Embedded YouTube Issue: Video Unavailable

  • I am starting to pull my hair out, and would be immensely grateful for a solution to this weird issue…

    Problem:
    Random embedded videos (hosted on YouTube) display the “Video unavailable” error when starting to play. They do show the Thumbnail & Play button, but once you press it the video controls disappear.

    Example page, scroll down a bit until you see the two videos. The first one works, the second doesn’t:
    [ redundant link removed ]

    Situation
    I have an (German) artist booking website, where I show one or multiple videos on each artist profile.
    Since a couple of months some videos started showing this issue on random videos.
    Sometimes all videos on a page are affected, sometimes it’s a few, sometimes one, sometimes none.
    Occasionally the video plays correctly in one browser, but not in most others.

    Troubleshooting so far + details
    – Re-uploading the video doesn’t help
    – Recompiling and changing the video doesn’t help
    – The videos are allowed to be embedded, some have worked fine in the past
    – I have tried different embed plugins, or the WordPress standard sin e it’s build in nowadays, no effect
    – Different device, mobile or pc, different network, no effect.
    – It’s a live website, turning off all plugins isn’t possible, I’ll set up a clone shortly.
    – I don’t recognize any related error in the console (FF developer tools), but I could overlook something here, not too experienced with debugging an issue like this.

    Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks in advance for any suggestion you might have!

    • This topic was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Jan Dembowski.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Why are you uploading the videos to Youtube and not serving them from WordPress?

    Thread Starter yoranheij

    (@yoranheij)

    You mean uploading it to my own host and serving them directly? I was under the impression that it’s usually recommended and more secure to host many videos on a service like YouTube.

    – The website is currently 300+ pages with 1-5 videos per page, it would use quite a bit of space & bandwidth
    – The YouTube videos have the potential to create traffic to the website (not sure about the amount here, might be neglected, but 19% of the views come from Youtube directly)
    – YouTube takes care of serving different sizes for different devices automatically

    If you have a solution other than YouTube that would be better I’m all ears in theory…

    Nevertheless I have almost a thousand videos uploaded who I then would have to find and re-upload to my own service, not to speak about editing every page on the website individually.

    Thread Starter yoranheij

    (@yoranheij)

    Still no change on my side either. I embedded your video on one of my pages, and it showed the same issue, which makes me wonder if the problem is on youtubes side.

    I have not been able to figure out what causes it, although one strange thing is that if I take the source file of one of the problematic videos, change it (add some images to it, make is shorter, anything), recompile it and reupload it, it still doesn’t display.

    So could it youtube that detects something weird in these videos and refuses to let them be embedded without any warning?

    Thread Starter yoranheij

    (@yoranheij)

    I think I figured out the cause (at least party).

    All affected video’s have a “Copyright claim” tag within the YouTube Studio, because they use audio tracks that are owned by others.

    Once I remove that audio track the embedded video suddenly plays again.

    Now, because you all shout “See, that wasn’t so hard?” – This is the displayed information from YouTube on these videos:

    • Channel impact: Not affected – The Content ID claim on your video doesn’t affect your channel. This is not a copyright strike.
    • Visibility: Public- This video is visible to everybody.
    • Monetization: Ineligible – Even though you’re not in the YouTube Partner Program, ads may be showing on your video.

    The video’s play without any restriction on YouTube, just not embedded on a WordPress website.

    One additional detail (I’m about 95% sure of this): the video’s usually play on Edge, Opera, Firefox, but not Chrome. This I can’t be sure off, I think I’ve had issues with every browser, and I can’t seem to reproduce this behavior currently.

    Can it be that Chrome somehow blocks embedded Youtube videos that are being monetized by somebody else than the channel owner?

    I also have a bunch of video’s that have the same Copyright claim on an audio track, but that play perfectly. However, all unplayable files have a Copyright claim, and the ones that I removed the audio track from suddenly all play (4 so far).

    I hope somebody has an idea, because I have no clue how to proceed. According to YouTube I’m allowed to use the video’s in this way, but it’s not it’s not reliable…

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by yoranheij.
    • This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by yoranheij.

    @yoranheij how did you solve the problem in the end? I have encounter the same issue today. Its almost impossible to get help from Youtube

    Found a fix to this today, if you have direct access with artists your showing on site, ask them to lift the copyright claim on their youtube account, this fixed the issue for me.

    When audio other than that of artists you have access to, I had to create a Vimeo version of the vid, which wasn’t ideal but worked!

    .

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by roybernal11.
Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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