HTML5 video element request stay pending forever (on chrome) - html

Question

I have a weird issue in Chrome.
Each time I load a <video> element, chrome will start two HTTP request.
The first one will stay pending forever (I guess this is the "meta-data", "partial content" request. But the point is that it stay pending)
The second one to the same file is ok and goes on and close after the loading is over.
The problem here is that the first request stay pending until I close the browser page. So at some point, if I load multiple video, Chrome will break and stop downloading anything because every available request is occupied by these pending requests.
I created a reduced test case here: http://jsbin.com/ixifiq/3
I've check to reproduce the issue, and it is happening on both Video.js and MediaElements.js frontpages. Open your network tab when loading the page, you'll see the first pending request. Then press play on the video, and you'll see the second request working, but the first one will stay pending forever.
Does anyone knows a fix to this bug?

Answer 1

(This bug still exists in Chrome 38.0.2125.111, OS X 10.10)
This may be a Chrome bug & you may solve it without any dummy ?time-suffix trick, just helping Chrome releasing sockets faster:
I had the same bug on a RevealJs HTML presentation, with 20+ videos (one per slide, autoplayed on slide focus). As a side effect, this unreleased socket problem also affected other ajax-lazy-loaded medias following immediately the first pending/blocked video, in the same HTML DOM.
Following Walter's answer (see bug report), I fixed the issue following the next steps:
1- Set video preload attribute to none:
<video preload="none">
<source src="video.webM" type="video/webM">
</video>
2 - Use a canplaythrough event handler to play and/or pause the video once it is loaded & ready. This helps Chrome releasing the socket used to load that video :
function loadVideos(){
$("video").each(function(index){
$(this).get(0).load();
$(this).get(0).addEventListener("canplaythrough", function(){
this.play();
this.pause();
});
});
}

Answer 2

Apparently that's a bug from Chrome. And there's nothing to do about it ATM.
I reported the issue a while ago on the Chromium project and it's been assigned. So hopefully it'll be fixed in near future.
Bug report: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=234779

Answer 3

I don't know if it will be functional right now, but I remember solving this issue by adding a parameter to the video URL, just like "video.mp4?t=2123". Of course, everytime you load the video, the parameter should be different. I'd use
var parameter = new Date().getMilliseconds();
to get it, and add it.
With this, at least a few months ago, I was able to play the same video multiple times without Chrome waiting forever the response.
Hope it helps.

Answer 4

This bug still exists. I'm using an HTML5 video player on a single page application. After loading about 7 players with pre-buffering, I hit the limit and no more videos load. I found another answer having to do with images and I was surprised to find that this answer solves this problem.
if(window.stop !== undefined) {
window.stop();
} else if(document.execCommand !== undefined) {
document.execCommand("Stop", false);
}
reference: Javascript: Cancel/Stop Image Requests

Answer 5

I found this issue when using html5 video inside dynamic content such as carousels, to release the blocked sockets you have to unload the video source:
var video = $('#video');
video[0].pause();
video.prop('src','');
video.find('source').remove();
video.remove();
The bug claims to be fixed but I still had to do this on Chrome 42. At least I could still set preload="auto".

Answer 6

We had the same symptoms, but the problem was that we were calling load() on the same video twice in succession: same video control, same video source (MP4). Two identical 206 requests showed up in the dev tools, and then, after switching video a few times, Chrome would cancel the first request, turn off progressive playback, and wait for that second request to complete.
Also note that if you're using an MP4 source and it isn't formatted for progressive playback (meaning the MOOV atom is at the beginning of the file), then you will have 1-2 additional requests for the file, which makes it even more confusing.

Answer 7

#sidonaldson 's answer is the only one that worked for me. However I did not remove the video or source. The following code worked for me, run this just before putting the correct src and playing it.
const video = document.getElementById('player')
video.pause()
video.setAttribute('src', '')
video.load()
#ecropolis's answer also worked but my SPA would end up having no images so it was not an option.