Background audio for entire project

Hi Mary,

You might find this link will help solve your problem:

https://360.articulate.com/review/content/d4a27eb2-7c39-4c34-be85-9c3f9a4c32e0/review

This is an excellent tutorial provided by Owen Holt on how to add an audio track that plays throughout the entire course and I can personally vouch for the fact that it works.

With regards to being able to change the volume, I used a slider and trigger to enable the user to adjust the level at any stage in the course by accessing customised audio controls at the bottom of the slides:

Audio Controls (located on the slide master)

Trigger (located on the slide master)

JavaScript

The variable "Volume" is the one that is changed when the slider is moved, so each time the user moves the slider, the variable changes and the trigger then activates the JavaScript. In your case, you could simply set the desired level each time a voiceover occurred.

I hope this all makes sense, but if you have any further queries, just get back to me here.

Hi Mary,

Further to my last post, you may also find this link useful:

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/building-better-courses/playing-background-music-across-all-slides-storyline-360#reply-708892

It will take you to the original post that Owen responded to with the link I sent you earlier. You will also find a number of other posts, including further ones from Owen and myself, helping solve a couple of people's issues with the same problem. This may answer some other questions you may have.

Hi Ned, thanks so much for taking the time to send this information to me. I've read through Owen's tutorial and the discussion thread in detail but unfortunately, I still can't get this to work for me. Like with others in the discussion thread, I think I'm falling down in the step with the URL to the audio file. (I have zero experience of JavaScript so I'm finding my way through the dark here). I've attached a sample and I'm hoping you could take a look when you have time? This isn't my project, just some templates I found in content library (I can't share my actual project but I figure if I can get it to work here I can replicate it in my actual project). I copied the JS from Owen's sample file and just added the folder and audio file name for my file. In Owen's example the path just starts with story_content/external_files so that's what I did...

Hi Ned, after many failed attempts at the Web Object option I gave up and tried the Resources option instead, (even though it's not ideal that a user can click on it) and I'm delighted to report that it worked! This is such a breakthrough as it has been a major headache for me, thank you! 

Thanks also Math for the tip, I wasn't quite sure how to do this so as another workaround I edited the text label for the Resources tab so that it's now blank and shows as invisible on the player. Technically the learner could still find it and click on it but if they do I doff my cap to them!

I needed to stop the audio for my final few slides as these are quiz slides and I found the music distracting so I managed to add a pause audio JS at the appropriate point. For the volume issue unfortunately your custom button option wouldn't work for me as this music is played underneath a voiceover so I need the volume to decrease automatically when it plays. I noticed in Owen's tutorial that he set the starting audio volume to 50% as follows: 

audio.volume = 0.5;

I played around with the number and found that 0.07 works great for what I need so I adjusted that also. I can't thank you enough for your help and for taking the fear of JS away! 

Hopefully Articulate will add the play audio across the entire project functionality at some point to save having to figure out all these workarounds. 

Thanks again! 

Hi! I have been successful with the web object and the mute button. Does anyone have the code for reducing the background music volume? I don't want a slider or any audio controls. I tried reducing the volume in Adobe Audition and the background music is still much louder than the narration. Any insight would be helpful. 

// get storyline player
var player, audiofolder, audiofile;
player = GetPlayer();
window.audiotrack = document.getElementById('ambient-music');
//
if (window.audiotrack === null) {
audiofolder = player.GetVar('audiofolder');
audiofile = player.GetVar('audiofile');
window.audiotrack = document.createElement('audio');
window.audiotrack.id = 'ambient-music';
window.audiotrack.controls = false;
window.audiotrack.loop = true;
window.audiotrack.src = 'story_content/WebObjects/' + audiofolder + '/'+audiofile;
window.audiotrack.type = 'audio/mpeg';
window.audiotrack.preload = 'auto';
// append to body
document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].appendChild(window.audiotrack);
}
// determine if audio is playing
// show the big play button
if (window.audiotrack.paused) {
window.audiotrack.play().then(response => {}).catch(e => {
player.SetVar('showbtnplay', true);
console.log('Couldn\'t play the music becuase....', e);
});
}