Forum Discussion
Why does the timeline expand for no reason?
I've been having the same problem over and over where for no apparent reason the timeline grows from maybe 10 seconds to something like 200 seconds. I'll resize it back to the original time, and the next thing I know, it's expanded itself again. I can not figure out what triggers it. Although typically it seems to happen to slides that have audio ... that's not always the case. Unfortunately, this isn't specific to any one .story file. I've had this same experience in multiple files. Is there a setting that I can change that will keep the timeline true to what I set it to? I'm working in Storyline 2. Thanks for any help. This little glitch is costing me a lot of time.
20 Replies
Hello Marge!
The timeline normally defaults to about 5 seconds. When you insert audio or video it will adjust to the length of the inserted media. However, inserting a new slide after that should revert to the default.
Please confirm that you are working locally as described here. Also you could follow the steps here if you continue to have issues.
You could also attach your .story file here to see if we can recreate the same behavior.
If you paste an object that is 200 seconds a slide it will expand
Thanks ... but I am working locally already. I do understand that the timeline would expand to fit any video or audio. This isn't that. This is just an unexplained increase in the timeline way beyond the length of any slide elements, including video or audio.
Unfortunately, I can't attach my .story file because it is proprietary content. However, as I mentioned, this behavior is not specific to one .story file. I've had this happen before in other files ... both Storyline 1 and 2. It seems to be worse in v. 2 though.
Hello Marge,
I haven't heard of this happening without items being inserted, or duplicate slides being made.
If you want you could send us your file here privately.
Hi Emily,
What do you mean by 'duplicate slides being made'?
Hello Marge,
If you right click the slide thumbnail and hit "duplicate" to copy the slide. You can also copy the slide and paste into a new slide.
If you do either of these, it will copy over the length of the timeline as well.
ok .. thanks. This is not something that happens when I first create a new slide. I am working in the slide ... the timeline is whatever the default length is ... I add a couple of things ... it's still fine ... and then somewhere along the line, the length of the timeline just out of the blue changes. I'm realizing now that I usually notice it when I go to preview the slide. I notice then that my seekbar is much longer than it should be ... and when I leave the preview mode, I see that the length of the timeline has changed. Also, if I run the slide from within development mode so I can add cue points to the timeline, it will take a long time to start to run ... probably because the timeline has made itself several minutes long.
So it seems to be preview and running the slide that are triggering this to happen.
Hello Marge!
You may want to conduct a repair of Storyline to see if this corrects the issue for you.
I'll give that a try.
Thanks, let us know if this works for you.
