Video Playback Troubleshooting

This topic addresses a very basic question: Why isn't my video playing?

There are many different reasons as to why you may be experiencing issues with video playback and we hope that some of these troubleshooting steps below will assist you in determining what might be causing the problem before having to contact our support team. If you do need further assistance, please submit a support request and a member of the team would be happy to assist you further.

This topic includes:

• Playback Troubleshooting Checklist
• Player Error Messages

Playback Troubleshooting Checklist

Run through some or all of these to solve or at least to help isolate your playback issues.

Clear your browser cache

To clear your browser cache for the page you're on:

• in Microsoft Internet Explorer, click CTRL + F5
• in Firefox, click CTRL + SHIFT + R on Windows, or COMMAND + SHIFT + R on Mac OS.
• in Safari, click ALT + CMD + E

Play the video on a different network

If the issue is only occurring on your local network, it could be an ad blocker or firewall problem. See this list of domains and ports that need to be open in your firewall to allow access to Video Cloud.

Use the Brightcove Player Debugger

Run the Brightcove Player Debugger to get a detailed view of the communication received by the player in your browser. Read detailed information about how to use this utility.

Play the video on a different computer

If the issue is isolated to one computer and other users on the same or a different network are not seeing the issue, the problem could be in your computer's configuration. Please check your Flash player version, browser, and platform to make sure your computer meets our system requirements.

Play the video in a different browser

If the video plays back in one browser, such as Firefox, but not in another, such as Internet Explorer, there may be an issue with the player publishing code you are using on your site. For example, make sure the object tags for each player on the page have a unique ID attribute, because otherwise Internet Explorer will not understand how to read the player properly. Also, make sure there are no <br> break tags, <p> paragraph tags, or other extraneous tags inserted between the opening and closing <object> tags. 

View the video on the Brightcove-hosted URL

Use the get link option in the Video Cloud Studio to grab a link to the player hosted on a Brightcove URL. You can access this URL either in the Quick Publish feature in the Media module, or in the Get Code feature in the Publishing module. If you have get link enabled on your player, you can test with that as well.

Publish the player on a standalone page

Try publishing the player on a standalone page to see if there is some other code on your site interfering with the player code. Take the player publishing code on your site and create a separate test page that includes nothing but that publishing code (along with HTML head and body tags). If the video plays back on the standalone page, this indicates that there may be other custom code on your site that is interfering with the player.

See if you can view our test player

Can you view the videos on this test player? Are you able to view videos from both tabs, progressive download and streaming? If you can view progressive download videos, but not streaming videos, or vice versa, please submit a support request so we can look into it for you.

Is your issue affecting only new content?

Sign into the Video Cloud Studio and check whether you are able to preview the video through the Media module. If you can’t preview the video through the Media module, this means there may have been an issue with the actual video upload or the video has not completed processing.

Is the video scheduled or inactive?

In the Media module, check whether you have set a schedule for the video so that it's not currently available. Make sure that you take into account time zones. Also check whether the video is marked inactive.

Is the player or the video geo-restricted?

If your player is geo-restricted, you will likely see an error message in the player that says “The Video You Are Trying To Watch Cannot Be Viewed From Your Current Country or Location”.  You can check player geo-restriction in the Publishing module and video geo-restriction in the Media module.

Is your connection speed too low? Are your renditions too high quality?

If you have a slow connection and the video has a very high bit rate, you may experience pausing or constant buffering. Check your connection speed at www.speedtest.net. Check the bit rate of the video in the Details pane of the Media module. For slow connections, use multi-bitrate renditions to make sure you have low bit rate renditions of each of your videos.

Is your Video Cloud account active?

Check whether you can sign in to the Video Cloud Studio. If your account was recently locked, your videos will no longer play back and you will not be able to sign in. Please contact your account manager to get assistance with your account.

Error Messages

Error messages can either be player-level or video-level. Player-level error messages appear before the player has had the chance to fully load. After the player SWF has been requested, something prevents that SWF from fully loading in the web page. Player-level errors can be recognized by the following distinctions:

• None of the player components have loaded  (there are no player controls or video display)
• The error message appears in a black box in the center of the Player SWF Object where the player should be

Here's an example:

What causes a player level error message to appear?

Here are some common causes of player errors:

• Incorrect player publishing code.
• The player is currently deactivated in the Publishing module.
• Rarely, a Video Cloud systems issue where our player SWFs are inaccessible. To determine if you are experiencing a system issue, test this player. If that test player loads for you, the issue is likely specific to your player. If you are not able to load that player, try the steps in the checklist, or submit a support request for further assistance. 

Examples of player error messages

The Video You Are Trying To Watch Cannot Be Viewed From This Website.

This error is caused by a domain restriction setting in the player that blocks the player from the domain you're trying to watch the player.

The Video You Are Trying To Watch Cannot Be Viewed From Your Current Country or Location.

This error is caused by a geo-filtering restriction setting in the player that blocks the player from the geographic location from which you're trying to watch the player.

The Video You Are Trying To Watch Is No Longer Available

This error can appear either because the player has been deleted from the account, or the account is no longer active.

Video-level error messages

Video-level error messages show up within the player, in the video display component.

The Video You Are Trying To Watch Is Currently Unavailable. Please check back soon.

There are a number of different possible causes for this error message. Try the items in the Troubleshooting Checklist to isolate the issue you are having.

This movie cannot be played

This message may appear on iPhone or iPad devices and can be caused by inproper transcoding settings for iOS devices. Be sure you have set iOS rendition settings for your videos you intend to play on iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. When setting renditions for iOS devices, be sure to use the BASE codec container setting, not the MAIN or HIGH settings. For specifics on setting renditions for iOS devices, see Encoding for Mobile Delivery.