Synthesia

Currently trialling the tool for building content/modules.

As a linear presentation tool with very basic animation functions it is fine

As for building this to working within and doing anything more than  embedding ( so can be embedded within Storyline and updated within Synthesia)  or filling the screen.

Current issues for me using more than are as follows.

Editing:

Within Synthesia.
You cannot define screen size - can only out put one size
So will have to re-edit in a premiere or crop in Storyline

There are now measurement tools - rulers guides or mention of pixels/ cms etc.

Although you can output audio(narration) it still exports as a video file - only option is to bring into quicktime and export audio only.

Newest animation feature allows you to add queues (markers) within your script so text/images appear at that instance. ( there is no timeline as such).

Storyline.
Biggest push back from you might find (from a few) is 'lip-synching' of the avatars - although Synthesia provides a multitude of avatars and voices - finding the right avatar to match the right voice, can be time consuming - I say match, more like looks better.

I have scaled back the videos within Storyline modules, so they play a great part in the screen real estate, just to hopefully reduce that burden and distraction.

For onboarding webinars and face to face training, it works really well - especially if you want to alter/amend on the fly - as it self contained, the product allows you to create templates that can be duplicated and re-edited.

I think the maximum video length on the enterprise package is approx 2.5 hours per video which is huge.

They are constantly updating and improving the application and whilst i was suing the trial they introduced another 5 upgrades and approx 10 new avatars with the new interactive face/shoulder shrug. wink/ smile responses - that can applied to different aspects of your script.

My main focus was to find out what i could do within Storyline - I sent back feedback, hope fully some of which will hope fully be listened to.

majority of feedback from creating out put for evaluation has been positive

We will see.