HTML5 video will not loop

Question

I have a video as a background to a web page, and I am trying to get it to loop. Here is the code:

<video autoplay='true' loop='true' muted='true'>
  <source src='/admin/wallpapers/linked/4ebc66e899727777b400003c' type='video/mp4'></source>
</video>

Even though I have told the video to loop, it does not. I also tried to get it to loop with the onended attribute (as per this Mozilla support thread, I also tried that bit of jQuery). Nothing has worked so far. Is it an issue with Chrome, or my code?

Edit:

I checked the Network events and HEAD of a working copy (http://fhsclock-labs.heroku.com/no-violence) versus the application I'm trying to get working. The difference is the working copy is serving up the video from a static asset on Heroku (via Varnish, apparently), whilst mine is serving from GridFS (MongoDB).

The Network tab of Chrome's Inspector show that in my application, the video is requested three times. One time the Status is "pending", the second is "canceled", and the final one is 200 OK. The working copy only shows two requests, one's Status is pending and the other is 206 Partial Content. However, after the video plays once, that request changes to "Cancelled" and it makes another request for that video. In my application, that does not happen.

As for Type, in my application, two are "undefined" and the other "video/mp4" (which it is supposed to be). In the working app, all of the requests are "video/mp4".

In addition, I'm getting Resource interpreted as Other but transferred with MIME type undefined. warnings in the Console.

I'm not really quite sure where to begin on this. It's my belief that the issue is server-side, as serving the file as static assets works fine. It could be that the server isn't sending the correct content type. It could be an issue with GridFS. I do not know.

At any rate, the source is here. Any insight that you can offer is appreciated.

Answer 1

Ah, I just stumbled into this exact problem.

As it turns out, looping (or any sort of seeking, for that matter) in <video> elements on Chrome only works if the video file was served up by a server that understands partial content requests. i.e. the server needs to honor requests that contain a "Range" header with a 206 "Partial Content" response. This is even the case if the video is small enough to be fully buffered by chrome, and no more server-round trips are made: if your server didn't honor chrome's Range request the first time, the video will not be loopable or seekable.

So yes, an issue with GridFS, although arguably Chrome should be more forgiving.

Answer 2

Simplest workaround:

$('video').on('ended', function () {
  this.load();
  this.play();
});

The 'ended' event fires when the video reaches the end, video.load() resets the video to the beginning, and video.play() starts it playing immediately once loaded.

This works well with Amazon S3 where you don't have as much control over server responses, and also gets around Firefox issues related to video.currentTime not being settable if a video is missing its length metadata.

Similar javascript without jQuery:

document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].onended = function () {
  this.load();
  this.play();
};

Answer 3

Looks like its been an issue in the past, there are at least two closed bugs on it, but both state that it was fixed:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=39683

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18846

Since Chrome and Safari both use webkit based browsers you might be able to use some of these work arounds: http://blog.millermedeiros.com/2011/03/html5-video-issues-on-the-ipad-and-how-to-solve-them/

function restartVideo(){
vid.currentTime = 0.1; //setting to zero breaks iOS 3.2, the value won't update, values smaller than 0.1 was causing bug as well.
vid.play();
}

//loop video
vid.addEventListener('ended', restartVideo, false);

Answer 4

My situation:

I have the exact same problem, however changing the header of the response message alone didnt do. No loop, replay or seek. Also a pure stop doesnt work, but that could be my configuration.

Answer:

According to some sites (couldnt find them anymore) its also possible to trigger the load() method right after the video ends, and before the next one is supposed to start. That should reload the source causing a once again working video/audio element.

@john

Please note that your answers/links are normal bugs, and not focused on this problem. Using a server/webserver is what causes this problem. Whereas the bugs these links describe are of a different kind. Thats also why the answer isnt working.

I hope it helps, i am still looking for a solution.

Answer 5

Just in case none of the answers above help you, make sure you don't have your inspector running with the Disable cache option checked. Since Chrome grabs the video from cache, it will basically work once. Just debugged this for 20 minutes before realizing this was the cause. For reference and so I know I am not the only one someone else's chromium bug report.

Answer 6

it is super lame but dropbox use the right status code. So upload to dropbox and replace the www by dl.

Thus using a dropbox url the video play fine.

Answer 7

I know this doesn't pertain exactly to the question asked, but if someone comes across this when having a similar issue, make sure that you have your sources in order properly.

I was loading an mp4 and a webm file and noticed that the video was not looping in Chrome. It was because the webm file was the first source listed so Chrome was loading the webm file and not the mp4.

Hope that helps someone else that comes across this issue.

<video autoplay loop>
    <source src="/path-to-vid/video.mp4" type="video/mp4">
    <source src="/path-to-vid/video.webm" type="video/webm">
</video>