Strava app does not play back Video Screenshots [Android]

Known Issues
1

I reported the issue copied below almost two months ago that has to do with video screen captures taken on Windows 11 not playing on Strava for some Android devices. I provided some diagnostic information about the format of the video file, but never heard back. I also reported another issue that audio for those video files, even on devices where the video does play, was not playing even though the volume in the game is turned up.

There’s a new development today in that Strava now has begun blocking those video files from uploading saying the video file format is corrupt.

There’s obviously something wrong with the way you’re creating the video files on Windows 11 to cause video not to play on some devices and audio not to play on all devices. And now Strava apparently has recognized the problem too and has prevented those files from being uploaded at all.

Since I haven’t heard anything for two months, I’m wondering is this a problem you intend to look into or do you no longer intend to support video screenshots recorded on Windows 11 that are uploaded to Strava? I know it took about two months for you to attempt to fix the problem when video screenshots recorded on Windows 11 were not being recorded at all after an OS update. After about 4 months I was hoping there would be a fix for this issue.

2

I think it’s a strava issue not a Zwift issue, I can’t upload many videos regardless of codec used to Strava and they aren’t zwift videos

3

Unfortunately, it’s not a Strava issue because when I download the Zwift videos and try to play them directly on the Android device, they won’t play directly on the Android device either.

Zwift videos that were recorded before the OS update in October play fine, and even recent videos that were uploaded (even though they don’t play on Android) will play on the iPhone version of Strava (albeit without sound). iPhones and web browsers may be more forgiving about incorrectly encoded video files, but apparently Strava expects the video file to be encoded properly. I can upload video files to Strava that are shot on my Android device or video files downloaded from other sources, and they play fine on Strava (video and audio). So it must be a problem with the way Zwift is creating/encoding the files on Windows 11, not a problem with Strava.

4

My recent videos, recorded on Win11, upload and play with audio on the Strava Android app.
They stopped working some time around October, and started working again in mid February

5

Hi @BikePower
I flagged this up to the Video Screenshot engineers, and am waiting for a reply. My personal recollection when we rolled out Video Screenshots is that Zwift creates an h.264-encoded MP4 file. This is the most universally playable web video format in use for the past ~15 years across devices running Apple / Microsoft / Android / Linux operating systems.

Speculation on my part but it is possible that Strava is transcoding the Zwift video to compress the video further. Saving file size to reduce loading/playback time is a likely reason why they’d do a secondary transcode, but I don’t know if that’s what’s happening here. Have you contacted Strava to ask them directly?

What Android device, and which version of Android OS is it running?
Do you mean in the Stava app on that device, or a media player app? If the second - which media player app?

6

No, I haven’t contacted Strava directly, mainly because I’ve had a poor experience getting helpful responses back from Strava. Also, most of my Strava followers have iPhones and could see the videos (but not hear the audio). However, Strava is now blocking the upload of these videos, so it’s more of a problem now than it was then.

I using the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 (the most current Samsung foldable phone) running One UI version 6.1.1 (Android 14). Strava is installed on the Fold6 and has no problem displaying other media. I tested a Zwift video screenshot on the device by transferring the file from Windows 11 to the Fold6 and opening the file in Google Photos on the Fold6. It did not play.

I can play the videos directly on Windows 11 and in a web browser (e.g., the web version of Strava running in Chrome ) but not in the Android app, and the web version of Strava is where I was getting the invalid video file errors today when I tried to upload the Zwift video files (the files finished uploading but as soon as the upload was complete it displayed an exclamation mark for each video with the error message).

7

You strike me as very capable tech-wise, so I’m going to suggest you troubleshoot in a different way.

