Forum Discussion
Storyline 360 now supports transparent WebM video
Hello and welcome to 2026, Storyline users! Toward the end of the last year, we quietly shipped something pretty powerful.
You can now import WebM videos into Storyline, including those that use real alpha channel transparency.
In the clip below, I’m dropping a WebM onto a slide with a textured background so you can clearly see that texture showing through the video. Then on the next slide, I add a few objects that animate behind the video while it’s playing. No boxes. No masking tricks. Just actual transparency doing what it’s supposed to do.
This wasn’t a big splashy launch, but it meaningfully expands what you can create. If you’ve ever wanted motion graphics or visual effects with transparency that feel native to the slide, this opens that door.
One important note: support for transparent WebM is solid in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and other Chromium-based browsers. Safari and Apple devices don’t currently support WebM transparency in the same way, so this works best when your learners are on those supported browsers.
I’m really curious about how you'll use this.
- What kinds of transparent video would be most valuable in your courses?
- Where does browser support influence your design decisions?
- What other video capabilities should we be thinking about next?
Looking forward to the feedback.
4 Replies
I'm glad to see this, as it makes a much cleaner presentation. I've been working around the MP4 limitations for years and while workable, this makes everything so much simpler. As the logical next step, and not particularly difficult, I would suggest offering user support for chroma keying video backgrounds. I posted an example of how to dynamically key out greenscreen videos a while back on ELH. Since the media library offers numerous greenscreen videos, and greenscreen stock may be easier for many users to find or even create on their own (versus fully transparent video), this would enable even more design power for users.
Although my example is fairly straightforward, it is well beyond the skill of many SL users. I'm sure having a feature like this built-in would be appreciated by many.
Chromakeying would not be great within apps like Storyline or used as a "Feature". They are nowhere near as good as the dedicated programs like After Affects and Maxon tools etc. Camtasia Studio added it years ago and it is still terrible. Strange as I added Webm files with Alphas to a modules before Christmas as I assumed they were already supported. Adding the ability to use MOV files with Alphas would also be an extra useful option.
I agree dedicated apps are definitely preferable in order to professionally accomplish tasks, and always a good skillset to develop. However, if the cost of implementing a feature is relatively low and the likelihood of the typical user either not having access to dedicated software or not knowing how to go about the task is high (which I would argue is true), then it is still a useful feature.
The same argument could be made toward many aspects of Storyline. Word processing, image editing, shape manipulation, audio editing, captioning, 3D objects, custom scripting and other tasks could all be done more efficiently and more effectively in external (even free) applications and then just inserted as is into a Storyline project rather than using the built-in tools. Often, that is exactly what I do. But for the average user, that makes even simple tasks far more cumbersome than they need to be. Just my opinion.
To render a video in Blender with a transparent background:
In Data Properties...
Go to Render > Film, and select the Transparent checkbox...
Then go to Output > Output...
- Choose your output location
- Choose Encoding > Container: WebM
- Choose Video Codec: WebM/Vp9
- Navigate up to Output > Color: RGBA
Then from the ribbon menu, select Render > Render Animation!
...and voila!
360 Review of Select the screen to turn the cube!
So much power!!! Mwa ha ha!!!
Thanks,
P
