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Hey Foliovision Team,
The new video player release is working great for the majority of people on my site. I did have a couple report that the videos were stalling out on their tablet and mobile devices even after I cleared my website cache, purged my CDN, and the users did a hard browser history/cache refresh.
See attached screenshots. One user helped me do some trouble shooting. They keep getting the video stalling error that you see on the first screenshot. This happens every time they try to play a video on my main website https://countryguitaronline.com Then I also had them run an internet speed test on their mobile and tablet and their download mbps seems to be fast enough. I believe they’re using Chrome but I’d have to confirm that with them.
Do y’all have any suggestions?
Thanks!
Devin
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Hello Devin,
the issue might be related even to an issue with Vimeo CDN and their particular mobile ISP. What happens when they tap the reload arrow? I see it’s slightly out of place on your website.
Thanks,
Martin
Hey Martin,
He said when he taps the reload arrow, the same error occurs. He said it happens just about every time.
I’m actually not sure why that arrow is out of place there. I’ve never seen that error before in all of my testing and I can’t figure out how to reproduce it.
Let me know if you need any other info –
Devin
Hello Devin,
I tested your video on different devices, and while it was working on Samsung Note 4 with Android 4.4.4 or Samsung Galaxy S6 with Android 5.0.2, it didn’t work on my Samsung X-Cover 3 with Android 5.1.1. It’s unfortunate that some Vimeo HLS streams do work just fine which other have issues like this.
I checked what is Vimeo.com doing and it’s playing the MPEG-DASH stream on these phones, so I’ll explore that possibility with FV Player Pro.
Thanks,
Martin
Hey Martin,
Awesome, thanks for checking. Having so many devices these days can be such a pain. If I check the “Disable HLS” option in FV Player Hosting Settings, will that fix it for now just like it did under the previous version/skin of the FV Player?..until you can update the HLS
Thanks,
Devin
Hello Devin,
there is no such option, however FV Player and FV Player Pro 7.2.0.727 which is being released now improves the video loading fallback so that if the HLS fails to play from Vimeo it will go back to using MP4.
We would like to avoid these MP4s, as these are just too easy to download with browser developer tools, which are not available on mobile, but still.
Thanks,
Martin
I forgot to add that this improved fallback is in FV Player Pro Beta, so you have to use the switch in Settings -> FV Player, here’s how: https://foliovision.com/player/basic-setup/switching-fv-player-pro-to-beta
Thanks,
Martin
Gotcha, thanks. I did make the switch earlier and the video was looking a little too crisp. I’ll give that a try in beta. Thanks
I just tried it out and it looks like it’s working about the same in the Release and Beta when I click the button to disable MPEG-DASH. I checked in Google Analytics real time…and checked the events for both. It seems like the videos playing in Release and Beta with MPEG-DASH disabled are playing in html5 and not HLS. I currently have https://countryguitaronline.com set to Beta. Can you tell if it’s playing the videos with disabled MPEG-DASH so it will play smoothly for all the Samsung users?
Hello Devin,
the MPEG-DASH option only affect desktop users. The mobile users on Android and iOS will get HLS out of Vimeo regardless of that.
As I said, since some of the HLS streams often fail on Android, we will test how it will perform when using MPEG-DASH, as that’s what Vimeo.com uses on Android anyway.
Thanks,
Martin
Hey Martin,
I think I might have my acronyms confused. I was thinking HLS is the same thing as MPEG-DASH. No worries, I’ll leave all the fun details to y’all :) Glad you know how to figure it all out.
I’ll keep it on Beta for now with the MPEG-DASH disabled and keep an eye out for updates whenever you get it all ironed out.
Just let me know if you need any other info from me.
Thanks!
Devin
Hello Devin,
FV Player Pro 7.2.1.727.beta is out, you should see it available in updates on your site. It enabled MPEG-DASH on Android version 4.4 and above. It requires latest Google Chrome too, I couldn’t get it to work in Chrome 63 for example. So hopefully your users will be able to upgrade and are not on Android 4.3 anymore.
By disabling MPEG-DASH you are only making the videos easier to download on desktop computers and users in Asia might be experiencing slower streaming. You should keep it enabled unless there is some big issues on Desktop computers. And now with the last update on Android too.
Thanks,
Martin
Hey Martin,
Awesome, thanks! I just ran the update and enabled MPEG-DASH. Cleared cache and purged the CDN. Really appreciate your help finding the issue.
I’ll tell my members with Samsungs to run the Chrome update if needed and see if it’s working again for them.
Let me know if you need me to test anything else.
Thanks again,
Devin
