I Ran Out of Storage & Now My Video Won't Play

It is extremely important to ensure that you have enough storage space on your devices before going live or recording. Running out of storage space can prove catastrophic for your production.

One such issue that you may encounter is being unable to find/play your recording within the Switcher Studio app or on your computer, although you can find the files when looking at your iPad's/iPhone's inventory via iTunes.

Video in general is recorded by “fragments”. A fragment is about 10-30 seconds long. When a recording is truncated, that last fragment is lost, so the video becomes “fragmented”. This is opposed to when recording ends normally, and fragments are merged into a normal, unfragmented video.

Normal, unfragmented videos are readable everywhere (i.e. on all video players), but fragmented videos are only readable by certain video players that have implemented this feature. Apple, for instance, allows you to see fragmented videos in iTunes and oftentimes play these videos in Quicktime. However, other programs like Windows Media Player and many video editors do not.

So the video is in the right file codec, but it is fragmented. Because it is in a format that is not super popular, some tools are just not able to read it.

If you have access to Final Cut Pro, see if you can view the video there. If so, render it out as a new video file, and you should be all set!

We also recommend trying to upload the file to a video conversion program (like Handbrake) and trying to convert it as a new video file.

In general, make sure that you have plenty of storage space, and it'll spare you any issues like this in the long run!