Uploaded videos suddenly Failing to Encode

[WaldenGreen]

In Brief: As of last night all uploaded videos are failing to encode. This appears to be a problem on Weebly's end as this is a process I'm exremely familiar with and I've eliminated all possibly sources of the problem at my end, eventually going so far as to re-upload videos which are currently on Weebly and working just fine, but which, when uploaded again will now "Fail to Encode". Our school is relying on Weebly during Covid-19 Remote School and desperately need this to be fixed ASAP. Your services has been nothing short of excellent thus far, so we very much hope you can address this issue quickly!

More details: Yesterday evening I needed to add a video and it failed to encode. Since I've done this with Weebly so many times the first thing I did was spend hours on my end trying to figure out what was wrong with a new video I needed to post for staff training purposes. I went all the way back to iMovie, exported the movie again, etc. etc. All steps worked properly. I tried various browsers and file names, just in case there was some weird browser update mucking things up, but nothing worked. Upload went fine as usual, video went to the encoding queue, and then failed to encode every time. Tried re-encoding the video with Handbrake into a couple different formats, which shouldn't have been necessary since what I was doing had always worked in the past, but you have to look at all the possible issues, so I did that. No luck. Finally I realized the problem almost had to be at Weebly's end so I took a video I knew worked before without issue and uploaded it again. It "failed to encode". At this point I have eliminated essentially all possible sources of this issue on our end and have established that even video files which are known to work with Weebly in the past will no longer encode. This points to the problem being at Weebly's end.

Sure hope you can get this worked out quickly. I'm sure you are incredibly busy during this time, but please do your best and much thanks for your help and service!

[NT11]

Both teachers in our department are having the same issue this week.

Weebly folks: can you help us understand why this is happening and how to solve it?

[Bernadette3]

Thanks for posting. Our engineers fixed this issue earlier today, although it's possible there may be a queue considering everyone is going to try to upload their videos again. Can you please check to see if your videos are uploading properly? Thanks in advance! 

@WaldenGreen

@NT1

[WaldenGreen]

Thank you! They are indeed working properly again.

[Bernadette3]

Thank you so much for verifying! Appreciate you.  

[WaldenGreen]

Hate to say it, but the problem is back today. Already tried twice. Worked fine last night, and today it's down again, at least the couple of times I tried it. The queue was also extra long, so possibly things are just backlogged with too many users trying to complete uploads?

[Bernadette3]

Oh no! Yes, I can definitely imagine there is going to be a queue considering how many people reported the issue. Does the error appear to be the same? We usually have more traffic during the day so I'm hoping the issue clears up for you by the evening. 

[drld2021]

With ALL DUE RESPECT...THIS ISSUES IS NOT FIXED!  This failure to encode is impacting our business!!!!  What is Weebly doing about this!!! ...beyond the standard COVID-19 excuses!!!

Dr. Bennett

[puurteam]

This issue is happening on my site, still. It happened in April and now again. Last night I had to reload about 10 videos. Why is this happening and what is being done to fix this problem?

[Adam7]

Were those 10 already uploaded in the past and no longer working, or were these just 10 new videos you were trying to add?

[WaldenGreen]

This problem still persists, but I *think* I've finally got it narrowed down:

I *believe* the problem is that the maximum file-size of the HD Video we upload is not accurate. I use Handbrake to sharpen videos and re-endode before uploading. Since Weebly re-encodes everything to 720p and compresses it considerably, I have to do this as I'm doing screen-recorded tutorials for educators, students and remote-learners during our pandemic, and I need them to be able to see the text clearly. Without pre-sharpening the 720p videos Weebly creates are so blurry they can be almost unreadable at times, especially with smaller text. Yesterday I needed to upload another video, and it ended up being about 950mb, so easily within the 1GB maximum file-size. But it failed to encode. I tried any number of Handbrake settings; VFR vs. Constant Framerate, Profile Level, - you name it I probably tried it. The only thing that finally worked was massively compressing my video down to about 275mb using the "constant quality" slider. That was it. I didn't bother trying to tweak that setting over and over again to figure out what the actual maximum file-size was; that one will have to do. But in the end it was clear that it was a file-size issue when this should not have been the case.

My suggestion: Just stop re-encoding our stuff down to 720p. Give us a maximum file size like we currently have (an *accurate* one), and let us upload whatever movie format we produce within that file-size limit. Then you wouldn't have to have systems converting our videos. There wouldn't be any conversion failures. We wouldn't be limited to 720p. There are a lot of upsides to this. Of course, users could produce videos that won't work well on many systems, but it would be up to the end-user, not Weebly. Considering the systems doesn't work all that well currently, that would still be better, as all you would need would be a guide to creating videos that work (i.e. "compress your final videos into "x y or z format").

But in the end, I would just love to be able to produce HD Videos, within our 1GB per video limit, upload them, and have them play without Weebly's servers re-encoding them. Would have saved a lot of headaches along the way, and my videos would look a lot better.