Thumbnail generation was working — now it doesn’t

  • First of all — thank you for such an excellent plugin. The thumbnail generation is very well designed and convenient.

    I have a strange problem. I used it for the first time a few days ago. I probably generated thumbs for about 10 videos. It worked beautifully. Then suddenly yesterday it stopped working.

    My host claims that they don’t install FFMPEG unless you buy a very expensive plan. I guess it’s possible it was installed and they just removed it over the weekend but it seems unlikely… but is there any other explanation?

    Is there any other reason that the plugin would have worked (to generate thumbs) and now suddenly does not?

    Is there any workaround if a host doesn’t allow FFMPEG installation. Can it be remotely accessed elsewhere? Like if I had it on my own server or some other external resource?

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Thread Starter mncd

    (@mncd)

    I have since discovered that if I access my WordPress site via my Windows PC then I can’t generate thumbnails as described above.

    However if I access the site via my Mac laptop, then I can? How is this possible?

    It’s the same server… and they said they don’t have FFMPEG installed? I’m so confused.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by mncd.
    Plugin Author Kyle Gilman

    (@kylegilman)

    Most people can’t install FFMPEG on their shared hosting servers so my plugin uses your browser’s built-in video decoding capabilities to generate thumbnails. FFMPEG is only necessary for the more advanced features like automatic thumbnail generation and of course video encoding.

    Which browser doesn’t work on your Windows computer? Do you get an error message either on screen or in the browser’s developer console? Have you tried a different browser? What version of Windows are you running?

    Thread Starter mncd

    (@mncd)

    Both Firefox and Chrome on Windows give me the same FFMPEG error when I hit Generate Thumbnails. It pops up as an alert box in each browser.

    Error: unable to load video in browser for thumbnail generation and FFMPEG not found at /usr/local/bin

    On the other hand, Safari on Mac works perfectly. I swear I had it working on the Windows PC too originally, but I could be wrong, and it definitely doesn’t work now.

    Plugin Author Kyle Gilman

    (@kylegilman)

    What version of Windows are you running? Does this happen with lots of different videos or just one in particular? Can you post a link to a video that’s giving you that error?

    Thread Starter mncd

    (@mncd)

    I’m running the latest version of Windows 10.

    It happens with all the videos I’ve tried.

    Link to one example video…

    Sample video

    Plugin Author Kyle Gilman

    (@kylegilman)

    Unfortunately I can’t duplicate this bug in Windows 10. I’ve disabled FFMPEG and I don’t have any trouble generating thumbnails from the video you posted or any other compatible videos. I can’t figure out what would be different about Windows that would cause this kind of problem. Are you able to play the first video on this test page? https://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html

    Thread Starter mncd

    (@mncd)

    Yes, I can play the H.264 video at the link on both Firefox and Chrome.

    It’s definitely strange because as I said, I believe thumbnail generation was working about a week ago on Windows and then suddenly stopped. Because of the error message, I thought the hosting company had suddenly changed something but obviously that’s not the case. It’s confusing because I don’t believe I made any significant changes to my system software configuration during this time.

    Oh well, I still think the plugin is great and at least it works flawlessly on the Mac. Thanks for the great tool as well as your efforts at troubleshooting.

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