Kyle Gilman

You can test this it out by disabling the Videopack plugin and embedding a video on your site some other way, and also uploading a video file with Videopack disabled. If the problem continues, disable other plugins until you find the culprit. It’s also possible that your theme is causing the problem, so try switching to a different theme as well.

Since your website is freezing after an interaction, that problem is almost certainly a JavaScript error. Take a look at the developer console in your browser and see if there are any specific errors that might point you in the right direction.

Videopack redirects the text output from FFMPEG to a log file in the same directory as the video file in order to track the progress of encoding jobs. Sometimes there’s a problem generating that log file. I don’t know why you’d see that particular bit of garbage text though. I’ll look into it. Is encoding still working fine otherwise? Have you tried clearing the Videopack Encode Queue? I assume you want to receive genuine encoding error emails? Otherwise you could solve the problem by turning off the emails.

Yes you do need FFMPEG on your server to automatically generate thumbnails on upload. I’m surprised you’re able to turn on that automatic thumbnail setting. It seems like I need to do some more testing with multisite installations.

Since you’re able to turn that setting on, I assume you have FFMPEG installed and working on your server.

First try disabling the setting that says “When possible, use the browser’s built-in video capabilities to make thumbnails instead of FFMPEG.” in the FFMPEG Settings tab of the Videopack settings page, then attempt to manually generate a video thumbnail in the Media Library. If generating the thumbnail manually is successful, can you post the full FFMPEG test output from the bottom of the FFMPEG settings tab? If you’re on a multisite installation, which I think you are, then you probably won’t see those settings unless you’re in the Network Admin area.

I don’t think ChatGPT is giving you good advice. Sometimes it will help point you in the right direction, but none of this code references any real Videopack functions. It’s important to remember that ChatGPT never verifies that any of the text it generates is accurate. You might get better results by finding relevant code in the Videopack repository and using that as context for ChatGPT, which will not go out and find code on its own. But I don’t think that will get you very far unless you already know a lot about programming WordPress. I think making what you want would be difficult and require a lot more work than ChatGPT indicated. The thumbnail-creation form is output by the Media Library attachment_fields_to_edit hook and the JavaScript is only loaded in the admin area or when the wp_media scripts are loaded via the wp_enqueue_media() function. If you could find a way to load those Media Library forms on the frontend, you might get somewhere. But there are security checks to prevent thumbnail generation and uploading unless users are logged in. If they’re logged in, and have authorization to upload video files, you can just send them to the WordPress back-end to do that.

Anyway, short answer is, no, I don’t know how to do this.

Ok, I found the problem and fixed it in v4.10.2, which is available now.

I’m seeing the same problem, although I haven’t determined what’s causing it yet. I’ll include a fix in the next update.

It shouldn’t have any effect on Google Analytics, only recording plays in the local database. And only in particularly non-standard Media Library configurations. I recommend installing updates on a test site before wide deployment if you’re relying on my free plugin for your business.

Great! Cron and WP Cron have similar names but aren’t connected unless you’ve manually set cron to run WP Cron. On most sites, WP Cron only runs when a page on your WordPress site is loaded. On a test site with no traffic that means it doesn’t run unless you manually load a page. The encoding event is scheduled to run several seconds after the attachment is uploaded to avoid overcrowding when a large number of videos are added simultaneously. It shouldn’t take more than a minute. If you don’t see the kgvid_cron_new_attachment event in WP Cron that’s probably because it already executed, so that’s a good sign.

Hmmm, I can’t replicate that problem. Are you able to create thumbnails or convert to other formats automatically on upload? It might take a minute for the event to be triggered, so it’s a good idea to wait a bit and then load the Videopack Encode Queue page to see if anything is scheduled. Videopack uses WP-Cron to schedule automatic conversions when a new attachment is created. Can you verify that WP-Cron is working? I recommend WP Control to check event scheduling. The event when a new video is uploaded is kgvid_cron_new_attachment

I just released version 4.10.1 which should fix these problems. Let me know if you need anything else.

Thanks, I’m looking into this. I’m able to replicate the problem on my end, and I’ll try to come up with a solution this weekend.

If you don’t have FFMPEG installed on your server (and you probably don’t) then thumbnails are generated on the client side. Videopack relies on the browser to decode the video image. Usually if it takes a long time to generate thumbnails, it’s because the moov atom that contains the video metadata is at the end of your video, so the browser has to download the entire file before thumbnails start generating. If it’s a particularly large file, it could take a long time. Does this happen on every video you upload or just some? Programs like qt-faststart or MP4Box can quickly move the header to the start of the file without completely re-encoding the file. If you can’t run those programs, you can use a program like Handbrake to re-encode, and make sure “Web optimized” is checked.

I see the problem. I’ll have it fixed in the next update. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

No, HLS is on my list of features to add someday, but I wouldn’t expect it within the next year. Videopack only converts videos to MP4 or webm or ogv files.