New Story Maps - Anyone Happy or Impressed?

Anonymous User

Why can I not add a YouTube link to the main window? A 20MB video file limit is ridiculous for what is supposed to be "A Quantum Leap for Story Maps"

Also, will story maps ever have multi-user editing capabilities? They're an amazing tool for individuals, but horrible for working as a group when only one person can edit at a time.

It all just looks a typical cascade story map with less options. Restricted design and restricted outlet for creativity.

oevans_storymaps

Hi Glen -- Thanks for providing us with your feedback on the new ArcGIS StoryMaps. As someone who sounds like one of our power authors, we understand that you may not yet be satisfied with the feature set of the new builder compared to the classic templates, which were developed over the course of seven years.

We hope you understand that this is the very first release of this new product, and its capabilities will be expanding rapidly. We're working hard to bring more features to the builder—including the ones you've mentioned—and will be releasing updates often. In fact, we've got several more updates planned just for the rest of this year, so please check back in the future to see what's new.

Please note that the limit for video uploads is 50 MB (images are currently limited to 20 MB). This feature provides authors with the convenience of being able to upload shorter looping videos directly in the builder without having to use a 3rd party site. For longer narrated videos, we already support adding content from YouTube, Vimeo, and now over 250 other video hosting sites (Facebook, Daily Motion, Wistia, Reuters, and many more) in the main, scrolling part of the story, and we will be expanding that support so that videos from those sites can be used in other parts of the story as well.