Your video is playing the whole time it is processing. From the moment the upload bar finishes, the file you uploaded is the file visitors see. What runs afterwards is a second pass that builds the smaller quality versions the player switches between on a weak connection. The badge on the tile is reporting on that second pass, not on whether your video works.
Processing means the quality versions are still being built
The tile in the builder reads Processing.... On the project page itself the note reads "Processing, playback quality will improve shortly". Both describe the same second pass.
That pass is checked every 30 seconds, up to 120 checks. One hour is a hard ceiling. A video cannot sit at Processing past it: on the hundred and twentieth check it marks itself failed instead of waiting longer. So the answer to "should I wait or is it broken" is that you wait up to an hour, and you do not have to watch it. You can close the builder. The status moves on its own, and you are emailed once the video is ready, as long as it is still attached to a project at that moment.
If a video has been Processing for more than an hour, refresh the page. The status you are looking at is stale.
Processing failed does not mean the video is lost
The tile then reads Processing failed, and the project page reads "Could not process this video". Your video still plays. What you lose is the automatic quality switching, so a viewer on a slow connection gets the full-size file rather than a lighter version of it.
There are four causes, and the first two account for nearly all of them.
- The file could not be read as a video. Usually an .mp4 that is not really MP4 video inside, or an upload that arrived truncated. Re-export it from your editor as H.264 MP4 rather than renaming the extension.
- The video is longer than 30 minutes. Thirty minutes is the limit for automatic processing. Longer videos are not refused as a policy, they are done by hand: raise a ticket with support and the team will publish it for you.
- The encoding job errored or was cancelled.
- The hour ran out.
The builder does not show you which of the four it was, so if the video is under 30 minutes and re-exporting does not help, raise a ticket and quote the project.
A failed video still costs one of the day's uploads
To retry, remove the failed video from the project and upload it again.
A failed attempt counts against your daily video allowance. Retrying is not free. Without a membership that allowance is three videos in a rolling 24 hours, and every paid plan raises it. An upload that never finished, where the progress bar stopped partway and no video ever appeared in your project, does not count against it, so a broken connection does not lock you out for the day.
If the video never appeared at all
A video is added to your project only after the upload finishes. If you closed the tab or lost your connection while the bar was still moving, there is nothing to fix and nothing to delete: the video was never added. Upload it again.
Related
Before you upload again
Uploads are capped per rolling 24 hours by membership, and a video that reached processing before failing still counts against that cap. Video uploads: daily limits, length and format has the figures.