Videos Load Erratically

Hello helpful forum!

I have a scene with 7 videos all mp4, using the same codec. All 7 videos equal 181mbs. When I load the scene sometimes the videos don’t load, when I refresh the page the ones that didn’t load will be there but a previous video will no longer load.

I have tested on my mac through Chrome, Safari and Firefox and a refresh of the page always sorts it out but on Windows using Edge as my browser the videos load erratically as explained above.

On my clients PC laptop none of the videos load but strangely, some of the audio will play.

What could be the problem?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Jennifer

MTN Gallery by My3Ideas (shapespark.com)

We are still investigating this problem. We have seen scenes with multiple videos that would randomly freeze a browser during loading and in that case it looked like a codec issue. We will update this thread after some more tests.

1 Like

One thing that we have discovered is that there is a bug in interaction between ‘progressive loader’ and ‘video texture control’ extensions. We are working on a fix, but you could also temporarily disable progressive loader in the Shapespark editor ‘Viewer’ tab.

1 Like

Hi @jan, my client has noticed something with the regards to the videos. When he loads the scene, some of the videos are not at the start of the video. It’s as if they’ve already been played and paused. Is this a browser cache issue. I tested on my browser with the history, cache and cookies cleared and I experienced the same issue. I also sent the link to my husband’s machine to view on a brand new browser (meaning he has never used the walkthrough) and he also had the videos in a “pre-played” state. The videos need to be at the start.

Please advise.
Thank you so much
Jennifer

Hi @peepshowillustration, it is indeed the case the the ‘Video texture control’ can pause a video after it already played a couple of initial frames. In your case, if the videos were black after the scene is loaded, would it be acceptable, or do you need the first frame to be shown?

Thanks for getting back to me @jan It would be very acceptable for them to start on black. But just so I understand, I could create a 1 sec freeze frame at the beginning of the movie file, and it would be unnoticeable that the movie has started to play? Then does the video control take over and pause the video until the user presses play?

I also just refreshed the scene and all the videos appear to be at frame 1… it’s very confusing.

It is rather something that we need to address on our end, 1 sec freeze frame can give an impression to a user that nothing is happening, so the user can continue clicking and pausing the video again.

I also tested on an iphone xs max and it looks like more than just a few frames are loaded :thinking: I’ll test adding a second of black for each video. Thank you for your wisdom :slight_smile:

Good morning @jan I tested the video with 1 sec up front of a black frame.
I included time code, as a test, to see how far into the video is loaded till the extension takes over to tell the video to pause.

It is completely random likely to do with internet speed and traffic. So this work around is not going to work. How do I get the video to be at frame 1 until the user presses play?

This is an issue for me as my client doesn’t want the videos to look like they have already been played.

The extension that tells the video to play when the trigger is activated seems to load after the video texture loads, is there anyway to reorder those actions?

Hope this makes sense, thanks in advance for your help as always.
Jennifer

We will ensure the videos either display the first frame or are completely black until played. Do you have a launch date for the gallery?

The first frame of the video will be perfect. Not all the videos start from black so it’s safer to use the first frame. The gallery is for the client’s thesis which he presenting end of January but I would like, if possible, for it to be done by the end of December as I need to wrap the project up.

Thank you so much, I’m very appreciative.
Jennifer

Tomorrow we plan a release that will fix loading issues for scenes with several longer videos and that will also ensure videos are stopped at the first frame.

Excellent news, thank you very much! Any special action I need to take?

No, the scenes hosted on our infrastructure will automatically use the new viewer version after the release.

If you are experiencing long loading times for scenes with multiple video textures when opened in the Shapespark desktop application, then this issue will disappear when the desktop application automatically updates itself to the newest version.

We’ve just released the new version. Could you verify the videos works reliably now?

BRILLIANT! It all works perfectly.

I tested on a Mac using Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Chrome took a lot longer to load though. Thanks google… The other 2 loaded very quickly with Firefox being the fastest.

I also tested in Windows on Edge and it loaded quickly with the videos at the 1st frame. Chrome in Windows also loaded a bit slower than Edge but not as slow as on Mac.

Thank you so much for fixing it up, I really appreciate it.

Thank you and Seasons Greetings to you and your team :star_struck:
Jennifer

1 Like

Thanks for testing it! Happy Holidays to you as well!:slight_smile:

1 Like