  1. The video screenshots are saved locally to your Windows hard drive. Open Windows Explorer > Videos > Zwift folder.
  2. Right click > Properties > Details to see the some basic details of the local file like frame dimensions, bit rate, and file size in MB
    002
    0021406×748 78.2 KB
  3. Transfer this local file to your Android device over USB (here’s how), and try to play it back. Does it?
  4. The local file(s) are uploaded to Zwift’s server when you save-and-exit your session.
  5. The Zwift server then forwards this file to Stava’s server. What Strava does to this file is out of Zwift’s control.
  6. For shiggles, you may want to download the same clip from Strava, compare its Property details. Chances are very high that it’s been compressed considerably vs your local file. Is it?

If you can play the local file but not the one from Strava - you need to talk to Strava.
If you can not play the local file on your Android - that’s a Zwift issue. Please let me know what you find out.

8

I normally attach more than one video screenshot to my Strava workout, so I’ve been just dragging them from the Zwift video folder and dropping them into the Strava edit page so that they’re uploaded to Strava. As of yesterday, this stopped working (as I mentioned): Strava displays an exclamation mark and when you hover over it a message is displayed stating there is an error processing the video file. On a related note, the video file that Zwift automatically sends to Strava is never displayed on the Strava activity page, so I assume that the processing is failing on Strava’s end as well and they just don’t display the video.

I don’t know if video screenshots are working on other platforms, but it seems like as of yesterday for Windows 11 there’s no way to capture a video screenshot and have it displayed on Strava.

I have years worth of video screenshots that have been auto archived, so I dug one out and tried to upload it to Strava and that fails as well. So Zwift video screenshots that used to upload to Strava no longer upload to Strava even if they were recorded before the original issue with the Windows 11 OS update.

I also tested transferring video screenshots from the Windows 11 computer to the Android device using Google Drive, and they do seem to play on the Android device if I transfer them that way and view them directly.

I don’t know if there’s an issue on Zwift’s end or on Strava’s end, or if it’s a combination of issues that’s causing Strava to suddenly fail to process the video screenshot.

There’s still the problem of audio not being recorded by Zwift even before you upload the file (the audio is turned up in the game, and I can hear it from the speakers while the game is active).

As far as downloading one of the videos from Strava for comparison, that’s currently not possible or at least not easily. When you access a video on Strava’s website, it’s played from a blob URL. So the video is downloaded to the browser first, to memory, and then played locally. Looking at the network traffic in Chrome developer tools. It looks like it’s being transferred as M3U8 video. M3U8 video is an extension of the M3U format, with the key difference being that the M3U8 files are specifically coded in UTF-8 and segmented, so it’s not one continuous stream. I think it’s possible to capture the M3U8 streams and convert them to something like MP4 using a program like FFmpeg to decode and convert the video, but I’m not sure that would accurately represent the source video that Strava has on their server.

To sum up, Strava is not successfully processing the video files that are being created by Zwift on my Windows 11 computer, so there’s no way currently that I’m aware of to upload a video screenshot to a Strava activity.

9

Thanks for working through the troubleshooting steps with us.

This may or may not be the same root cause as the video-with-no-sound issue, but we’ll look into both while we’re investigating.

10

This morning, I tried again to upload a video screenshot to Strava, and this time it worked. The last two days may have been technical issues on Strava’s side that were preventing video screenshots from being uploaded. However, I still can’t view them on the Samsung Galaxy Fold 6 though I can view them in a web browser. Also the audio is still not present.

11

Hi @BikePower
Confirming that we identified an issue with video upload to Strava and are working on getting that fixed. We really appreciate you taking the time to diagnose and giving us some really usable clues.

The Android playback issue and no audio issues are still being investigated.

1 Like
12

I now have the same problem uploading the zwift video clip to srava on wondows 11. I get the exclamation mark in the video clip on strava and fails to play it. I then tried uploading it from my android tablet (that I use for the zwift companion app in game) and it uploaded the zwift video clip no problem to strava, Windows will play the the zwift video clip just fine but strava doesn’t seam to want to upload it. Looks like Zwift stores the same video clips locally on Windows and android if using the android companion app at the same time as you’re on zwift using the pc/laptop. There was a windows update on 28th March, so I don’t know if its a problem from the windows update or from the Zwift update.