HD quality MP4 video playback quality gets reduced

Jul 17, 2013

Hi,

I have added a few videos to a project, where a user clicks a button and the video appears from a hidden layer.

This works fine.

However, the recorded video is a short HD 1960x1080 clip and outside of Storyline plays very clear and sharp, as expected.

When I test the project, the video seems to be more compressed and the quality is very low. It is as if Storyline compresses the video during the production of the final output?

Is there a way to control the output video quality rendering settings, or better still,would it be possilbe to add the ability to display the video in full screen mode?

thanks

12 Replies
Darren Mc Neill

thanks for the links.

I tried the workaround and it worked fine.

The compression produces a file roughly 8 times smaller than the original, which is a lot.

It is a bit of a clanky procedure though and giving the option of " No Compression" would be useful as I have already filmed the video, edited it through After Effects, Premier Pro etc, got the correct quality through Adobe Media Converter, and then to find the video almost unwatchable once Storyline finished with it.

If I have 10 or more videos, I have to match them to the originals as the naming convention is different.

A lot of the Videos are also HD Screen captures and so most of the detail is lost.

Hopefully this might be considered in another update.

thanks again

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Darren,

I'm sorry to hear that your experiencing difficulty with compression of your videos. In addition to the post that Bruce mentioned above from Mike Enders, he also has a great Screenr on how to compress videos in SL and ensure they're of the highest quality. The video is here

Hope that helps, and if you need anything else please let us know!

Darren Mc Neill

Michael Rosenberger said:

Thnking out loud here, but could you upload the video to YouTube which has a HD trigger for the embed and plays at very good quality then embed (Insert video from website) the video in the layer? That would be independent from Storyline compression.

No time to try but just a thought.

Good idea and I did think about it but..........

I work for a very large Multinational who like to treat their employees like kids.

We have no access to Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook twitter etc, as they are blocked.

Bruce Graham

Ashley Terwilliger said:

Hi Darren,

I'm sorry to hear that your experiencing difficulty with compression of your videos. In addition to the post that Bruce mentioned above from Mike Enders, he also has a great Screenr on how to compress videos in SL and ensure they're of the highest quality. The video is here

Hope that helps, and if you need anything else please let us know!


Hmm...

Ashley, I would not say "....of the highest quality". I would say "...to the highest quality that Storyline allows".

I am not a video expert, (I'll leave that to Arlyn and his team...), however, I know that I have a series of (beautiful) videos that I had to have at a much worse quality in my eventual courses, (and the "insert original once published" solution from Mike did not work for me - I got a wonderful shade of green pixilation the first time I tried it)..

I would just love to find a solution that allowed my videos, produced at Retina quality, to show at that quality, by default, when imported into SL, on both PC and iPad output.

I appreciate the work and pride that went into videos, but at the moment that seems to be something that I just can't have, despite logging support calls.

Bruce

Bryan  Naas

Bruce Graham said:

Ashley Terwilliger said:

Hi Darren,

I'm sorry to hear that your experiencing difficulty with compression of your videos. In addition to the post that Bruce mentioned above from Mike Enders, he also has a great Screenr on how to compress videos in SL and ensure they're of the highest quality. The video is here

Hope that helps, and if you need anything else please let us know!


Hmm...

Ashley, I would not say "....of the highest quality". I would say "...to the highest quality that Storyline allows".

I am not a video expert, (I'll leave that to Arlyn and his team...), however, I know that I have a series of (beautiful) videos that I had to have at a much worse quality in my eventual courses, (and the "insert original once published" solution from Mike did not work for me - I got a wonderful shade of green pixilation the first time I tried it)..

I would just love to find a solution that allowed my videos, produced at Retina quality, to show at that quality, by default, when imported into SL, on both PC and iPad output.

I appreciate the work and pride that went into videos, but at the moment that seems to be something that I just can't have, despite logging support calls.

Bruce


I'm right with you Bruce. I certainly understand the logic of Articulate to reduce the video quality for better performance.  That said, bandwidth is not an issue for us (and is becoming a non-issue with most).  I'd love the option to better control this quality to put out the best learner experience possible.  Right now, my produced video quality is so low it makes it difficult to follow along. 

Kyle Owen

in articulate presenter pro '09 I didn't have an issue with the compression. Now that I "upgraded" presenter 13 I now can't get past the compression. I have already compressed my videos to less than 2 mb and don't want any further compression. bandwidth is not an issue on our internal LMS.

I tried the suggestions in this thread, but they are not working for me.

anyone else know how to remove the compression? 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Kylw,

Our team has designed it so that Studio '13 gives you the highest possible video quality with the smallest possible file size. This article has further information on how we deal with video compression.  As the above article has discussed, it is recommended to insert high quality videos into your project, as Articulate will compress this when you publish your project. The method that you mention for Storyline (although unsupported) has been helpful to a number of community members who want to keep the original video quality without any compression. If the quality issue you're experiencing seems to be beyond a normal compression, and you'd like for us to take a look at your files please feel free toshare the Presenter files with us here. You'll want to create a Presenter package to upload it on the second page. 

Mark Lindros

I was wrestling with this today so my reply is delayed....

After finding that I couldn't retain the quality of my original mp4, regardless of any Articulate settings I could find, I decided to dig deeper into the generated files created when my course is published.

It turns out that the mp4 files have generated alternative mp4 files that have generated file names. These alternative versions of my mp4 files are (on Articulate highest quality settings) reduced from 108MB to 78KB. This is a vast reduction in quality that I just couldn't accept for my project.

The easy fix? Replace Articulate's files with my files at their full fidelity. Works great. Just use the same file names that Articulate uses.

Bruce Graham

Mark Lindros said:

I was wrestling with this today so my reply is delayed....

After finding that I couldn't retain the quality of my original mp4, regardless of any Articulate settings I could find, I decided to dig deeper into the generated files created when my course is published.

It turns out that the mp4 files have generated alternative mp4 files that have generated file names. These alternative versions of my mp4 files are (on Articulate highest quality settings) reduced from 108MB to 78KB. This is a vast reduction in quality that I just couldn't accept for my project.

The easy fix? Replace Articulate's files with my files at their full fidelity. Works great. Just use the same file names that Articulate uses.


...and make sure that you convert (for example) a .mov file to .mp4.

This is exactly the solution/workaround Mike suggests in his Screenr above, however, forgetting to convert my source files has caught me out a couple of times.

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