Hello, we are having an issue that just recently cropped up relating to self-hosted background videos and the way that they load in Safari. I don't recall this being a problem previously, but Safari seems to display the static image of the video until it has completed loading and only then will it start playing. I was always under the impression that these types of videos should play as they're loading. I made sure that we are using the latest theme version as well as the latest version of Wordpress. I tried making the videos shorter, tried encoding them various different ways, tried moving the videos to AWS S3, and nothing seems to make a difference. Chrome loads the videos perfectly. This problem seems to be exclusive to Safari. Any advice on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.
Hello, and thank you for your response. Judith, I followed the link you provided and have confirmed that video can load normally in other browsers and all of the correct formats are in place. I also confirmed that the media types were already present in the .htaccess file. Thank you Tahir. Please keep us posted on anything you hear from the developer. Perhaps Safari is now requiring video directives not currently implemented in the theme.
I've tried replicating this issue locally on Safari 18, but so far, I haven’t encountered the same problem. Here's a screen recording of the loading process on my end, showing the video playing while it finishes loading: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xt7nq6l1nd08ydzffzsly/safari-video-playback.mp4?rlkey=g4sg6fklx3xgu37pq9swxgukm&st=h84p6p58&dl=0
Could you let me know which version of Safari you’re using? Also, as a side note, the video file you’re using for playback hasn’t been properly compressed for web. At 32MB, it’s significantly larger than recommended; ideally, you should compress it to under 5MB for web playback.
Hello! It looks as though you can mark this one solved. It was definitely an older version of Safari that was the culprit. After updating the version 18.0, everything is working as it should. I apologize for wasting any of your time. Thanks so much for looking into it for us.
Hello, we are having an issue that just recently cropped up relating to self-hosted background videos and the way that they load in Safari. I don't recall this being a problem previously, but Safari seems to display the static image of the video until it has completed loading and only then will it start playing. I was always under the impression that these types of videos should play as they're loading. I made sure that we are using the latest theme version as well as the latest version of Wordpress. I tried making the videos shorter, tried encoding them various different ways, tried moving the videos to AWS S3, and nothing seems to make a difference. Chrome loads the videos perfectly. This problem seems to be exclusive to Safari. Any advice on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.
Hi there,
Thanks for writing to us.
To help troubleshoot the issue, please refer to this https://themenectar.ticksy.com/article/9066/edit/ it will help you troubleshoot the video background issue.
I hope this proves helpful for you. If you have any more questions or run into any problems, please feel free to reach out.
Best regards,
Hey Again,
This could be a new Safari rendering issue. Escalating this to the developer for further response.
Best,
ThemeNectar Support Team
Hello, and thank you for your response. Judith, I followed the link you provided and have confirmed that video can load normally in other browsers and all of the correct formats are in place. I also confirmed that the media types were already present in the .htaccess file. Thank you Tahir. Please keep us posted on anything you hear from the developer. Perhaps Safari is now requiring video directives not currently implemented in the theme.
Hey seanlobdell,
I've tried replicating this issue locally on Safari 18, but so far, I haven’t encountered the same problem. Here's a screen recording of the loading process on my end, showing the video playing while it finishes loading: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xt7nq6l1nd08ydzffzsly/safari-video-playback.mp4?rlkey=g4sg6fklx3xgu37pq9swxgukm&st=h84p6p58&dl=0
Could you let me know which version of Safari you’re using? Also, as a side note, the video file you’re using for playback hasn’t been properly compressed for web. At 32MB, it’s significantly larger than recommended; ideally, you should compress it to under 5MB for web playback.
Hello! It looks as though you can mark this one solved. It was definitely an older version of Safari that was the culprit. After updating the version 18.0, everything is working as it should. I apologize for wasting any of your time. Thanks so much for looking into it for us.
I'm glad to hear :)
Cheers