issue How to fix issue with screenshot format failed to be created for some videos

[Tech Support]

In some cases when you want to create a new screenshot format its background task may fail with the following error message in log:

WARN Videos with errors are: 66674, 66675, 66676, 66677, 66678, 66679
ERROR(8) Error during screenshots creation for screenshot format "336x189" for some videos, cancelling this task [PH-E]

 

This happens because KVS is trying to create thumbs from screenshot sources, but sources for some videos could be missing (either you have deleted them, or some random disk failure).

First of all it is important to understand that background task that creates screenshot format works in small iterations by 100 videos, so that conversion engine could switch to other tasks. Therefore if it finds that some of the videos fail to create thumbs, it will not go ahead and check all possible videos, but will rather finish the current iteration and report all videos that failed during this iteration. Even if you fix the issue for the list of reported videos and restart the task, it doesn't guarantee that later some other videos won't fail as well. So there are 2 ways to deal with this: either only fix for the reported list of videos, or run the full content audit check and fix for all videos where screenshot issues are reported.

 

Fixing screenshots for the reported set of videos

In order to do that, select and copy the list of reported video IDs, then go to Videos -> Mass select videos and paste the list there, and choose Mass edit selected videos option:

Then in mass edit GUI verify the number of videos selected, and activate Re-create overview screenshots checkbox:

This operation will create background task for each video to re-create new screenshot sources from it and will replace all screenshots of the given videos. Please wait for all background tasks to be finished, and then re-start screenshot format creation task in Administration -> Background tasks. When restarted, the task will not attempt to process the videos that were already processed during previous iteration, and it will take some time to reach the place of error and will continue from there. However, as we already noted, any future iteration may also result in the same issue for another set of videos, so you will need to repeat this procedure again and again, until the screenshot format creation task will be finally finished. Per our support experience normally it takes up to 3 iterations to find and resolve all screenshot issues and finalize the task.

 

Identifying videos with missing screenshots

If you suspect that many of the videos could have their screenshot sources missing, it could make sense to find all these videos at once, and then run mass edit for them to re-create their screenshots.

First go to Plugins -> System audit and run video content check there (no need to enable additional sub-checks for it):

After audit is finished, the plugin may report some errors regarding missing screenshots. Then go to Videos section and under Customize -> Filters activate Data errors = Overview screenshots missing or invalid filter. This should filter out only videos that have been reported by audit with missing screenshots. After filtering the list, choose Mass edit filtered videos under Batch actions.

in mass edit GUI verify the number of videos selected, and choose Re-create overview screenshots checkbox:

This operation will create background task for each video to re-create new screenshot sources from it and will replace all screenshots of the given videos. Please wait for all background tasks to be finished, and then re-start screenshot format creation task in Administration -> Background tasks. When restarted, the task will not attempt to process the videos that were already processed during previous iteration, and it will take some time to reach the place of error and will continue from there. Since you should have fixed all videos with missing screenshots at this point, restarting the failed task should fully finish it after some iterations.

 

Other issues and considerations

1. If your videos are embed codes, or pseudo videos - KVS will not be able to re-create their screenshots, as these videos do not have any video files that can be used for screenshot creation. For such videos, you can only delete them, or you will not be able to create any new screenshot formats.
2. Some customers decide to delete all screenshot sources, because they could take some disk space. If this is your case, it depends on how many videos you have. Re-creating new screenshots could take long time, especially if your videos are stored remotely or at CDN - KVS would need to download them to the primary server and this typically takes long time.