Chrome HTML5 Videos stop working if too many tabs are open - Memory issue?

Question

I\'m using jQuery to dynamically write objects, and running videojs to init them. After I play a video, SOMETIMES when I try to play it again, it

Answer 1

Stu is correct. But sometimes, in my experience, Chrome ignores the preload="none" attribute and goes ahead and opens a connection anyway. I've had much problem with this when developing a site which had many smaller videos on it. The connections blocked the rest of the content (images, custom fonts (and when custom fonts are delayed, the text does not even render)) My solution was to build an own preloader which loads the images. This made sure I could control at least when the images (which was the most crucial aspect from a design point of view) was loaded.

That solved the problem with images not showing but the problem still remained. So the best solution is to set up subdomains pointing to the same server, like: v1.server.com, v2.server.com, and so on. This means you won't have to move your files and you get the benefit from enabling browsers to have more open connections. Watch out for increased dns lookup time though.

Answer 2

There is a known bug with Chrome. It will not play the same video in multiple tabs at the same time. This is probably what you are running into if you are a developer and happen to have your page open in two tabs at the same time.

The bug has been known for almost 5 years as of this writing. Feel free to visit the Chromium bug report and star the issue. Hopefully it will increase in priority for the Chrome devs.

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In the meanwhile, a workaround is to use a random query parameter in your video src. For example, instead of <video src="vid.mp4">, use <video src="vid.mp4?_u=1253412">. This will break Chrome's caching mechanism and allow the same video to be streamed to two different tabs at the same time.

Answer 3

Exactly how many video tags to you have? What do they look like? Do they include preload='none' attribute? Are the source videos all on the server?

I ask because if you have more than six video tags on a single page pointing to the same source server then you could be experiencing "connection starvation":

• Chrome allows only six open connections to a single server (based on DNS name in the URL)
• the html5 video tag's preload attribute default value is 'auto'
• Chrome's auto behavior is to preload some data and leave the connection open ready to pull more data for the video

So, with more than six video tags on a single page pointing to a single server, the videos will not play. To resolve this particular problem, set the preload attribute to 'none'

Answer 4

I had a similar but related issue which I can expand on slightly here.

I had 14 different small videos on a page but only 2 were available at a time. Setting preload = 'none' didn't fix the issue so I also used a data attribute to store the src, and remove the src for all videos that aren't currently being viewed.