html5 video is not playing mp4 error “Invalid Source”?

Question

I am trying HTML5 video tag and I have downloaded a Microsoft sample and trying to run it but a strange thing is happening, and it is that it plays video coming from a URL (

Answer 1

I got this problem and found that the video codec was not supported.

Get a video converter software (like Oxelon - it is free) and choose the output to be .mp4 (even is the source is .mp4). Choose the video codec to be "H264" and the audio codec to be "AAC". This will solve your problem.

Answer 2

Im on Windows 7 Pro. I develop locally and then host/serve remotely. Trying to load a local mp4 file while developing locally ran into this identical situation. No combination of using localhost/myvideo.mp4 or 127.0.0.1/myvideo.mp4 or /aaa/myvideo.mp4 or myvideo.mp4 in same directory as file got things to work...but referencing a full URL like http://www.mywebsite.com/myvideo.mp4 did, as above.

On local machine, Chrome shows no error messages...just shows black box with controls. No clues as to whats up. Switched to IE and it showed the black box and controls and the error message. 'Invalid source'

I focused on @steveax question and Mime types.

Turns out IIS in this version of windows/IIS does not have a MIME type setup for .mp4. No clue why not...but not.

To add the MP4 MIME type, open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and follow these steps:

• Highlight Default Web Site on the left panel;
• Double-click MIME Types on the right panel;
• Scroll down the list and notice that there is no .mp4;
• On the right panel again, click Add: at the first field, write .mp4 and on the field below write video/mp4
• Click OK and you are done.

Restart IIS!

Answer 3

I had the same problem

For Internet Explorer

I used FormatFactory, setting up AAC encoding for audio and H264 for output for the mp4 format, in "High Quality and big size"

For Google Chrome

I converted my original video to the webm format thanks to Free WebM Video Converter (make sure you uncheck everything that would like to install ads).

It took a long time but then it worked in Chrome.

<video controls>
  <source src="thevideo.mp4" type="video/mp4">
  <source src="thevideo.webm" type="video/webm">
</video>

Answer 4

I had a similar issue but it's just with IE 11. Firefox works great.

On IE, if I go to Compatibility View and add "localhost" to the list, the box disappears altogether.