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New in Storyline 360: Background Audio
We’ve got news that we think will be music to your ears—you can now add background audio to your Storyline 360 courses! Thanks to this highly requested feature you can set the right tone for your training and keep learners engaged by adding a list of audio tracks that play in the background. And to give learners control over the experience and ensure it’s optimal for everyone, they can toggle background audio on and off as needed. Check out this article to learn more about this new feature: Storyline 360: Background Audio.
If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber, you can access this new feature immediately by updating Storyline 360 via the desktop app. And if you don’t have Articulate 360 but want to try out this feature, you can start a free 30-day trial.
Once you’ve given it a try we’d love to hear what you think! Please share any feedback or suggestions in the comments below. We’ll be working on enhancements for this feature and want to know if there are areas for improvement or additional functionality that you’d like to see. We’re looking forward to your feedback!
~The Storyline 360 Team
Hi everyone!
Good news! I'm happy to share that we just released Storyline 360 (Build 3.81.31200.0), which includes a feature to control the background audio for each slide using triggers to play, pause, or stop the playlist.
This was highly requested, so we hope it serves you in your course creation! If you run into any snags, don't hesitate to contact our team in a support case.
First: I love that you implemented this feature. It's actually something I was just discussing with my supervisor (as something I wish Articulate would implement).
Second: It would be nice if there was an option to pause the background playlist when the course is manually paused (by using the "Pause" player control). Currently, the course/timeline pauses, but the background playlist continues to broadcast. This isn't a dealbreaker, but for those reviewing the course, it could be inconvenient (perhaps even a bit annoying) to pause the course to discuss, take notes, leave Review comments, etc., but have to continue hearing the audio from the playlist.
Hello Robert,
Thanks for checking out the Background Audio feature, and it's great to hear how timely this was!
We currently don't tie the course play/pause button to the background audio, but would one of the following player keyboard shortcuts perhaps help in this situation for course reviewers?- Ctrl+Alt+A: Toggle background audio
- Ctrl+Alt+M: Mute/unmute overall course audio
Vanessa - It might, yes, but ultimately, when sending the course up the ladder for multiple executives to review, the less instruction I have to impart about how to operate the course, the better. Being able to tell them just hit play and pause is much more direct.
Hi Robert,
If you enable "accessibility settings" on the player, the learner can toggle the background music on and off if they'd like.
I hope this helps!
Thanks for this new feature.
We have been waiting for it for so long. However, the background audio has one limitation: it has only ONE playlist for the whole course. It would be better if we could create multiple playlists and choose which playlist applies to different selected slides/scenes. That would be great!
These are some examples from iSpring that you can use as a reference.
Once again, thank you all for the new feature. We're really looking forward to new improvements in the future.
Hi TKDG OES!
Great suggestion! Thanks for sharing feedback on the flexibility you'd like to see when using background audio!
We currently have this logged as a feature request, so I’ll go ahead and include your voice! We’ll update this discussion if this feature makes it on our feature roadmap.
I found a workaround for the background audio bug, where the background audio doesn't duck, if you jump to the next slide when current slide audio is playing. Hopefully, there will be a fix soon.
Like others I really need a way to manually control when the background audio is off/on or at least adjust it's volume myself. The auto reduction in volume is nice however i've got some MP4s that contain no audio and I'd like the background audio not to auto adjust when it encounters these silent videos. I've encoded these videos with no audio track... is the player simply adjusting because it detects a video file period? Any tips on how I can have a video not trigger this auto adjustment in volume? Thanks.
Hi there, I am using the background music for a step-by-step explanation which I finally want to embedded in Rise. The problem: On my last slide the background music in Rise doesn't stop. It goes on and on.... Any ideas please how to stop this? Thanks
Hi Karl!
It sounds like you were trying to customize the controls for background audio in your Storyline 360 imported Rise course. I'd be happy to share some insight!
At the moment, that type of functionality is not available in Rise 360. However, we currently have a Feature Request logged which would allow you to add custom triggers to control background audio in your Storyline 360 course. I've included your voice, and if that feature makes it on our feature roadmap we'll be sure to update this thread!
Once that feature becomes implemented, you would need to set up custom triggers within your Storyline 360 course first and then reimport it to your Rise 360 lesson.
Please let me know if you have any more questions!
Many thanks Steven, that was exactly what I was looking for. A trigger in Storyline where I can set up when the music has to stop / start / fade. And then import it into Rise360. Looking forward that this hopefulls will come soon. Thanks.
I think you need to disable the option to lower the music when narration is playing. Or use the old-school workaround and add the music to each slide and add triggers to play and loop the music.
Thanks Team for adding this feature, It will be great if we can control the Background music through triggers too.
I have a project, inserted the background audio and it plays perfectly in Storyline as I am reviewing it. However, when I publish my project to a video...it does not have any audio playing in the background. Is that a bug or am I doing something wrong?
Good morning, Elke. No, you're not doing anything wrong. Currently, the feature isn't supported in video output. I was very disappointed to learn this myself, as published video was the primary reason I wanted to use the background audio feature.
It would be nice if this was noted in the interface or on the Articulate support site about this feature. I went through all the trouble to add design elements to the course to notify learners of the audio, etc. and now I have wasted that time and need to undo them.
Hi Vanessa. My question is not directly related, but it is related to Audio. I have created an interactive diagram. The Base Layer has an audio voice-over I do not want to play on the layers. How can I stop the recording from playing when they open a layer? Your help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Kim
On the layer there is an option to 'pause timeline of base layer' that will stop the audio playing when the layer opens.
Thank you very much!
Hi Kim,
Wendy has provided the solution, other way is to block the interactivity till the audio ends.
Regards
Yogesh
Yes thank you.
Hello, Angie!
I'm sorry for the trouble—and you raise a great point. Thanks to your feedback, we added a note that background audio isn't available in published video output in the documentation for this feature.
And we're still planning the next phase of this feature, so we'll let you know if video output compatibility becomes an option. If there's anything else you'd like to see added, do let us know!
