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embedded audio links suddenly stopped working

Hello all, I often embed dropbox-shared audio files (as well as other files) on my educational websites for students (copying the link, swapping in raw=1 instead of dl=0 at end, and inserting into suitable <iframe> part of html).

These embedded audio connections suddenly stopped working at some point in the past couple days. These are links that worked fine when I created them. I've done nothing to alter my website, but now the iframes render blankly (audio controls greyed out, no duration, title, or other data) as if the files don't exist.

If I try to take that link and paste it into the URL bar in my browser, I get a *flicker* of an mp3 player trying to load, and then:

.mp3 files are supported but something went wrong.

Oddly, my image and pdf files, all similarly taking advantage of dropbox-shared-link embedding, are still working fine. As I say, I'm convinced something has changed on the dropbox end, because I've changed nothing at my end. I found out about the problem from my students who were trying to do their assignments. ">😐

(Troubleshooting done so far: verified dropbox account is in good standing, verified no large files "banned" for causing bandwidth alarms, converted file from m4a to mp3, renamed, played around with swapping in every possible variation on the filename with and without dl=0, raw=1, omitting those altogether, etc. -- although, as I say, all of these are links that already did work fine. And analogous embedded links that are not audio seem not to be affected.)

Any insight?? Many thanks in advance!

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Daphne

Hey @espringer, I hope you're doing well!

Just to narrow down the issue here, can you let me know if you see any difference when using another web browser, or an incognito browsing window?

Also, please try clearing your browser cache and load the links again to see if you see the same error.

Let me know what you find and we'll go from there!

AVP

I have the same issue. I have been using raw=1 for years with mp3 and now it doesn't work in Chrome or Safari.

I contacted support but no answer yet. I tried cleaning my cache and same result. Here is an example that works for dl=0 but does not with raw=1.

Not working:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uq2yka3q26wq196/1986537305.mp3?raw=1

Working:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uq2yka3q26wq196/1986537305.mp3?dl=0

Been using raw=1 for years and I have many links that I have created and sent to my customers with raw=1 and now none of them work in any browser. I am very worried. Please help. Thank you.

espringer

I have tried multiple browsers, and didn't reach out here until I'd been troubleshooting for a good 45 minutes.

And, as my post indicated, the problem first came to my attention because my *students* couldn't access their materials -- embedded materials that had always previously worked.

I had not tried incognito mode, but I just did, with the same result. The <iframe> part of my page renders the "container" for the audio, but no content (no duration, no title, greyed-out "play" button, no "scrubber" for moving along the duration of the audio).

Here's an example link I made (analogous to the other reply): a page where I can invite you to confirm that the dl=0 link works, but the raw=1 (embeddable variant) fails to work:

https://teaching-tools.tiddlyhost.com/#audio-file

aaumann

I have been having the same issue with embedded audio links in my university's CMS and tried the same solutions. My students report that the audio links sometimes play for a few seconds or a few minutes and then suddenly stop with the error message: "A network error caused the media download to fail part-way." I have also contacted Dropbox support and so far we haven't gotten anywhere.

One question to the OP. What content management system are you using? My school uses a version of Moodle.

Lusil

Hey peeps, could you also make sure that you don't have any third party browser extensions/plugins running?

espringer

Lusil,

Just as suddenly and unpredictably as this issue started, the problem seems to have evaporated as of today. I'm feeling cautious, but relieved.

(The working of these embedded audio links never did seem to depend on any browser or browser-extension situation, nor have I done anything on my end that could account for the improvement. At any rate, for web-hosting purposes, it's not possible to micro-manage the browsers of visitors. All we can expect is reasonably up-to-date and stable configurations.)

Lusil, I don't know whether something changed at the dropbox end, but if you had any role in nudging someone in any way to restore something, many thanks!

(As far as educational content-management systems go, I actually use a website that's independent of any institutional CMS, but in the past I have used moodle, Although moodle generally allows us to upload multimedia files, which can be then played within some kind of frame, I have found CMS systems too clunky and constraining in various ways. For that reason I have designed my own interactive websites for most teaching purposes, and rely heavily on dropbox to be the backend for embedded images, pdfs, and audio.)

-ESpringer

espringer

aaumann, have you checked to see whether your embedded audio links for students are functioning properly again?

(I admit I haven't tried playing any embedded-link file all the way through; since my audio iframes weren't even rendering well enough to hit "play" last week, I'm now delighted that they render and seem to work for the first 30 seconds.)

-espringer

aaumann

espringer, I have been working with the Dropbox customer service for the past few days and the problem appears to be fixed. Here is what they said to me in their last e-mail:

"We had another similar report of this recently and our engineering team has made some changes that may resolve what you're seeing here."

I haven't had any complaints recently and it appears to be working on my end. I hope it is fixed for you too!