Video is a terrific way to engage your learners! I am sometimes asked whether or not it is possible to have a video play and then pause to review various discussion points. There are many ways to accomplish this, and the following is a simple option that takes advantage of the layer functionality in Storyline 360.
Insert Your Video Onto the Slide
For this build, we are using a video about the planets in our solar system. (We can discuss whether or not Pluto is truly a planet later!)
Tip: It may be helpful to insert a rectangle over the entire video and make it 100 percent transparent or you could add a hotspot over the entire video (no trigger required). Either way, this step helps to ensure learners cannot click on the actual video and pause it, thus disrupting the timing.
To go a step further, you could also disable the seekbar.*
*This could work with the seekbar, as long as the slide and video timing is about the same.
Preview Your Video and Add Your Cue Points
Using the Play button in the lower left corner, play/preview the video. Use the ‘C’ Key on your keyboard to create cue points at the approximate points that you want the video to pause. In this example, we have created eight different cue points, one for each planet.
Build Your Layers
Build layers that will contain the discussion points you want to display to the learner. These may include audio, text, captions, etc. Here, there are 8 different layers for each planet, with captions on each one.
Tip: To speed up your development time, you can add one layer, duplicate it seven more times, and change the verbiage on each layer!
Be sure that there is a way to hide each layer. This may be done with a trigger or with the “Hide Layer when Timeline Finishes” setting in Slide Layer Properties. (You can access the Slide Layer Properties menu by selecting the layer you want to adjust and clicking the gear icon in the lower right corner of the screen. This is the option used in the example shown.)
Still within Slide Layer Properties, you will also want to be sure to pause the timeline of the Base Layer while the individual layers are active. This ensures that the video on the Base Layer will not continue to play while the learner is viewing the content you are discussing.
Return to the Base Layer and Build Cue Point Triggers
Once your layers are complete, return to the Base Layer to build the triggers that will show each layer. In this example, there are eight different triggers—one for each cue point/planet.
Preview the Slide
Preview the slide to be sure all is working properly. You may want to adjust your cue points to perfect the timing.
Do You Want the Video to Replay?
Now it is time to decide what to do once the video is over. You could simply have the learner move on to the next slide by clicking the Next button, but what if you want the learner to be able to repeat the entire exercise?
This will involve adding a “Replay Button” that will restart the slide when the learner clicks it. You could simply add this button the the end of the timeline of the Base Layer, but you may want to create a separate layer if you like to keep various tasks on your slide separated. This is the option chosen for this exercise.
Create an additional layer called “Replay,” and place a button on this layer that will jump to this same slide when the user clicks it. Remember, there is no “Reset Slide” trigger, so we need the learner to return to this exact same slide.
On the Base Layer, create a trigger that will take the learner to the Replay layer once the video is completed. The media is your video.
Now preview the entire project. Did it work? Terrific!
Summary
I hope this gives you some ideas on how to enhance the video into your e-Learning courses. There really is no limit to what you can build and how creative you can be with video and Storyline 360, which is what makes it such a powerful and engaging tool! Good luck in your future builds, and let us know what questions or comments you have.
~John
Update: Please note that the interface of the faster new trigger workflow (in Storyline 360 update 3.33.20625.0 or later) will appear slightly different! While the process is the same, this article uses screen captures from the classic trigger workflow.
Nice post..I am now also in a project involving video on a few slides.
Trying to engage slider’s variable with cue points. My question is, does cue points in timeline cam also control time in video. For example if i put cue at 3, 6, and 9 secs on timeline and then when i reach 12 sec on video i paused and want to go back to 3 sec on video using slider. Can I do that?
Hello Hanggari
Thank you for the comment and the question. I think if I understand your question correctly you want to control the video using a slider. There is really not an easy way to use a slider to adjust the timing of a video. When we do things like that we often have to segment the video onto different layers and triggering the layers to play after each other and also from the slider. It is not ideal, but that is the current work around. The seek bar at the bottom of the slide can control the video, so I am not sure if that is a feature that is going to be available, but it would make a good feature request for Articulate.
Sorry we do not have a more immediate and easy solution.
wow great post!.
i have one problem, how to make video still playing while i switching the browser tab or minimize the window?
Hello, and thank you!
Unfortunately, that behavior is default. However, you could always submit a feature request to Articulate and your browser provider!
Hope this helps.