Why can't I play back MP4 videos on my Lumia 920?

[Mr Manson]

Everytime someone sends me a video file (mp4 format) via bluetooth onto my Lumia 920, when I try to play it, it says " Sorry we cann't play this file on your phone".

I can play these video files on my laptop with no problem. So the videos files seem to be OK.

( I can record and play back videos with the phone itself just fine)

Any idea?
Thanks

 

[holzlondon]

have you tried copying them via usb rather than bluetooth? just to see if it makes a difference. I've copied mp4s onto the phone without issues, but never through bluetooth yet.

I suspect it may be more a codec issue, but this could help narrow things down.

 

[congusano]

Everytime someone sends me a video file (mp4 format) via bluetooth onto my Lumia 920, when I try to play it, it says " Sorry we cann't play this file on your phone".

I can play these video files on my laptop with no problem. So the videos files seem to be OK.

( I can record and play back videos with the phone itself just fine)

Any idea?
Thanks

A rights issue with the file? Maybe there was an issue in the bluetooth transfer that always creates a corrupt video. Once the video is on your phone, are you saying you can take that same exact video, transfer it via usb to your computer and it plays? If so, can you then copy it back to your computer via usb and see if it plays?

 

[Mr Manson]

Thats a thought to narrow things down.I will definately try. But still I wish there would be a fix to it. I am really used to send and recieve videos from others phones. they do mp4 as well as my Lumia 920. Why should there be such issue then !!!

 

[Mr Manson]

A rights issue with the file? Maybe there was an issue in the bluetooth transfer that always creates a corrupt video. Once the video is on your phone, are you saying you can take that same exact video, transfer it via usb to your computer and it plays? If so, can you then copy it back to your computer via usb and see if it plays?

I have the videos sent to my L920 via bluetooth. It didnot work. then I had the same video sent to my laptop from the original phone and it worked. Now I will do what you said to see how it play out. ( 1-sending the video onto my phone -> sending it from my phone to my laptop to see if it playes. If yes, then will send it back to my phone from laptop to see how it goes.

Will update the thread. But still, bluetooth to bluetooth seems not working

 

[congusano]

I have the videos sent to my L920 via bluetooth. It didnot work. then I had the same video sent to my laptop from the original phone and it worked. Now I will do what you said to see how it play out. ( 1-sending the video onto my phone -> sending it from my phone to my laptop to see if it playes. If yes, then will send it back to my phone from laptop to see how it goes.

Will update the thread. But still, bluetooth to bluetooth seems not working

My guess is that it has to do with the size of the file....
What kind of phone does the other person have that is sending you these files? Perhaps there is a limit on their end, so the file they send you is corrupt?

Curious if you have more than 1 file on your phone that you receieved via bluetooth, if you can look through explorer on your computer and check the file size and compare it to the original file on your friends phone.

 

[andrelamont]

I am not sure what's happening with the Bluetooth transfer but I do know that I can play a 6GB 1080p (90 minute in length) file that was encoded to play on an Apple TV3 on my 920

 

[azasadny]

I had the same issue. No matter how I got the videos on my L920, sometimes they would play perfectly and then , for no apparent reason, they would never play again. I asked on a thread here what I should do and Iit was recommended to reset the phone, which I did. After the hard reset, I can now play music and videos on the L920, the same ones that wouldn't play before. I hope I don't have to reset the phone regularly. though.

 

[Mr Manson]

My guess is that it has to do with the size of the file....
What kind of phone does the other person have that is sending you these files? Perhaps there is a limit on their end, so the file they send you is corrupt?

Curious if you have more than 1 file on your phone that you receieved via bluetooth, if you can look through explorer on your computer and check the file size and compare it to the original file on your friends phone.

-The other phone is a Samsung s5230
-The files cannot be corrupted because I can play them just fine on my laptop
- I tried it with 4 videos files and all the same. They are between 1 and 4 megabyte only

Still not working...

 

[Mr Manson]

I had the same issue. No matter how I got the videos on my L920, sometimes they would play perfectly and then , for no apparent reason, they would never play again. I asked on a thread here what I should do and Iit was recommended to reset the phone, which I did. After the hard reset, I can now play music and videos on the L920, the same ones that wouldn't play before. I hope I don't have to reset the phone regularly. though.

