Forum Discussion
URGENT || Audio lag in large file
We are experiencing significant performance and synchronization issues with a large Articulate Storyline 360 project and are seeking any insights or solutions.
Project Details:
- Course Size: 180+ slides
- Media: Audio narration on nearly every slide, with numerous images throughout the course.
The Problem: After a user navigates through a number of slides, the course begins to lag. The issues are inconsistent, appearing on random slides for different users. The specific problems include:
- Timeline Mismatch: The slide timeline continues to play after the audio narration has finished.
- Synchronization Drift: Animations and on-screen elements lose synchronization with the audio.
- Overlapping Audio: On slides with multiple audio tracks on different layers, both tracks sometimes play simultaneously.
Environments Tested: This behavior occurs across multiple publishing environments:
- Articulate Review 360
- Local Web Publish
- Our LMS (SuccessFactors) using a SCORM package
Troubleshooting Steps Taken:
- Standard end-user troubleshooting (clearing browser cache, restarting).
- Re-publishing the course with optimized media settings for both images and audio.
Despite these steps, the issue persists. Has anyone encountered similar performance degradation in large-scale projects? Any advice on what might be causing this or how to further diagnose the root cause would be greatly appreciated.
6 Replies
I'm thinking you have either an LMS issue or a computer issue. Last year I worked on a project with over 200 slides mostly videos with the longest over an hour. It's been up and published and working for 6 months and no issues. Looking at the testing you've done. I think you need to get someone with a lot of background in Articulate to look through it and see what they could find. Not that I'm saying you don't, but it looks like you are missing something.
Good luck
Hi Sagar_Mavale!
Sorry to hear you're facing playback issues with a large-scale Storyline course!
Great to see Eric has been helping you. Also, it looks like my teammate LucianaPiazza just replied to your other post, here!
I think you may have multiple (different) problems here:
"Overlapping Audio: On slides with multiple audio tracks on different layers, both tracks sometimes play simultaneously."
This is normally a problem if you haven't used triggers to 'Pause Media" or "Stop Media" when you open another layer which has audio on it. You can normally control multiple layers with audio by setting the layer properties correctly:
So if you select "Pause timeline of base layer" when you open a layer which has audio on it, any audio on the base layer will be paused until you close the layer. If you use "Hide other slide layers" when you open a layer it will close other layers that may be playing audio. This, plus the triggers I mentioned earlier mean you can easily fix this problem and get the audio to play nicely - one track at a time.
"Timeline Mismatch: The slide timeline continues to play after the audio narration has finished."
Just shorten the slide timeline to end shortly after your audio finishes. If the slide timeline is longer than the audio, then it will continue to play after the audio finishes.
"Synchronization Drift: Animations and on-screen elements lose synchronization with the audio."
This is a little trickier and you may need to do some more detailed testing BUT, if any of the media files (especially MP4 video or audio files) were exported from software like Adobe Premiere Pro or Camtasia with VFR (Variable Frame Rate) instead of CFR (Constant Frame Rate), the playback engine in Storyline cannot consistently synchronise timeline events to the media. This will cause synchronisation 'drift' on longer media files exactly as you describe.
If you can't re-record those elements with a CFR setting then there are free utilities that can be used to convert VFR to CFR media - I've used one called Handbrake and it does the job really well.
Some people will, undoubtedly telll you that 180 slides is too many (which it is) - but I would try converting your audio and video files to CFR first before you start looking for other reasons the Storyline playback engine gets out of synch with the media.
Hope that helps - give me a thumbs up if it does 😀
We've run into the same issue here. It's not a trigger issue. As a hypothetical...
track 1 starts at 0.5 seconds and runs until the 10.5 second mark. track 2 starts at 11 seconds. However, when the lag kicks in, the audio on track 1 may not start until 2 seconds and runs until 12 seconds - but, track 2 starts on time at 11 seconds. You end up with 1 second of overlapping audio.
On larger files, the delay can be as much as 45 seconds. I've seen slides in which track 2 starts before track 1.
Is this a software simulation with screen action recordings? Getting rid of the screen action recordings on slides in which they weren't needed has really helped with our lags.
Hi angelo - I might be missing the point here, but are we saying that the audio is a separate media item to the screen recording? i.e. are you trying to synchronise an audio track, or several audio tracks with a video in Storyline?...
,,,If so, I would seriously recommend getting Adobe Premier Pro or something like it and dropping your video in then you can just drop your audio segments into separate audio tracks and just slide them along so they line up with the screen recording. You can still chunk the output up into separate video segments but the audio is then part of the video. This would defnitely be my preferred method.
However, if you can't go that route you are back to using Storyline triggers. Let's suppose I want to start audio1 when video1 starts and audio2 when video1 reaches 10 seconds audio1 is 8 seconds. There are a number of ways you can do this:
One way is - slice video 1 into two parts - video1A (10 seconds) and video1B (10 seconds onwards) Then start audio1 when video1A starts (by putting them on the base timeline together). Put audio2 and video1B on a new layer then show that layer when video1A completes using the "When the media completes" trigger:
Using this method you know audio2 starts only after the first part of your screen recording has finished. It doesn't fix your video lag if you are saying that it takes two seconds for your video to start but it stops it getting progressively worse.
I still don't fully understand what you are trying to do so apologies if my solutions are off target.
Good luck...
