import video with alpha background

You would think that it make sense for Articulate to add a chroma keying tool to Storyline. This tool would be priceless for many, who want to import alpha transparent animations.

Hey Bryan! That would be cool. You are welcome to share your idea as well as a use-case to our team here. 

Welcome to E-Learning Heroes by the way :)

This is silly... We go from problems with transparent videos showing up in Storyline 2, to having the same issue in Storyline 3, and now we are moving into 360 with no known fixes just workarounds! What is the deal guys? E-learning is very important and the tools are only going to get better and better as we go but it feels like Articulate is being left behind because of issues like this alongside flash problems, and the list goes on. I was so close in moving over to 360 but now our team has to start looking at other tools because of unresolved issues that just stay in place from one version to the next. Very sorry to hear that you team is not listening to it's customers...

Hi Ryan, 

I'm sorry you feel that we're not listening, as that's not ever something we want you to think! Our team is focused on fixing bugs as soon as possible,  listening to ideas and feedback about enhancements, all with the goal of providing the best tools we can. You shared a few things that I hope I can clear up here! 

• There was an issue with FLV alpha transparent videos in Storyline 2, where they'd show up without the transparent background. We fixed that in Update 5 of SL2 (we're now on Update 12).
• We support FLV files with alpha transparency in our Flash output and the Articulate Mobile player (all Storyline versions). The nature of those files doesn't allow for transparency to carry over to our HTML5 output.  To make sure your courses will still play if you've included them we'll reencode those files during publish for HTML5 output to an MP4.

Some users have asked about other file types with transparency:

• The MP4/H.264 file type does not support alpha channel (not specific to Articulate tools)
• The .webm video format is an option for transparency, but we don't support that based on their lack of browser support.  Essentially if you were using that file it wouldn't work in IE, Safari(mobile or desktop) and have less than awesome results in Firefox. 

If there is another file type or feature we're missing, I'd love to know more about it. 

We see lots of requests and ideas here in the forums and also through our feature request form. Feel free to use the option that works best for you! Also, here's a look inside how we manage all  of the feature ideas we see! 

Let me know if I can help with anything else. 🙂

I've reported several issues to Articulate over my time using Storyline. Occasionally, someone will mention that I should go to the "feature request form".  I have never done it.  You need to rethink your processes. When people complain about issues on a forum, an employee of your development team needs to pay attention and stop trying to redirect people to re-type their problems in a separate form.  You are missing plenty of good enhancement requests because people like me are not willing to type them twice for you. For instance, this comment should be escalated and some smart manager should react to it.  Pay attention, or just ignore it at your company's peril. 

Hi Tony,

I can promise you, we are paying attention. 

We are also working to better our feature request process. If the request is clear, we do submit them on the users behalf for the exact reason you mentioned - I would not want to share the same information twice either.

If the request is not clear or we are unsure of the use-case, we will still request that the user submit the request. We want to be sure that the need is clear when shared with the development team.

In addition, because we are watching and working to better advocate, we are pulling similar requests together to push them forward - which is why we encourage users to share their thoughts and/or feature requests.

I took a look at your profile to see where we may have dropped the ball with you, but I only see 2 posts. Do you have another profile perhaps?

We do appreciate your feedback Tony and I do apologize if you felt we were not listening.

I read this whole thread and I'm still confused.

Is it possible to insert a video with a transparent background into Storyline 3?

Is this only supported for Flash? It's almost 2020....

Hi Jeff!

I'm happy to clarify! FLV videos with alpha channel transparency are supported in Storyline 3 Flash and Articulate Mobile Player output but not HTML5 output. With browsers blocking Flash, the videos will not playback as expected. 

In short, these specific interactions were designed to depend on Flash. We'll update this discussion if we hear of any workarounds! We hope our community members will share how they are going to continue using transparent videos in HTML.

I'd love to loop back around to this.  I'm trying to import a character from Adobe Character Animator for my first time ever.  For a number of different reasons, it would be far easier to import with alpha (transparent background) than it would be to capture all the different background images and put them behind my video before exporting.  Has this been solved?  Am I able to import a video with a transparent background?

Hi Robbie,

This is an open feature request with our team. Our previous solution supported FLV files with alpha transparency in Flash output, which is no longer relevant.

This conversation is attached to the report so that we can share updates with you here.