[Video encoding & bitrate] lighbox audio is fine, but video freezes

[MagicTH]

My S3 videos were working fine in my test site wp.denvertradinggroup.com

I went live today and got a call almost immediately that the videos were not playing. I tested and verified that many videos are not playing video. They START playing video, but after a few minutes the video ceases to update yet the audio keeps playing just fine. I tried clicking forward and back. Whenever I jump in the video the last video frame stays on-screen. Doesn’t matter if I go back to the start or anywhere. Other videos play fine throughout. I verified one of the problem videos on my computer plays fine. I deleted that video from S3 storage and re-uploaded. Then I immediately downloaded the same video (which took 10x as long to download as upload) and played it. Works fine. Just doesn’t play from S3.

a) Since my video links are working; i.e., I get the video to load and start playing, and,

b) the audio is good all the way, and,

c) some videos play fine…

I’m thinking this is Amazon’s problem, especially considering the very slow download. (My download speedtest is 240 Mbps/upload 12 Mbps).

What do you think? Have you seen this before? I’m in Colorado using the East Ohio server.

Obviously a BIG PROBLEM. The day I go live and my main product isn’t working.

I can give you a login, but a customer who has never been on the site before has the problem. My MAC computer which I never used for development doesn’t work. My Windows 8.1 64-bit machine has the problem. No cache plugins.

PS: I really don’t think it has anything to do with going live and changing the URL. Lightbox has no URL related settings.

[wpCommerce]

Hi, This might be an encoding issue. Please check the Video Encoding section of this post for details:

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/lightbox-ultimate-videos-hosted-on-amazon-s3-not-playing

[MagicTH]

All my videos are .mp4. Looking in VLC under Media Info > Codec it shows:

Codec: H264 – MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)

Resolution 1280×738

Frame rate: 557.344827

Decoded fromat: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

Aduio .mp4a

Stereo

44100 Hz

The above is for a video that has problems.

For the video that plays fine everything is identical EXCEPT the frame rate is 6 instead of the oddball 557.xxx

Could this be it? I don’t know anything about frame rates.

[wpCommerce]

The codec looks fine. This may have something to do with the frame rate then. Please check this doc and let me know if it helps:

https://flowplayer.com/docs/encoding.html

[MagicTH]

SUCCESS! I can verify that some of the other encoding specs, besides just picking H264 MPEG are required. Some of which are documented in the link you sent.

I found a popular (and Free) program called HANDBRAKE https://handbrake.fr/ and I have created a screen shot of the specs you need to make your videos play properly through FlowPlayer (I’m using Amazon S3 for storage and security).

The main additions are using a constant bitrate, 30 fps (possibly 24 would work too, but I used 30 and tested it on videos hundreds of MB in size and it works) AND getting the “moov atom” or metadata to be stored at the beginning of the video file instead of the default location at the end of the video.

Here is a link to that graphic. tipsandtricks, feel free to use this graphic.

http://lightbox.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Handbrake-Settings-for-Flowplayer-and-Ultimate-Lightbox.png

PS: Handbrake can queue up and convert multiple videos unattended. Handy since it took 23 hours to convert my 90 videos.

[wpCommerce]

Glad to hear that it worked. And thank you so much for the screenshot. I hope this will help other users who are having a similar issue.

[Author]

Posts