Forum Discussion
Inserting videos that have a shorter duration that the timeline
I’ve noticed that when inserting a video (MP4 file) that it can be a challenge to get the video’s ending to line up with it’s actual duration. For example, if a timeline has 20 seconds of content on it, but I insert a video that is 6 seconds, the video consumes the entire 20 seconds. I know its 6 seconds, and I want it to no longer exist after that point. Otherwise, the final frame of the video just remains onscreen for the rest of the slide’s timeline.
The usual solution that has worked for me is to, right after inserting the video, right click on it in the timeline and uncheck “Show Until End.” This results in the tail (end) of the video getting truncated on the timeline and is now exactly as long as the video’s actual duration. 6 seconds, not 20. Nice!
But an issue comes up when one doesn’t do this right away after inserting video, such as inserting the video and moving it (in the timeline) below some other items. After this, if I right click and select “Show Until End”, the video’s duration doesn’t get truncated, and still matches the length of the timeline. Once I’m in this situation, I’m not ever able to get the video to truncate to its original length.
What I’m looking to avoid is the work-around solution, where you manually drag the tail of the video to where you want it. That’s really hard to do when a video is several minutes long.
How can I properly truncate a video on the timeline so that it ends exactly at the end of the video (regardless of where it is on the timeline)? Is it a bug or a missing feature that this isn’t an option, or is this something I just don’t know how to do?
Related post: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/video-duration-upon-import
17 Replies
I've encountered the same problem; it seems to become more of an issue as the length of a video clip increases. I would like to know how Storyline calculates the displayed duration and how it takes frames-per-second (FPS) into account. For example, the number of frames in a 30-second clip can be:
- 15 FPS - 450 frames
- 24 FPS - 720 frames (traditional film)
- 25 FPS - 750 frames (PAL, SECAM)
- 30 FPS - 900 frames (NTSC)
- 60 FPS - 1,800 frames
The timeline in Storyline's video editor is largely useless, IMHO, as it completely ignores 25+ years of digital video editor convention (which was based on decades of analog video editor convention). Below 1 second, the number of frames is displayed, not 1/10's, 1/100's or (inexplicably) 1/1000's of a second.
It reminds me of multiple "conversations" I had as a Value-Added Reseller with Adobe, Apple, and Radius engineers in the early 90s. While Radius "got it," Adobe could not seem to grasp the concept of a 29.97 NTSC frame-rate (the 3/100 of a second needed for the black-burst/video sync/gen lock signal), insisting 30 FPS was exactly the same as 29.97 FPS. It wasn't until version 5 of Premiere that Adobe FINALLY acknowledged 29.97 FPS and could officially state Premiere was, in fact, "broadcast quality."
Hello Joseph, many thanks for this. However, I am not such an advanced user, and I have wrestled with this issue for two days. do you know of anyone or service where I can send it and it can be repaired?
I tried to save as video to see if i cut cut the end that way, but I think it is taking way too long and it will not happen.
Francisco
I am having an issue where I try to insert a clip at :22 into a timeline and it instead of having it start at :22, it cuts off the first 22 seconds. It seems like the issues with this has been known about for several years based on this post and yet it hasn't been resolved? That's extremely frustrating. Is there a workaround?
The clip works just fine if I insert it at 0 on the timeline, but no matter which way I try to get it to start at :22, it doesn't - I've tried just adding it into the timeline directly at that point, adjusting the start time by right clicking and going into timing and dragging it and every method results in the same problem.
Hi Krist,
I'm sorry you're having an issue with the timeline! I would love to troubleshoot this for you. Would you be willing to share your course here or in private by opening a support case?
Thanks for reaching out!
This is the exact issue I am currently facing. Anyone have a fix besides what Steven suggested?
Hi Tom!
I'm sorry to hear you're also experiencing issues with videos that have been inserted into the Storyline timeline.
We currently have this incident logged as a software bug that our product team is closely monitoring. I've included your voice in the report so you can be notified as soon as we have any news to share.
In the meantime, as a workaround, following a specific workflow when adding videos to the timeline should prevent this behavior. We recommend adjusting the timing/duration of added videos at the end of your authoring process.
Please let me know if you have any more questions!
@Kristi - Good luck. The main issue is that the Storyline timeline doesn't sync with the video timeline and there is no way to lock them together. We've fought with this for years. If you add other elements with the video you'll find that it's nearly impossible to sync the actions with the video. If you try to use auto advance with a video you'll find sometimes the entire video plays and it advances as expected, other times it advances to early so the video is cutoff or late so the user has to stare at the end of the video for a while before the slide will advance. The problems get worse if the user pauses the video.
Our workaround is to create videos with all the elements we need in them and just use Storyline as the container for the video for that spot in the course. Basically, videos are used on slides by themselves, and we don't auto advance them.
As you pointed out, this issue has been known for at least 3 years, but they still haven't addressed it. We are considering switching to Captivate.
