Forum Discussion
Audio Desync / Loading
Hey ThierryEMMANUEL,
Thanks for jumping in and sharing your experience! I completely understand how frustrating this can feel, especially when the behavior impacts client delivery.
While we recommend authoring on the latest Storyline versions for stability and fixes, this is helpful insight and something we’d like to investigate further. Since you're seeing this issue across multiple projects and versions, do you mind uploading a sample .story file for testing? You can share that file here in the discussion or through a support case.
In the meantime, I have some follow-up questions to help us troubleshoot this better:
- Are you using multiple short clips on the Timeline, Triggered audio, or both?
- Are your audio files externally sourced, AI-generated, or a mix of both?
- Does the behavior occur consistently across all browsers?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Hello StevenBenassi . It’s not easy to answer all your questions because, as you know, customer feedback is often vague: “It’s awful! Nothing works!” What’s more, I’m just the storyliner. The end customer is my client’s customer, for whom I’m building the module. I don’t always have all the information. The details I do know, I mentioned in my first message. I tried several solutions WITHIN the file, but I stopped looking when using an older version of SL ‘resolved’ the issue.
I can’t really share a file with you, for confidentiality reasons. If I change a single thing (for confidentiality), your test to find and reproduce the problem will be worthless.
Yes, as you suggested to Matthew, I’ve turned my short clips into single long clips to avoid overlap.
No, I haven’t added a “Play Audio” trigger to every audio clip because that’s just a workaround, not a solution to the problem. That’s not how it’s supposed to work… normally, and certainly a few months ago.
Yes and yes. On one project, the voice-overs were actual recordings of actors. On the other, 100% AI Storyline.
As for browsers, I’ll try to find out. However, one customer said they had NEVER encountered this problem (in other words, their browser doesn’t seem to be the cause, as it never had been before). The other customer… told us the trick of using the old version (in other words, they had already encountered the problem internally).
My gut feeling was that it was down to the LMS. But do they have the same type of LMS? I don’t know yet.
In any case, thank you for your technical explanations. I’ll sound more knowledgeable the next time I come across the problem. But I still won’t have a solution.
Best regards.
Thierry
Hey ThierryEMMANUEL,
Thank you for following up!
I completely understand the challenges here, especially when you're working through layers of client feedback and confidentiality constraints.
The fact that you’re seeing this behavior across different types of audio (recorded and AI-generated), and potentially across different LMS environments, suggests there could be multiple factors at play. Possibly including how the course is being delivered or loaded in the LMS, rather than something isolated strictly within the .story file itself. However, we have seen some Storyline bugs that only emerge once a course is distributed through an LMS.
Also, you're right that workarounds like adding Triggers or restructuring audio can feel like a temporary solution. That’s exactly why we’d want to take a closer look. That said, given the complexity and the number of variables involved, this is a great opportunity for our support engineers to dig in more closely with you. I've opened a support case on your behalf so they can have a closer look at this issue. Just a quick note that anything you share with our team in a case is kept confidential. We regularly remove user files from our systems, and we're also happy to sign an NDA upon request.
You're in excellent hands working one-on-one with them, and they should be connecting with you soon!
Articulate hasn't responded to my comment below, have you heard any more about this? I don't think I can use updated versions until I know for certain this has been fixed.
If it wasn't for some of my courses needing translated into multiple languages, I would band-aid the problem with the add triggers route. I can't, though, because I really need to see the waveforms to adjust the animation timing to each language. And creating a single audio file is also difficult because I'm using a combination of V2 and V3 models in ElevenLabs for different things and it's just too taxing to patchwork all of that with every single slide and every single language.
Time to copy/paste all my JS and downgrade. Goodbye JS labels, it was fun for a hot second :(.Hi NicholeSande365,
Thank you so much for reaching out and sharing your experience and concerns around this issue. I've opened a support case on your behalf and escalated it to our engineers who will take a thorough look at what's going on. They'll follow up first via email for further troubleshooting. We appreciate your patience as we look into this!
