Troubleshooting Rendering Timeouts

Shotstack API
1

We are consistently receiving rendering timeouts using the stage version. Is there a way to troubleshoot this more in depth or tips to find the problem?

2

Got the timeouts to stop by removing our soundtrack from the request. The soundtrack was ~2 minutes long and the video was only 48 seconds. Is there a constraint where they need to be the same size or something else?

3

Hi Jeldridge,

Can you share the UUID and potentially full JSON? What type of audio file did you use?

There shouldn’t be a constraint and the video should only be as long as the video asset. Below an example where the video is 13.88 seconds and the soundtrack 116.9312 seconds.

{
    "timeline": {
        "soundtrack": {
            "src": "https://shotstack-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/music/motions.mp3"
        },
        "tracks": [
            {
                "clips": [
                    {
                        "asset": {
                            "type": "video",
                            "src": "https://shotstack-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/footage/night-sky.mp4"
                        },
                        "start": 0,
                        "length": 5
                    }
                ]
            }
        ]
    },
    "output": {
        "format": "mp4",
        "resolution": "hd"
    }
}
4

My guess is the audio file that is causing timeouts contains metadata that is confusing the render engine seek capabilities. I’ve seen this happen when the audio file has album art embedded in the file. Post the URL of the original audio file and we can inspect it. Otherwise check the file in your OS and see if it has album art, or you can use ffrpobe

You can also use ffmpeg to remove the album art, here’s a Stack Overflow I found: How to remove ID3 audio tag image (or metadata) from mp3 with ffmpeg - Stack Overflow.

5

Thanks Lucas! It was the art. Removing that metadata via ffmpeg worked perfectly.

1 Like
6

Good to hear. We are planning on creating an ingestion service soon which will import your assets and fix all these edge cases without you having to inspect assets or run your own ffmpeg commands.