Forum Discussion
Storyline block autoplay in Rise
I'm having an issue with Rise. As others on the discussions have reported, when you embed a Storyline file in a block, the Storyline file automatially plays when the Rise lesson begins. This is problematic if the Storyline block is not the first block in the lesson. The simple solution shared in the discussions is to add a continue block to the lesson right before the Storyline block. The learner needs to click it to open the Storyline block, and then it autoplays. This works well, unless the learner reloads the page. In that case, the Storyline file will autoplay when the page loads, as if the continue block was in a visited state. Is there a way to deal with this aspect of the Storyline autoplay issue in Rise? Thank you for any ideas!
- AlexNevels-1f2bCommunity Member
Running into this problem on our end, too, and am currently troubleshooting for the best solution. To begin with, I really just want to use the built-in media player within Rise. It works exactly how we want, it just doesn't do captions. Embed media players with caption toggles won't work either, because the learner can skip the video without it completing. So here we are, building a SL block per video.
This would work fine-ish, if it weren't for a very persistent auto-play feature for Storyline, which means all the videos startup at the same time after you have visited the site once and 'cleared' the continue blocks.
Does anyone have a way to make a Storyline video not auto-play while keeping the seekbar and media in-sync?
Here are the workarounds I've tried:
- Pause timeline trigger when slide loads, so it never autoplays
- This separates the timeline seekbar from the media. If I pause or start the video by clicking the video, it starts the video, but not the seekbar. This is really confusing UI.
- Any triggers that try to pause the timeline OR pause the video if the video has been viewed
- See triggers. I've tried pausing timeline, pausing media. Nothing. I've tried lots of these.
- The slide is set to resume saved state.
- I've even put the variable in text on the slide, and it won't "remember" that it was changed to true when I revisit. It will flip to true, then on revisiting, it flips back to false. How can it retain these triggers? Again, slide set to resumed state.
- Set media to play only when triggered/clicked.
- This again separates the seekbar from the playbar. The user stares at a black screen while the timeline is going. I thought something was broken before I realized I had to click the video.
- Removing the seekbar and only using the video player controls.
- Ok, I'd have to make the story size bigger on all 19 videos. This is probably my next thing -- but really?
Again, this is a LOT of work to just get captions to work.
Thanks!
- Pause timeline trigger when slide loads, so it never autoplays
Hi Alex! It sounds like what you really need is a closed captioning feature in a Rise 360 video block, is that right? We're tracking that popular request, so I'll add your vote to the list.
In the meantime, I'll open the floor to the community for their ideas of how you can best configure the triggers in the Storyline block.
- AlexNevels-1f2bCommunity Member
Yes, please!
Ok, so here's our fix, which LOOKS nice, and works well. It takes two slides. Hopefully this helps someone. It took way too long to figure out.
First slide is a holding slide. We took freeze frames of the video and did a play overlay icon, so the learner knows to click the slide. When they click the slide, it advances to the next slide, which auto-plays the video. When you revisit, you again go back to the holding slide (slide 1). Triggers attached.
Be sure to take off the seekbar from slide 1, or you may have learners trying to press that play button, which won't work. We have the seekbar coming in on slide 2 (the video slide).
- AlexNevels-1f2bCommunity Member
So as a follow-up, this approach is really a band-aid to the lack of CC support in Rise.
The end result for us was a 220mb published file from Rise. There are 19 videos that are like 110mb together. When we inserted them just as videos and NOT as Storyline blocks we saved 70mb in the published output. (Videos were compressed in both and the same size).
On top of that, it's an extra place of complexity and I fear the LMS we're working with doesn't super love it. Learners going through it so far have had some squirrely issues.
Anyways, we may opt to publish out a captioned and non-captioned version to 'solve' this for now.
- PeterWard-c85b8Community Member
Thank you for sharing your solution, Alex.
Good news, everyone!
Now you can make your videos accessible by adding closed captions in Rise 360. Simply import a caption file for each language you want to support. Check out the video demo in this discussion, and find more details here!
- StephenBeck-4f4Community Member
Is there a way to make Storyline inserts with audio play automatically? I embedded an animated slide (no audio) in Storyline 360. It played automatically (after the user clicks the continue divider). All good. I then edited the slide to add audio and embedded it again. Now it requires the user to click play. This can be good in some cases, but in this case, I would prefer that it play automatically.
Also, is there a way to get the storyline embeds to go fullscreen, similar to the "Image & Text" feature wherein if you click the image it goes full screen? I would like to make more custom interactions with layers, etc in storyline to embed in Rise. They'd look better full screen in many cases.
- StephenBeck-4f4Community Member
I think I just answered my own question (the first one anyway). Safari for mac was set to not allow auto-play of videos. Allowing autoplay for the sites with articulate files made all the storyline file with audio load and play smoothly.
Hey, Stephen!
You're absolutely correct - web browsers like Chrome are blocking audio from playing automatically. That's why you'll see a play button covering any Storyline blocks that have media on the first slide. I'm glad you were able to adjust the autoplay setting in Safari!
Storyline blocks don't have a fullscreen option, but you can adjust the size to "full width" to give the block more real estate inside the lesson. I would also suggest using a widescreen aspect ratio for your slides, such as 16:9.
You can even completely hide the Storyline player so the interaction will seamlessly blend into your Rise 360 lesson.
- JeanneRupprechtCommunity Member
I have run into this same issue, but with different results in the same RISE course. One lesson has a View Me from storyline and it just starts playing and does not have the gray screen with the play button. The fist slide in the View Me is just a screenshot with caption, no audio. The other lesson in the same RISE course is a Try Me. It has a gray screen with a play button, which is what we want. In a second RISE course, I have a Try Me lesson and a View Mode lesson and both have the gray screen with the play button. I am using Chrome and none of these have audio. I can find no distinction as to why one Storyline insert does not work like the others I have done. And my co-worker is getting the gray screen with the play button every time. Seems like a bug to me. Can we investigate it as such?
Hello Jeanne. We'd love to help! If you can privately share your files with us by clicking here, we'll try to understand why these interactions are being treated differently. We'll delete everything when we're done troubleshooting. Please include a Share link to the course, or the zipped output if you exported for LMS or web. We can go from there!
- StevenMeikleCommunity Member
I encountered the reverse issue (but similar) - I wanted the storyline embed to immediately play adn reveal the infographic in rise (it was an interactive infographic). I did not want the play icon on a black screen.
I had two identically created seperate storyline interactive infographic embeds - one immediately showed the infographic landing slide (which i wanted) the other did not. The second one had some slide layers with video, so I made an identical first slide stripped of all interaction and at 1 sec had it switching to second slide (with interactions and video) this resolved the play screen and instead showed the interaction slide immediately.