Can I Make a Video Un-Clickable?

As many of you may know, if a Storyline 360 video is playing and a learner clicks on it, the video pauses. If they click it again, it resumes. Let’s answer the common “as heard in training” question: “How do I make videos un-clickable?”

Why are videos clickable in the first place?

Well, this click-to-pause design mimics how other software and social media use video. If you were watching a video on a platform like YouTube or Facebook right now, you would experience the same action. (Go ahead and try it!)

When you insert a video into a Storyline 360 course, your learners expect the same behavior they experience elsewhere. In fact, one current e-Learning trend is to build user interfaces that mirror how learners are already interacting with technology on a day-to-day basis, creating a more intuitive experience.

 

But what if I don’t want that behavior?

If you decide you don’t want this behavior in your e-Learning, it’s an easy adjustment in Storyline 360.

The simplest option (Occam’s Razor) is to cover the video with a hotspot. In Storyline 360, a hotspot can act as an invisible shield that prevents anyone from clicking the item underneath. (Typically, a hotspot is used to place a trigger over a portion of the screen so that something happens when the unseen hotspot is clicked, basically like an invisible button, but in this case, we’re using the hotspot in the opposite way: to prevent a click.)

1. Choose Insert | Hotspot.
2. Draw the hotspot on top of the video.

That’s it.

Tip: If your software isn’t up to date, or if you’re using Storyline 3, you’ll want to delete the trigger that was automatically created with the hotspot or right-click the hotspot and deselect “Show hand cursor on hover” to remove the hand cursor functionality. Pretty simple!

 

A few other options to consider:
(Some of us are never satisfied with simple solutions!)

1. If you use the simple hotspot method above, you might also add a trigger onto the hotspot to reveal a layer that states something like “Video control is currently disabled.”
2. As an alternate solution, with your video selected, open the Options tab and set “Play Video” to only play the video “When triggered.” Then, add a trigger to play media when the timeline starts on this slide. This plays your video automatically and disables the default click-to-pause feature. Same result as our simple solution—and almost as simple.
3. A third solution: Open the Options tab (again, with your video selected) and select to “Show Video Controls” below the video. The video now has its own controls bar and the option to select the video to pause it is disabled. In this situation, you can:

• Allow the learner to use these new video controls.
• Resize the video so the controls aren’t included on the slide stage.
• Cover just the video controls with a hotspot and adjust the hotspot on the timeline to leave near the end of the video. (Tip: If you go this route, we recommend communicating to your learners that “Video control is disabled until the video has finished playing,” perhaps by triggering some sort of error layer when the learner clicks the hotspot.)

 

Do you have other ideas to add to our list? Did you give one of these methods a try? Please leave a comment below and stay tuned as we revisit the topic of video throughout the year.

 

That’s Storyline and I’m sticking to it!

 

 

 

 

 

~ Ron