched through the forum and found many discussions (on this topic) that are very old. This was the most recent one I could find. I did not see a comment where Articulate acknowledged the issue and stated a plan to fix not did I see a suitable fix for it. BTW, I have the newest version of Storyline 360.
I've experienced this issue just as Brandan describes it, using up to date SL360 in more than one course. This happens to courses published in Review and also to our LMS. It happens in Chrome and in Edge. It is inconsistent for me and for other users - sometimes a slide is delayed, and sometimes that same slide is not. Some delayed audio starts without a trigger, some delayed audio starts with a trigger. Some slides auto-advance and others do not. We've experienced the issue with imported audio, audio recorded within SL360, audio generated within SL360 using text-to-speech.
The best way to describe it is similar to the buffering you might experience in a video, except that the only delay is the audio. The visual (animation, screen recording, etc.) moves on the timeline as expected.
Hi DebbieSiguaw!
Sorry to hear you're also experiencing delayed audio from your Storyline courses!
Since the behavior is widespread, it could possibly be related to internet connectivity speeds. Slower networks can have an effect on loading times, for audio elements within a course. Are you able to test the issue across different networks? Also, does clearing the browser's cache make any improvement? It should help the browser purge cached files, to load audio and video more quickly.
If you're comfortable sharing one of the affected .story files, we'd be happy to take a closer look and test it on our end. Feel free to upload a copy here in the discussion or privately through a support case.
Hi Brandan,
Thanks so much for reaching out about this and providing such detail!
- Are you working on your local hard drive?
- Are you publishing your course for LMS viewing?
It will be helpful for us to do some further testing if you're comfortable sharing your file. You can upload it here or privately in a support case, and we'll delete it from our systems as soon as we're done troubleshooting.
