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Why is JWPlayer (6, 7) is unable to play certain MP4 video files after conversion?

I am converting videos (. -> .mp4 (h264) using handbrakeCLI command The conversion goes just fine and I can play the re-encoded video in windows media, VLC, real play etc.

But the video is not playing in self hosted jwplayer. It says Error loading media: File could not be played

If I upload this video to youtube or daily motion, it plays fins after upload and processing.

What I am missing? Is my handbrake command missing some parameter or player setup is wrong?

Let me know if you need more info. Please help.

Thanks

4 Community Answers

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mohammad.musa

User  
0 rated :

Looks like file name can cause this problem. What characters are NOT supported in mp4 file name?

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mohammad.musa

User  
0 rated :

An & character in video file name is enough to cause this issue.
Is that a generic solution to take care of all reserved characters in file name in one shot?

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mohammad.musa

User  
0 rated :

If I change the file name from "mike & molly.mp4" to "mike molly.mp4", it plays fine!! How can I handle & and other special characters so that JWPlayer can handle all of them including unicode characters? –

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Todd

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Which version of the player are you using? I would expect JW Player 7.1 and higher to URL encode any characters in your file URL.

To test this, I just uploaded a video named bunny&trailer.mp4 to my test S3 bucket and the video played correctly. I also changed the name to bunny & trailer.mp4 (with spaces) and the video played correctly for me as well.

If you are still having trouble with JW 7.1+, I am guessing this might be web server-specific or otherwise related to settings on your web server, but that is not my area of expertise.

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