Force render issues (raw=1) and shared links won't work for hosting.

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H96Max wrote:
Usually the shared link ends with dl=0 by changing it to dl=1 downloads the file directly, but from today its not downloading!!

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Are you accessing the link directly in a browser, or are you using it in a plugin or extension for some web page or other type of service (rather than directly clicking the link and downloading the file)?

Test the link in your browser. If the file downloads then the link is working as expected and you'll need to reach out to whatever plugin or service you're using the link with.

If the link doesn't work, provide the error message or take a screenshot of the page you get after clicking the link.

What the plugin developer said (last week)

The reason why it does not play in FV Player is that it probably checks some of the HTTP request headers, such as the referrer header. When I insert it using bare HTML5 video tag it won’t play either.

And...

So it’s not a problem with FV Player, but a more general issue.

I found that it actually depends on the dropbox.com cookies which your browser has.

So the Dropbox link cannot play the video reliably, as they probably don’t want you to be using their services for video playback anyway.

So there you go, It's Dropboxes fault, and NOT the FV Player plugin 🙂

Thanks, Rich, I just tried a couple of different URLs in a browser window.

The link ending in raw=1 played immediately.

I also tried changing the link to the Dropbox original of dl=0, which just opened the file in the Dropbox web app, which is obviously why the raw=1 URL is preferred.

I'll get onto the plugin developer about this.

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Steve Raven wrote:

I'm running a couple of WordPress websites and using the FV Flowplayer plugin to show off my Dropbox videos. ... I get an error message: html5: Video not found ...

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Do the links work if you paste them into a browser window directly? If so, then it's likely an issue with how the player tries to access the file. Dropbox links have a redirect in them (the final URL of the file is different from the link you're give by Dropbox). If the player isn't able to follow that redirect, it won't be able to load the file.

If the links work in a browser on their own, I'd go back to the plug-in creator and ask them to look into it. With the change to how links are generated, they likely need to update their plugin.

Hi,

I'm running a couple of WordPress websites and using the FV Flowplayer plugin to show off my Dropbox videos.

I'm doing all of the usual edits, eg re-naming the end of the Dropbox file from dl=0 to raw=1 which was working fine up until a couple of days ago.

Since then, I get an error message: html5: Video not found: and regardless of how many times I refresh the websites' cache or indeed perform a 'Clear Browsing Data' on Chrome and Firefox (or a hard refresh with ctrl+f5), the error message remains.

How can the error message be fixed?

tia

Regards,

Steve Raven

I'll have to find an alternative, thank you so much ❤️

Happened to me a week ago in some browsers but not others.  The redirect is the root cause. 

To fix, change the www at the start of the link to dl.

For example: www.dropbox…. becomes dl.dropbox…

Hmm...this is unfortunate, if true.

I've been a long-time subscriber to Dropbox for many reasons, and this was one important one. I don't really want to shop around for another cloud storage service yet but I may have to consider doing so if this is the case.

Can anyone from Dropbox please verify or explain the reason the shared image links suddenly broke without warning yesterday? Thanks!

Yes there is a problem again for safari and google.  [img] raw=1 [/img] no longer auto renders pics any more.  We had no issue for months and now customers and forums wont auto render pics via Dropbox files????     We need to get this again worked out. 

Suddenly it doesn't work again.. What's going on Dropbox??

The new url doesnt work but the old way is working(i have to xml files, one with old sharing format and the other one that has the new sharing format..

old: https://www.dropbox.com/s/random_string/test.xml?raw=1

new: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/RANDOM_STRING/FILENAME.xml?rlkey=RANDOM_STRING_for_rlkey&raw=1

and i cannot create the old url format on the main xml(filename.xml) because its only giving me the new sharing format, or is it a way to create the "old"  way?

Tested both url:s in chrome and edge got this result:

old: https://www.dropbox.com/s/random_string/test.xml?raw=1

will redirct to a longer url

https://uc9d29123.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/random_string/file#

Test with new sharing url gives the same result, it redirects but in the new redirected page its without the hastag after the text "file"..so something like this:

https://uc9d29123.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/random_string/file

Im not sure if that`s the case but thats the only difference that i can notice..

Just to see if the content in filename.xml is OK i copied all the content from main xml into into the old shared format test.xml, this one https://www.dropbox.com/s/random_string/test.xml?raw=1

it works fine from here, therefor nothing wrong in the content in the filename.xml.

Also tried to create a new one xml, gives me of course the new format, same error. New shared format doesnt work..

tahjdbx lisadbx Hannah could you please fix this?