Forum Discussion
Storyline 360 random audio results
Storyline issues recently
Recently I have been experiencing several Storyline bugs in the published content. These issues are not showing when viewing the content locally using preview. In summary the issues are:
Incorrect audio playing
I have recorded a software simulation. In the simulation is audio narration. On some slides, there are several pieces of audio narration that play end-to-end.
When publishing the module, it is unpredictable what will happen with the audio. It changes from publish to publish which slides will be affected, but a slide will randomly play the incorrect audio. It may play the correct audio at the start, then the following 4 audio files will be from a different slide, and may be the same audio repeated over and over again.
It is a large course, with close to 200 audio files and so it is not viable for me to check the entire course each time I provide it to the client, but the client keeps finding incorrect audio.
The author file does not reflect what the publish file plays. This is an awful situation and we’re losing so much time on reviewing and republishing and re-importing audio files to see if it helps. Nothing seems to work to correct this.
Event triggered Audio (in Layer) Playing when slide loads
I have an audio sound effect on a layer. The audio is triggered by an event (selecting a button). When the slide loads, the layer is not visible. However, the layer being hidden, and the audio playing by trigger does not seem to stop the audio playing when the slide loads. I have experienced this several times in this project and have had to deviate from “standard” Storyline programming to get the audio to behave how I want it to.
Layer not displaying when requested
I appear to have fixed this particular issue by importing the entire module into a new Storyline file, but a regular piece of code I was using on several slides, decided not to work on other slides.
I would have a trigger on variable change, to show a layer “Question Instruction” if variable “showInstruction” changed to “True”. This did not work, and I had to explicitly set a trigger to “Show Layer”. On several other slides, the functionality worked, but on three slides, it just wouldn’t. I tried delays (change variable when slide reached 0.5s) but everything I tried didn’t work, until I imported the module into a new Storyline file.
Layers not resetting
I am using layers to play some feedback audio to users. The layer features a character and a timeline audio. The layer hides itself when the timeline ends, and is set to reset to initial.
When the layer is shown, even for the first time, it is playing mid-way through the audio. In order to correct this for subsequent plays, I had to stop the layer hiding when timeline ends, and add a trigger to send the play head back to zero on the timeline and then add a trigger to hide the layer.
Hello SamHill,
Thanks for reaching out and for giving a brief description of the issues you're experiencing. I'm happy to investigate the behavior.
The cause of this might be due to the high number of media files you have on the course, but I understand having a lot of media files shouldn't be a limitation of the course. Would you be willing to share a copy of your project file here or privately by opening a support case so we can take a closer look at what's happening? We'll delete it when we're done testing!
Hello SamHill . I recently experienced the same kind of very strange and unexpected audio problems as you describe.
I think I've noticed that the problems appear when I place audio files on the master slide mask, and its layers, which I use for my slides. Everything returns to normal when I remove ALL the audio files from the master slide mask. Have you noticed the same thing?This is not a satisfactory problem resolution, it's just an observation to investigate the source of the problem.
There weren't that many audio files in my entire module. The audios placed on the master slide mask were “ding!” “pop!” etc, and a few voice-overs. I use the master slide mask a lot to place a lot of elements that I use all the time. And I seem to have been able to place audio files without any problem until... recently. JoseTansengco
Hi ThierryEMMANUEL many of these issues resolved for me in future updates. I didn't want to re-visit the project I had issues with as it was published and out the door and I had PTSD ;).
I do remember I did have issues with a layer and audio and worked directly with Articulate on that one. I was provided with a workaround as a patch solution, and the last comms from support was that it was with their engineers now.
I'd highly recommend reporting any remaining issues to Articulate. If you can send them a file with a replicable issue, provide recordings, details etc they are generally good at coming up with a solution for you. It's helpful when you have the pressure of a large project and cannot spend hours on a bug!
Bon chance!
I'm glad to hear that the problem has been solved for you SamHill (admittedly, it was an old one, but I came across your post a bit by accident). The end-of-year vacations are coming up and you'll be able to rest from all this stress. For me too, the project is behind me and I've found an alternative solution to place my audios on a separate slide, not on the slide mask. Finally, it's not easy to share a file, or the problem only occurs on certain slides, sometimes not, sometimes a little... I didn't take the time to do it. Merci.
