Forum Discussion

JeniJohnson-19a's avatar
JeniJohnson-19a
Community Member
5 years ago

Video compression options grayed out?

When I insert a video onto SL the option to change compression is grayed out and set to "Automatic". I don't want SL to compress my videos. How do I get this to show up as an option?

  • SashaMalone's avatar
    SashaMalone
    Community Member

    I am also having no luck with Randall and ID's solution.  Very frustrating!

    I found another work around to try.    Luckily I had a video that already had compression set to 'None' in my project so I copied that video to the slide, right clicked the video then selected 'replace video'.  I got the new video with no compression attribute assigned to it.  Hope this saves someone a few hours.

  • This bug is maddening.  Randall and ID's solutions did not work and I cannot try Sasha's as I do not have an uncompressed video in my project.  Why would I be able to get the option when I import into a brand new storyline project but not in the project I want to import the video into?  It makes no sense

  • BrettConlon's avatar
    BrettConlon
    Community Member

    WOAH, I've just had this issue AGAIN, even though it was supposedly fixed in the April 18, 2023 (Build 3.75.30269.0) update - "Fixed: The video compression setting was disabled when it should have been active."

    Today, I opened an older project to make some updates and re-publish it and I noticed that it was taking AAAAAGES to save and realised it was encoding video. I stopped it and went to the video slide and saw that the Compression setting was greyed out and set to "Automatic". I tried all of my previous tricks (eg. creating a NEW project, importing the video and applying the "None" setting, then copy/pasting the video (...NOPE) and then the slide across to my old project) but nothing was working. I even tried closing all Articulate projects and opening just the one project but it still wouldn't allow me to set the value. In the end, I was going to reboot windows and try one last time (before I resorted to the dreaded 'copy all slides over to a new project then fix everything that went wrong' process) so I closed ALL apps & Explorer windows and decided to re-open Articulate one last time, before rebooting, and I was able to successfully re-import the video and change the setting to "None".

    Why did this issue return again???

    I'm dropping this note in here in case this happens to someone else and they come looking for help.

  • BrettConlon's avatar
    BrettConlon
    Community Member

    Yeah, this is driving me nuts. I'm trying to update multiple older projects (created in '21 and updated last year) and every one of them is giving me grief with the greyed out/locked-in "Compression: Automatic" issue. I'm having to close all Articulate files, re-open just the single file that I'm trying to change and then I have to re-import the video afresh and set the compression.

    I'll now lodge a support request...

  • it can be done direct in the .story file (= .zip) with a text editor

    /story/story.xml

    replace all

    • compressedOnInsert="true"

    with

    • compressedOnInsert="false"

    but better let support do this

  • I'm having this issue too, and it's driving me CRAZY.

    I'm breaking a course I built in March into five smaller courses. Compression is turned off on all the videos in the original course. For each new course, I copied the original file and deleted the slides I didn't need. But I just noticed in all of those new course files, compression is turned on on all the videos and the dropdown is grayed out. I tried replacing the videos, but it still won't give me the option to turn off compression.

    I also tried importing the video slides into a new file, but same issue - compression is on and the dropdown is grayed out.

    If I open up a new file and insert the videos, I can turn off compression. However, I added captions to all of these videos in the original course (~20 across 5 courses), so if I import these videos into a new file to turn off compression, I have to redo all the captions. Not happening - I didn't bill this customer thinking I would be spending extra time re-inserting the captions I put in the original course.

    I've resorted to the method Natasha posted (replacing all the video files in the story_content folder in the SCORM package), but this isn't sustainable long term (nor should it be necessary) if I have to go back and update these files in the future.

    Any update on fixing this issue, Articulate?

    • EricSantos's avatar
      EricSantos
      Staff

      Hi Danielle,

      I'm sorry to hear you've hit this snag with video compression in your Storyline course! I appreciate all the details you've included, and it's a great idea to open a case as well. I see that Mick is requesting a screen recording of the issue.

      We can continue troubleshooting through your support case to help keep all information in one spot, but let me know if I can help with anything else!

  • Dears, is this bug not fixed yet?
    I still have "Automatic" compression which is grey-out((
    My video is in .mp4 format

  • video "compression off" is only possible, if storyline don't convert the video while import

    if you want this feature, you have to compress the video (for internet usage) outside of storyline, e.g. with Handbrake

  • Thanks,

    what about "record screen" feature inside the Storyline? also not possible to turn off compression for those videos which were created by means of this funstion?

  • Hi Alena,

    Thanks for reaching out! 

    • You mentioned earlier that you have a .mp4 video file you are working with. If you tried to insert this into a new .story file, do you experience the same greyed-out behavior? 
    • Have you tried using Handbrake as Jürgen recommended? Please let us know if this did the trick! 

    For your second question: I wanted to confirm that the video compression option is only available with imported videos, not screen recordings. I'd like to share a wonderful resource for creating high-resolution recordings in Storyline 360 as a resource to you.

    Feel free to share your .story file with us in this thread or privately in a support case so we can investigate this further.

    Looking forward to hearing from you!