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Non-seekable media

If you see the following error in the console:

The media [src] cannot be seeked.
This could be one of two reasons:
1) The media resource was replaced while the video is playing but it was not loaded yet.
2) The media does not support seeking.
Please see https://remotion.dev/docs/non-seekable-media for assistance.
The media [src] cannot be seeked.
This could be one of two reasons:
1) The media resource was replaced while the video is playing but it was not loaded yet.
2) The media does not support seeking.
Please see https://remotion.dev/docs/non-seekable-media for assistance.

Meaning​

This error could occur due to one of two reasons:

1 A video or audio has entered the video while not being preloaded.

Most commonly this happens when an audio has been replaced while the video is playing, for example due to user input changing. You can fix this by first preloading the assets before you mount them in an audio tag - for this the assets need to support CORS.

tsx
import { prefetch, staticFile } from "remotion";
 
const MyComp = () => {
  return (
    <select
      onChange={(e) => {
        prefetch(e.target.value)
          .waitUntilDone()
          .then(() => {
            setAudioUrl(e.target.value);
          });
      }}
    >
      <option value={staticFile("sample.mp3")}>Audio 0</option>
      <option value={staticFile("sample2.mp3")}>Audio 1</option>
      <option value={staticFile("sample3.mp3")}>Audio 2</option>
    </select>
  );
};
tsx
import { prefetch, staticFile } from "remotion";
 
const MyComp = () => {
  return (
    <select
      onChange={(e) => {
        prefetch(e.target.value)
          .waitUntilDone()
          .then(() => {
            setAudioUrl(e.target.value);
          });
      }}
    >
      <option value={staticFile("sample.mp3")}>Audio 0</option>
      <option value={staticFile("sample2.mp3")}>Audio 1</option>
      <option value={staticFile("sample3.mp3")}>Audio 2</option>
    </select>
  );
};

2 A video or audio was provided that cannot be seeked to an arbitrary time.

The cause for this is that when requesting the media file, either:

  • No Content-Range HTTP header has been sent by the server, making it impossible for the browser and therefore for Remotion to seek the media.
  • No Content-Length HTTP header has been sent by the server, also preventing seeking.
  • The file does not support Faststart

You can verify that this is the problem by opening the video or audio in a new tab and observe that you cannot seek the media.

You can determine if a video supports seeking, you can use the getVideoMetadata() function.

Solutions​

Consider one of these solutions:

  • Serve the media from a webhost that supports the Range header and returns a Content-Length and Content-Range header.
  • Download the media and import it locally using an import or require() statement.
  • Use the <OffthreadVideo> component which will render the video fine. You may still see problems during playback in the Remotion Studio or the <Player>.

See also​