Timeline preview is SLOW and jumpy

Hi Tyler and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :)

We do have a similar issue confirmed from a customer file in SL360. I would advise following the direction of your support engineer, as they are from Articulate, in testing so that we can confirm and report as needed.

If you do not wish to do the repair, please share your file with Miker as instructed.

Thanks!

I submitted the scrub/timeline playback feature in the Feature Request area of the website.

It's understandable if "High Level" functions don't work due to needing specialized code when in "preview" mode, but just to playback the basic screen elements LIVE. This feature is Desperately needed. I had this feature in Captivate 3.0 back in 2007, so SL is already a Decade behind this particular curve. (Great product otherwise, but sheesh!)

I agree. This needs to be a feature ASAP. I am a videographer as well on the side and having the ability to scrub through the timeline in Storyline would save so much time, which would in turn, save my company production hours and money.

I am spending a day just to edit one slide because I have to start from the beginning of the timeline each time to preview changes - this is insane!  I moved across to SL360 and was hoping that this was no longer an issue that I had already endured with SL2.  

Can someone please fix this issue - the amount of wasteful time spent is ridiculous and try explaining that to a client awaiting product review!

One way around the super slow timeline preview that I've found is to just play the audio file and pause it to note the time stamp at which I want different slide elements to fade in.

For example, if I have three bullet points, I play the audio from the editing pane that opens when you double-click, and I write down when I want the bullets to fade in based on the audio. You can see the time that the playhead is at by looking in the bottom right corner of the audio editing window. Then I right-click on the slide element in the timeline, go to Timing... and type in the time stamp I noted. 

In order to preview what I've done (since the timeline playback is super slow) I always do Preview > This slide and publish just that one slide. 

I still think that Articulate needs to fix this (a pretty basic function), but in the meantime this workaround has cut down my development time significantly. 

Hi Marcin, 

Thanks for sharing those steps here - and we do have this reported to our team for a deeper dive into what's happening. We'll let you know here as soon as we have any updates. 

This thread is now 2 years old and I am on the very latest build of Storyline 3.  The preview delay is just as bad on S3 as it was on S1.  Adobe Captivate can do instant preview playback of the timeline.  It's time Articulate addressed this issue.  It makes Storyline look bad.

Hi Rod,

We do have an open issue where we are monitoring this behavior. If you have an example to share (a .story file preferably), that would be fantastic so we can include it in the report. I wanted to share some information on how we define bugs and how we tackle them when they occur, and user impact is a big factor.

If you cannot share it here in the forums, please share here privately.

Hey Tyler,

Thanks for chiming in to share. I see where you previously shared a sample file in your case as well, so I'll be sure to include that as well.

Greetings!

Hopping back in on this thread since I still see the replies come to my email.

I've been using Articulate since SL1 and it's a great program...however, this isn't a bug. The timeline has never allowed real time preview of the timeline...especially if video is involved.

I feel with Articulate 360 that the software is far enough along that this should be integrated and not even considered an additional feature, but necessary.

I come from a background of video editing using Adobe Premiere Pro and After effects and I can preview the timeline simply by pushing the spacebar. 

It takes so much time to wait for the timeline in SL to load and not even show in real time.

In my opinion, this feature should be a priority.

Likewise for me. The best I've gotten is about 2 seconds of delay, which is still not good enough to be able to sync animations with audio, so I've had to resort to simplifying or eliminating animations from my courses, because it takes too long otherwise.

When I need something with a lot of movement, though, I use Camtasia--a program with real-time previews--and create a video that I then import into Storyline.

I still prefer Storyline to other tools, though, but having a real-time preview like Camtasia has would be an incredible timesaver and value-add.