I did the same after I did read here to do the reset thing. (Factory Reset)..still not working

 

[Mr Manson]

Update from me:

As some recommanded, I went a little bit deeper. This is what I did and the results:
-I also did a hard reset ( options->factory reset) and had the videos (mp4 fromat) sent to my phone from other phone via bluetooth=> Still could not be played back
-I sent the very same files from the same phone to my laptop and could play them just fine. I then resent them back to my phone from my laptop => Again could not be played back
-I used a converter software on my laptop and had then converted from Mp4 to Mp4 and sent them back to my phone and this time they worked.
So if mp4 is compatible with lumia 920, then how come mp4 files canot be played ?!!

 

[holzlondon]

One more thing to try: try moving / copying the videos from your computer to your phone by USB rather than Bluetooth.

Either way, mp4 isn't the same as mp4. I'm no expert, but I do know that there are different codecs for mp4 files, some of which are not recognized by all devices universally.

 

[Mr Manson]

Update :

Yesterday I had sent an email to Nokia about this issue that I have been having. Today I got a call on my phone from Nokia (which made me "wow, they are calling me for the problem i am having"). I explained the very nice lady on the phone about the steps I have already taken and how they played out. She said that well, since 1. the other phone cann't play your Lumia videos either and 2: you can play the videos once you had them convertet ( from mp4 to mp4 ), therefore the only reason could be that the mp4 you are recieving is not the same mp4 as Lumia supports. Also it seems there are more than one type of MP4.

I told her that I am happy enough with my Lumia 920 that this does not make me any less happy.

WOW Nokia called me to help me with the problem. That was a great service.

 

[vince8603]

Hi Manson,

I face the same problem with you
my fren took video from Samsung galaxy S3 and upload to dropbox for me.
i logged in to dropbox, press download but cant download video to lumia 920, just direclty play. Play also got problem, sometime will show you NO SUPPORT or SWITCH ON FLASH or WHEN PLAY THE VIDEO KEEP STUCK, EVERYTIME YOU LOG IN DROPBOX PLAY THE SAME VIDEO STILL NEED LOADING & KEEP STUCK .... WTH ... mp4 also cant ???
Why cant download to phone i really cant understand .......

Only the way i use PC, download to PC and then transfer to phone, perfect and can play it without any converting

 

[Mr Manson]

Hi Manson,

I face the same problem with you
my fren took video from Samsung galaxy S3 and upload to dropbox for me.
i logged in to dropbox, press download but cant download video to lumia 920, just direclty play. Play also got problem, sometime will show you NO SUPPORT or SWITCH ON FLASH or WHEN PLAY THE VIDEO KEEP STUCK, EVERYTIME YOU LOG IN DROPBOX PLAY THE SAME VIDEO STILL NEED LOADING & KEEP STUCK .... WTH ... mp4 also cant ???
Why cant download to phone i really cant understand .......

Only the way i use PC, download to PC and then transfer to phone, perfect and can play it without any converting

hmm..seems like this needs time to be worked out somehow... thanks for sharing

 

[desmonc]

MP4 videos created on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus and transferred to my Nokia Lumia 920 would not play.
I solved the problem by creating a Folder called Imported videos and copying the videos into it from my laptop running Windows 7 Pro, no conversion was done.
Path -- \Computer\Windows Phone\Phone\Pictures\Imported Videos

 

[dzibo]

I have similar problem with my Lumia 620, solve it with this: How to convert MP4 to Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 optimized MPEG-4 video profile Windows and Mac? - softwareinfo

 

[T_Minamoto]

I have a Lumia 822 and had the same problem with the mp4 file. What it seemed strange to me was that only one of the 4 mp4 file was showing in the player. I connected the phone to my PC and opened the SD card folders. Just for curiosity, I copied the file name including the ".mp4" extension from the good file, and pasted it to the other files and renamed them to it's original file name. Then, it worked.... What I noticed was that the bad files had ".MP4" in block letters and the good file had ."mp4" in lower case letters. I have no idea if this had anything to do with it, but it made the other files playable.

 

[YouveActivatedMyTrapCard]

MP4 is only a "container". The codecs used to compress videos are what differentiates one MP4 to another MP4 file. Most MP4 videos are compressed with H.264 compression (youtube uses this as well). If all else fails, there is a VLC player for Windows Phone 8 coming this October, that should probably be enough to play almost all well known video codecs.

 

[broar94]

^^Any source for Oct release of VLC Media Player for WP8?? That'll be very great, thanks!