videos won't play

Wednesday, 2/25.....my videos play perfectly now. Fingers crossed.

All comments

Hi @peterv43, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Are you trying to preview this on the Dropbox mobile app, or the Dropbox site itself?

This will help me to assist further!

on the site itself...the videos are well under the alloted size and are MP4. there are two and neither will play outrigt or preview.

on is called retirement and other "misery"

Could you try switching browsers to see if this helps?

Otherwise, you can try using incognito/private browsing mode without any extensions running, clearing your cache and even resetting your browser entirely.

I run a very "clean" computer. I'm **bleep** about that:-)

I have no probems reviewing these videos elsewhere, YouTube, etc. also, BTW, when I first posted these videos they DID play. It wasn't until after dropbox went down a few days ago, something wrong with the site, that they started not to play.

I prefer not to change anything on my end as I have no other problems viewing the videos elsewhere, and they DID play initially on dropbox.

I prefer, unfortunately, to find another online site, e.g., Google to load and store them. I'm very leery about tinkering on my end to resolve the problem that in my opinion, uneducated, is not a problem on my end.

So the fact that they DID play originally on dropbox, before the site went down a few days ago and another one of my videos still DOES play, without any issue, tells me it's probably not an issue on my end.

I appreciate your efforts in trying to resolve this issuebut, as I said, I sincerely believe it's not an issue on my end.

Thank you for trying

Peter Vajda

Is this the end of our conversation after my reply yesterday, 2/9/23? Nothing to do/explore/try on your end?

peter vajda

As the videos don't preview normally on the site, then it could be a codec issue preventing them from loading normally in a browser.

Do the files preview normally when you download them?

they both open immediately when I download them , no issues at all.

they also play perfectly on google drive..whee i uploaded them yesterday

Do I assume that I won't get a "tech support" level answer as I don't have a paid version and that there actually are tech support folks who can come up with an answer to and resolve my problem? But only if I paid?

YellowBear

This also affects me. Also started a few days ago.

Videos won't play in browser (firefox) but work fine on the app, even older ones where the media player worked perfectly in the past.

Clearing cookies or changing browser only brings temporarily relief, before it starts to buffer weirdly and then break again.

The moment I select a video it opens for a half a second before kicking me back into list view, happening consistently on nearly all videos, with the odd few second video being able to playback.

Nice to know I'm not alone. FYI, This all started when dropbox went down a few days ago. Before then, no problem. Personally, I refuse to tinker with my computer, as they suggested (change this, change that, fool around browsers and cookies....all of which I resist doing) when my videos run just fine on other sites, etc. I want them to go to dropbox technical support but I don't think they will because I'm using a free version. Fingers crossed.

drop box itself ..itwould help if you read the thread..and the comment of "yellow bear" who has the same issue

HI @YellowBear, does this occur for all videos on your account? What are the filetypes of videos you're playing and what size are they?

all mp4, preview gives the same size for the three I'm having trouble with, hmmmm 192.93 mb but they have different KB sizes

I'm having the exact same problem. Following hoping for an answer soon.

I'm having the exact same problem. Following hoping for an answer soon, this is really a problem.

Hannah

Hey everyone, thanks for letting us know about the issue you're having.

Trying different browsers, clearing cache, trying private browsing windows, etc., are the most common and necessary troubleshooting steps when it comes to web issues.

You'll find that most times the issues are resolved after following these steps, so that's why we recommend them.

If the issue persists on the Dropbox website across different browsers, please let us know.

IT PERSISTS in my case

Still happening for me as well.

YellowBear

Tried a fresh login on a private browser session with 0 extensions and cookies and it only temporarily worked, before the usual problems of kicking me out of various videos arose.

I didn't change ANYTHING with my browser or extensions in the last months, and yet the problem started around a week ago out of the blue, even with videos that I have watched plenty of times without problems in the past.

I am on firefox. The problem seems to be especially strong on longer videos, with some shorter videos being able to be played, but also buffering longer than usual and expected...

This whole thing doesn't sound like user error to me tbh. Especially because clearing cookies or changing to private browsing only brings temporarily relief. And multiple users on here having the same exact problem-description, around the same timeframe.

Sounds more like the preview-player function got messed up on dropbox end, as its consistently and reproducible happening over multiple sessions.

I am actually a paying customer with monthly subscription, which sucks, if the problem isn't going to be investigated and fixed this month, I don't see a reason to not cancel.

trinatoday

Hi Everyone - hope you can help!

Today, I'm having a hard time accessing all of my large video files (anything over 1GB). I can view the files in the folder, but when I open them, they'll display for 1-ish seconds and then close immediately. I can't play any of the large video files.

Does anyone have any advice? Smaller files are opening just fine, even smaller video files. But larger ones aren't viewable at all today. I'm working from the web version (not the app).

Appreciate your help!

trinatoday

Was able to find a fix from another thread if anyone is encountering the same error today.
+ Check that it worked in another browser (it did)
+ Clear cookies from dropbox.com

Video is playing correctly now.

Hope that helps!

R-

Almost every time I open a video file to preview on web, I either get a white screen (if I view in a new tab) or get kicked back to whatever folder I was just in (if I click the file to preview it).

This is annoying because I work with someone on these files and they need to be able to leave comments.

What's also annoying is I'll see the regular video preview and comments for a second before they disappear.

Shorter files around the 2 minute mark preview as intended but longer video files (what we're primarily working on) always run into this issue.

I've encountered this issue on Windows 10, macOS, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, even Edge. No matter what OS or browser I use, it won't let me get to the comments or preview on longer videos.
And when I say longer, I'm just talking 10-62 minutes long, nothing crazy.

I can see the preview and comments on mobile; unfortunately that's not really a solution for me though.

I scoured the web to see if anyone else has had this issue and came up with nothing.
The files are just mp4s, usually in 480p, other resolutions and bitrates have the same issue though.

This is a recent issue, these exact same files were never a problem a week ago.

Here's an image of the white screen I keep getting every time I open one of these files in its own tab.

If anyone has any ideas or solutions please let me know. ❤️

tl;dr- Every time I open a 10 minute or longer video file (mp4) to preview on web, I get kicked back to whatever folder I was just in.

Walter

Hey @R- - sorry to hear you're having issues with this and thanks for all the details.

Just one last thing though, have you ensured that your browsers are completely up to date?

If you did, you can also try clearing the browser's cache or even try an incognito window with no extensions or plugins running.

Keep me posted anyhow!

R-

Hey Walter!

All my browsers are up to date. I tried clearing the cache and unfortunately that didn't help.

Going into incognito almost worked, but as soon as I clicked on anything I was sent back to having a blank white page again.

Any other suggestions? 🙏

Hannah

Thanks for the additional info, everyone.

For those who are having this issue, can you please specify which browsers you're using to access Dropbox and which specific browser version?

I'm using Chome version 110.0.5481.77

Version 110.0.5481.77 (Official Build) (64-bit)