[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #42560: mp4 files do not play in Safari

[WordPress Trac]

#42560: mp4 files do not play in Safari
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 Reporter:  cg923         |       Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)  |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  normal        |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Media         |     Version:  4.8.3
 Severity:  normal        |  Resolution:  invalid
 Keywords:                |     Focuses:
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Changes (by blobfolio):

 * status:  new => closed
 * resolution:   => invalid


Comment:

 Replying to [comment:4 cg923]:
 > I'm a little new to all this so I apologize if I don't explain myself
 clearly.

 No worries! Everybody has to start somewhere. :)

 > When we use the built in wordpress file uploader and upload an mp4 file
 it will not play in Safari.  The resource is loaded, it seems, as the site
 will return 200 for the video file, but it won't play, probably because
 wordpress is offering the file in one chunk, whereas Safari is trying to
 load it in bytes.

 When a web browser asks a server for an asset (an image, video, web page,
 etc.), the first thing Apache does is check to see whether that asset
 exists. (A file that literally exists on your server is what I meant
 earlier by "static content".)

 If the file exists, Apache just passes it along. Job done, champagne!

 If it doesn't, this is when WordPress gets involved. Apache will route the
 request through WordPress and PHP, and WordPress will put together some
 sort of response to send back to the browser. (Usually this will be some
 sort of HTML document.)

 This is all rather technical, but the main takeaway is that — unless you
 have deviated from the default Apache/WordPress configuration — WordPress
 is ''not'' serving anything but text.

 When your blog address is entered into Safari, Safari asks your server for
 that document, then parses the HTML it gets back for any additional URLs
 (images, video, etc.), then sends additional requests for those.

 When you uploaded the MP4 video through WordPress, WordPress simply saved
 a copy of it on the server. Whenever any browser asks for that, Apache
 will find it and serve it directly.


 ----

 There are plenty of other reasons your MP4 might not be streaming the way
 you expect:

  * Apache might not be configured correctly to handle that kind of
 request.
  * The video might not be encoded with web-streaming in mind.
  * Safari's release cycle has not yet evolved to cope with the fast pace
 of web development; if you are even a couple versions out-of-date (the
 latest release also requires the latest MacOS), MP4 support might be
 incomplete or buggy.


 ----


 I'm going to go ahead and close this ticket as this issue is not related
 to WordPress, but thank you again for reporting, and I hope you discover
 the nature of the issue.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/42560#comment:5>
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