Hi,
I have a weird issue with uploaded videos to the app.
My app allows users to upload videos to the app. Some of the videos uploaded are audible but not visible for some reason. For sure the video (prior to loading) is playing well on the user’s device so something happens after the upload.
Any advice?
Thanks,
Ronnie
Can you tell us what exact device is experiencing the bug?
I think all devices. When I view the user’s account on my laptop, I can see the issue that he sees. So I don’t think it’s a device specific. It’s something with the app of file. But because he can see 1 of the 3 videos, he sent I tend to think that the issue is with the app??
What format are the videos recorded in? Are all three videos the same format? Can you share the link to one of the videos they aren’t working? Do you have any screenshots?
All 3 videos seem to be mp4 which makes sense because all 3 were working initially until 2 of them turned into this:
That looks a lot like an audio component. Are you sure that you aren’t displaying an audio component instead of a video component?
The video that does work looks like this - exact same component in the app
(I hid the identity of the user for privacy reasons)
Is there any way to check the codec that was used for the video? The extension may be mp4, but the codec could be different and possibly unsupported.
Also, what is the storage size of each video file? I seem to recall that there is a 100mb limit for video files stored in Google drive, but I’m not sure if that also applies to glide storage.
it gets weirder - the coach can actually see the videos. Here’s a screenshot of what the coach sees.
So to summarize:
When I log into the player’s account, I see the same issue he sees.
When I log into the Coach’s account I still can’t see the 2 videos although the coach can!
So is this device issue?
see my previous reply with additional info.
I don’t think that it’s a codec issue bc 1 out of the 3 videos actually works and the 2 that don’t work, were working initially for the player and the coach can still see them…
I’ll try to find out the file size although that if the Coach sees the videos than it’s probably not about the file
Codec could still be an issue if it’s different between the three files. Some devices or browsers may not be able to render certain codecs. If we are comparing iOS vs android and Safari vs chrome, then it’s still something to consider.
Thanks.
I’ve just sent you a couple in private.
I’ll take a closer look later today when I have time. I did click on both links and the one that doesn’t work for you also doesn’t work for me. I’m getting the same result on chrome on both a windows laptop and an android device. Since I wasn’t viewing the links in a glide app (opened the links directly from the email I received in my Gmail application), I don’t think it’s specificly a glide app issue.
One more question…are the non working videos recorded in vertical format by any chance?
From those that I sent you, I think that the one that doesn’t work is vertical and the one that does work I can see that it’s landscape. Perhaps that’s the issue.
So here’s what I found so far. Both files appear to be in landscape. Chrome was only able to play the working file. Windows video player could play both. VLC also could play both files.
If you look at the screenshots below, you will see that both files have different codecs. I’m familiar with H.264 being a pretty widely used standard for MP4 files. But, for the non-working file, I noticed that it was instead using an H.265 codec. I’m not familiar with that codec, so I did some searching and found the following info:
https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/127402264/does-google-chrome-support-hevc-h-265-codec?hl=en
What I’m understanding is that H.265 HEVC is a more efficient codec that takes up less space, but uses hardware decoding. I’m also seeing mention of it being expensive to license, so only bigger companies license it’s use. (ahem…Apple). It’s also used to help compress high resolution video (like 4k or 8k video). Both of your videos appear to be 1080, so not 4k. I’m not sure why they would be different in this case. Could it have been different devices? Could it be settings that were changed between video recordings? Could it be apple just being apple and making everything complicated for everybody else? 
So what I’m guessing is that some of the videos are being recorded on an iphone using the less used H.265 codec instead of the more popular H.264 codec. Since Apple has purchased the licensing rights to use the codec, I suppose that’s why it works on Safari. Chrome/Android seems to have limited support…possibly depending on the device. I guess if you can find out if there are different settings that were used when the videos were recorded, that might help to narrow it down. I don’t really have a solution since it comes down to browser/os support for the codec. I think the only things that could be done would be to change the settings on the offending device, run a manually conversion on the file to convert from h.265 to h.264, or find some third party service that could possibly look at each file in the table and automatically process a conversion.
This is the codec information for the working file.
This is the codec information for the non-working file.
