Slow playback when streaming with AVPlayer

DB-Des 

we are still facing huge performance problems with our app.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/67kwaw75pnytjwcqm12ak/video_performance.MP4?rlkey=blbpqtuvgkvsmp2s8aayq0adp&dl=0

See this clip, first we play through dropbox app, it starts pretty soon. Afterwards same video through our own app, it takes much longer to start up.

The video to be played can be found here https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6h40imwb8dh8n1dju7ze1/IMG_21161.mp4?rlkey=pkgu8obx6blu3t6huf9n53299&dl=0

thank you very much :-)

Hi austincase,

Looks like the shared link is missing. Are you able to provide it again?

Hello - Thanks for the reply. Here is a shared link for the folder we are using. Our platform does not work with shared links but rather users folders directly, if that makes a difference.
Something we have noticed is that on longer HEVC videos, the problem is worse... it looks like the issue might be that the incremental RANGE headers are not being respected by Dropbox and thus the browser is having to basically download the entirety of the file before it plays back the first frame. This is a hypothesis and seems weird that it would be isolated to HEVC videos, but this is what we are noticing.

Let me know any other information I can provide and I appreciate your help

Hi austincase,

I'll be happy to help with any issues you're having. For testing purposes, are you able to share one of the shared links you are using to stream videos on your platform?

We are seeing this same issue. This was not an issue previously -- we have had dropbox playback in our application for over a year without issue.

We are specifically seeing issues related to HEVC codecs -- H264 plays just fine.

We are getting the behavior across all browsers with consistent behavior. We have many user reports coming in, we support many implementations beyond dropbox so we are highly confident this is not our implementation.

iggypop 

Thank you for providing an additional link.

I just reviewed the documentation for /files/get_temporary_link and realized it explicitly states that these links should not be used to display content directly in the browser:

Get a temporary link to stream content of a file. This link will expire in four hours and afterwards you will get 410 Gone. This URL should not be used to display content directly in the browser. The Content-Type of the link is determined automatically by the file's mime type.

This also applies to streaming directly within an iOS app using the AVPlayer component.

Additionally, I noticed that the latest file you shared is over 50GB. That file size alone could be affecting playback latency, especially on certain devices or network conditions. Large files can take longer to load and may struggle with smooth streaming, particularly in browsers that don’t handle large media files efficiently.

Please try this https://uc335f53789e85f975b742674075.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/get/ClxBsDdKU4RVs4g97_SerqyG5Pv3jcqxbDLA2VyL5_30-llr43eMd5tInoBBiLUE-EtHfT-QmfFwj0kkEGzyOemZ3gSyDCc_g-eyatxDgMVwwqeR25K193sAQv5DMREuVJHPbz5S73m-xbB3Nnb8-JhND3GtY9ZosuTX5-QgIwzF1w/file

Hi iggypop, looks like the link has expired.

Please test this 

https://uc50d65f08fef20931cddc0fc937.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/get/Clt6g4ydXcBg9C3W7b0Y82en3P3vx7e0r-oMcikRgCLnKx3pzS65GXUmED6pYZXFR5ji7gHIjzXSqKWad45aRGLw8xKWFtkxoyjCPDzhOrmrpBI-6hyENDti8QzxutZo_-OFOAf7XUdee47LsibUD-dwrtn3CnoxIh4PIEIN6TNBZg/file

iggypop 

I tested the link you provided across multiple environments, including Chrome, Safari (both regular and private browsing), VLC, a test iOS app, and a test React web app, but I wasn’t able to replicate the loading issue you described. The video played without any delays in my testing.

One thing I noticed—although it doesn’t appear to make a difference—is that you’re adding both dl=0 and raw=1 to the shared URL when it should be one or the other.