Video file sizes increasing when Rise SCORM file is exported

Mar 21, 2022

Peter Locke
By Peter Locke

Hi. Rise is increasing my video file sizes when I export a SCORM file. I have tried uploading various resolutions and compression settings, but the smallest video file Rise creates is still 50% larger than the smallest file I can output with a tolerable quality. The info below gives an example of what I am experiencing - here testing with various file sizes/resolutions to see how Rise compresses it...

1. My video: 540p, MP4, 20.8MB --- Rise 'compresses' to a 31.3MB 540p file

2. My video: 1080p, MP4, 786MB --- Rise compresses to a 52.5MB 720p file

3. My video: 720p, MP4, 411MB --- Rise compresses to a 56.2MB 720p file

I have seen this issue reported in other threads but without any resolution that I can see (I do not want to embed video content e.g. with Vimeo, nor do I have the resources to manually replace all the video content in my courses with my smaller files every time I publish a SCORM file).

Please can you advise if this is still something that is being investigated and when a resolution is expected (the option to use the actual uploaded video file without compression would solve this, as in Storyline)? Also is there any known workaround using the current Rise workflow (e.g. if I were to upload a 540p video with a specific bitrate, the Rise compression would actually produce a smaller video)? BTW I am using Adobe Media Encoder to output my videos.

Thanks for your help,

Peter  

8 Replies
Peter Locke
2 years ago03/28/22 at 6:53 am (UTC)

I've been in touch with Chester and thought it would be helpful for others if I summarise our discussion:

Rise encodes every video in your course. Their encoder outputs video files with the following specs:

Video:  Frame rate: 29.97 fps   /    Total Bitrate: approx 600 to 800 kbps

Audio:  Audio Bitrate: 159-160 kbps   /   Audio sample rate: 44.100 kHz   /   Channels: Stereo

The Rise encoder will reduce video file sizes if you are uploading large videos, but may increase sizes if you are spending time to optimise and upload smaller videos. You have no way of knowing the final video sizes until a SCORM file is published and you inspect the contents.

Frame rates are always converted to 29.97fps even if the uploaded video has a lower frame rate, and resolution may be changed depending on the video uploaded.

---

I have submitted a feature request to have an option (when you upload a video in Rise) to choose no video compression is applied when the SCORM file is published.

The workaround if just using Rise (as has already been stated buy others on this forum) is to manually swap out the videos in the published SCORM file for your own optimised versions of the videos, retaining the naming conventions of the published videos.

(As a test, using the above workaround I reduced a Rise SCORM file containing ten videos from 199MB to 132MB)

Cheers,

Peter

  

Jill McNair
1 month ago03/26/24 at 7:04 pm (UTC)

Woo hoo - Rise just solved this

Pro Tip: If you'd like a video to keep its specific file format and not undergo compression, you can opt-out of optimization on a case-by-case basis. Just add _NOPROCESS_ to the name of your video file. It'll upload and display exactly as you saved it. Keep in mind, using this method bypasses transcoding and compression, so learners may encounter issues with playback across different devices. File size limits still apply.

Source: https://access.articulate.com/support/article/Best-Practices-for-Images-Videos-and-Audio-in-Rise-Courses#videos 

Thanks Karl Miller for posting this on another thread and solving my problem in an instant!

Jose Tansengco
5 days ago04/29/24 at 1:38 pm (UTC)

Hi Nigel,

Happy to help!

The video encoder in Rise 360 doesn't just compress videos but also automatically increases the quality of low-resolution and low-settings videos (effectively increasing the file size).

For example, a 720p video with around 10mbps bitrate can be compressed to 2mbps; and a 540p video with around 0.4mbps bitrate can be increased to 0.6mbps bitrate. For this reason, the 540p file will have its size increased while the 720p video will have its size decreased.

If you have any questions, or if you'd like to clarify the behavior with our support engineers, feel free to open a case with our support team here.

Nigel Kirkby
5 days ago04/29/24 at 2:59 pm (UTC)

Hi Jose. What I can see is that videos that are added to a Rise course as 1080p high bitrate are being exported in SCORM 1.2 packages as 1080p at still quite a high bitrate (5Mbps), whereas for the last 4-5 years, they have always been converted to 720p 29.97fps low-ish bitrate. As a consequence our SCORM packages are getting bigger. We are not appending _noprocess_ to the filenames as we want them to be recompressed to smaller sizes, because that's the way it has always worked previously.

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