Forum Discussion

Bridget's avatar
Bridget
Community Member
10 months ago

Black screen with Play Icon

When I upload my Storyline scenes to Articulate it comes up with a black screen with the Play icon in the middle of it.  I've not had this in the past and can't work out what I need to switch off or ...
storyline 360
RolandStraub-e1's avatar
RolandStraub-e1
Community Member
6 months ago

Hi Jonathan,

Thx so much for your availability. I tried to film a bit, what I was writing about, plus I added the respective story file. Funily everything works fine while I preview it in storyline. After importing the interaction from the articulate review to the Rise project, one cannot hear the speech. 

Hope I made my points clear and sorry, for my bad spoken English 

Cheers Roland

Jonathan_Hill's avatar
Jonathan_Hill
Super Hero
6 months ago

Hey Roland - I think this is because Rise is a browser-based experience and most browsers, under WCAG, don't allow autoplay of media. The 'blank slide' technique gets around this for the visual aspect, but not the audio.

In short, I think audio has to be actively triggered - either by pressing play on that ugly black screen - or by another interaction. I tried to add a 'hover' trigger to the 4 images, but that didn't work.

So I put my thinking cap on and added some Javascript to the SL block. This detects if the block is running in Rise, and changes a T/F variable.

You can see the code working in Rise here.

However, even though I have added a trigger to play the TTS audio when Viewed_in_Rise becomes TRUE, the audio is still not playing. I think it's because the browser doesn't recognise this as a user interaction.

I can only conclude that Rise/browser conditions don't allow autoplay of media unless the user triggers it, and the only way around this is to add a button to your slide. 

Entschuldigung!

  • RolandStraub-e1's avatar
    RolandStraub-e1
    Community Member
    6 months ago

    Hello again Jonathan

    I can see why you're holding the "Super Hero" status around here 💪 — thanks so much for your explanations! I didn’t quite grasp all of it as you definitely seem more tech-savvy than I am 🤭.

    I suspect the issue is related to our internal browser security. My company is currently a bit paranoid about cybersecurity and tends to block things first, then gradually reopen access later.

    I managed to get it working using a workaround from one of the links you shared. It now looks like what you see in the attached screenshot. Honestly, I don’t mind the play symbol in the center — it signals to learners that something is about to start, which is actually quite nice. What’s really bothering me, though, is the black bar at the top and bottom that stays visible no matter what. It looks awful, and I have no idea how to get rid of it. But maybe I'm just too picky and my learners won't even notice this frame. 

    Hope to run into you when I have another case and wish you all the best in the meantime

    Cheers Roland