{"id":1336,"date":"2026-06-13T03:45:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T03:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/?p=1336"},"modified":"2026-06-13T03:48:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T03:48:04","slug":"chrome-looked-at-my-video-and-said-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/13\/chrome-looked-at-my-video-and-said-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Chrome Looked at my Video and Said Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This was driving me nuts.  When I upload videos recorded from my Pixel phone onto my WordPress blog, they would not render on the post page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s how I found the problem and how I fixed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The problem is the codec.  An mp4 file is just a wrapper.  What matters is what&#8217;s inside it.  Chrome plays H.264 video reliably but if your file was encoded with H.265\/HEVC (common from newer phones and screen recorders), Chrome often won&#8217;t play it even though the <code>.mp4<\/code> extension looks fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ultimate solution is not to upload videos that are encoded with HEVC or H.265.  For this I changed my Pixel 8 camera settings.  Turn this off:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"728\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Pixel8CameraSettingForHEVC-728x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Pixel8CameraSettingForHEVC-728x1024.jpg 728w, https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Pixel8CameraSettingForHEVC-213x300.jpg 213w, https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Pixel8CameraSettingForHEVC-768x1080.jpg 768w, https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Pixel8CameraSettingForHEVC.jpg 1008w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 728px) 100vw, 728px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But to fix videos I had already uploaded, I needed to install ffmpeg  ( sudo apt install ffmpeg).  With that I could inspect my video files with: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>ffprobe myvideo.mp4<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Looking out the output revealed the stream was using hvec.  I was able to re-encode them with H.264 using:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -movflags +faststart output.mp4<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I did this right inside the WordPress wp-content directory and fixed it right on the live site (you need to rename the output file back to the original file name since that is what WordPress is expecting)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally, I am able to watch my own videos using Chrome that I upload here.  Like check out <a href=\"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/traxxas-disruptor-day-4\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/traxxas-disruptor-day-4\/\">my Traxxas Disruptor wiping out in slow motion<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was driving me nuts. When I upload videos recorded from my Pixel phone onto my WordPress blog, they would not render on the post page. Here&#8217;s how I found the problem and how I fixed it. The problem is the codec. An mp4 file is just a wrapper. What matters is what&#8217;s inside it. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1344,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions\/1344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}