MP4 files playing audio only in Omeka S

Omeka S
1

I’m currently using Omeka S 4.1.1, and I have a project coming up for my college where students will be submitting smartphone video recordings (mainly mp4 and mov files). We’ve mainly used Omeka S for our oral history (audio only) and student art collections up until now.

I did a test run upload today. The file uploaded to an item no problem, but it only played as an audio file rather than a full video. I changed to different themes, but the file still only played as an audio clip. I switched to different web browsers to see if that was the issue. On Chrome, it only loads as an audio file despite the MIME type saying video/mp4. On Microsoft Edge, it loads as a video but won’t play at all. On Firefox, it says the file is corrupted, but I don’t know what to look for within the file itself. Right now the theme is set as Foundation, and I have embed media on item pages check in site settings.

I don’t know if it’s a server issue, a theme setting issue, a file corruption issue, or human error issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

2

Omeka makes no changes to uploaded files. It’s possible that the file uses an unsupported codec that browsers are unable to process. Web browsers are a little finicky about MP4 files. Try loading the file in a standalone video editor and changing the codec, or setting a different encoding in your video recording app.

3

If you can share or link to the file, then we might be able to say more. I suspect the issue will be with what codecs are used in the mp4 file you tried: mp4 is basically a generic container, and so it’s possible to have one that will play some places but not others, or will play on a desktop locally but not in a web browser.

4

Sorry for the delay in my response, but thank you for your suggestion.

I was able to edit the file’s codec, and it’s playing as a video now.

5

Thank you for following up on my question.

I was able to edit the file’s codec, and it’s playing as a video. As a follow-up question, is there a way to adjust the way a video presents on a page? The video is taking up a lot more space than I want it to. I’m very much a novice when it comes to working with video files, so I’m not sure if that’s something to change in the file itself or if that’s a setting I can change within Omeka S. This project is still in the early stages, but here is a link to the test page https://blueridgearchive.org/s/helene/item/308

6

The video appears large for two reasons:

  1. It’s actually large, it’s 1080x1920 pixels (a 1080p video). It’s actually displaying at a smaller size than its “true” size on a standard desktop.
  2. It’s a vertical video. The styles for the theme you have (and most of our themes) constrain the display of media only by the width. So things like this video that are taller than they are wide can still display pretty big.

You can change the CSS to constrain the video size. Something like

video {
    max-height: 90vh;
}

will make it so the video is never more than 90% of the height of the user’s window or device. You could also set an explicit maximum with something like max-height: 600px or whatever size you want to set as a limit.

You can add that CSS code to your theme manually, or use the CSS Editor module.

7

Thank you so much! That gives me some options to work with depending on the type of video students submit for the project.