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Encoder Problem Alerts
The Encoder prepares uploaded videos for playback in browsers and devices. It asks your AVideo site to send an e-mail when a video fails, takes too long to process, or waits too long to start.
There are two kinds of alerts:
| Alert | What it is about | Who receives it |
|---|---|---|
| Video alerts | A problem with one specific video | The owner of that video |
| System alerts | A problem that can affect several or all videos | The Encoder administrators: the AVideo accounts set to Admin in the Encoder's Streamers tab |
The owner of the video receives an e-mail when their video:
| Situation | When the e-mail is sent |
|---|---|
| Could not be processed | When the monitor detects a failure that is not waiting for an automatic retry. Some temporary failures are retried before an alert is sent. |
| Is taking too long to process | After 1 hour or more of processing |
| Has been waiting in line too long | After 1 day or more waiting to start |
These are the default limits. The monitor checks every minute; an alert may arrive later if other alerts are waiting or the site cannot be reached. The e-mail goes to the address on the owner's account and includes a link to manage the video.
| What the e-mail says | What to do |
|---|---|
| Still waiting or taking longer than usual | Wait. Large or long videos can take more time. You do not need to upload the video again. |
| Could not be downloaded or converted, or processing stopped | Upload the video again. If it fails again, contact the site administrator. |
| Could not be sent back to the site | Contact the site administrator to retry the transfer. The converted files were kept; you do not need to upload the video again. |
Follow the instructions in the e-mail. When contacting the administrator, include the job reference shown in the message.
While the video stays in the same situation, the owner receives at most one reminder per day. Alerts stop after the video has spent 7 days in that situation: waiting, processing, or failed. This period starts when the video enters that situation, not when the first e-mail arrives. If the situation changes, a new 7-day period begins.
The owner is not e-mailed when:
- the problem was already fixed, or the video was published in the meantime;
- a newer processing attempt exists for the same video entry on the same site; alerts from the older attempt are skipped;
- the owner's account does not have a valid e-mail address.
Uploading the same file as a separate video entry does not cancel alerts for the earlier entry.
The Encoder administrators (the AVideo accounts set to Admin in the Encoder's Streamers tab) are warned about these service problems:
| Alert | What it means |
|---|---|
| Low disk space | Less than 5% or 2 GB of free space remains on the disk used by the Encoder's video folder |
| Queue stalled | Videos have been waiting for 30 minutes or more, and nothing is being processed |
| Many failures | 5 or more videos failed within the last hour |
To avoid flooding their inbox, each of these alerts is sent at most once every 6 hours.
Each row of the Streamers tab is one AVideo site and the account the Encoder uses to sign in to it. For every row set to Admin, the e-mail goes to that account's address on that site. It is not sent to every administrator account of the site. The site added during the Encoder installation is set to Admin automatically.
No. A failure of a single video is sent only to the owner of that video. Administrators are not e-mailed about each failed video, but they can:
- see monitored jobs, their failure reasons, and the result of owner alerts on the Encoder's Monitor tab;
- receive the Many failures system alert when several videos fail at once;
- see the video with an error status in AVideo's video manager.
If the administrator is also the owner of the video, they receive the normal video alert.
For these e-mails to arrive:
- Your AVideo site must be able to send e-mail. The alerts are sent by your own site, using its normal e-mail settings. See Setting up AVideo to send emails.
- Both AVideo and the Encoder must support these alerts. Update both applications and apply pending database updates. The Encoder's Monitor tab shows missing database updates and sites that did not accept alerts. See How to Update AVideo.
- The Encoder's monitor must be installed and running, with alerts enabled (see the technical setup below).
Administrators can open the Encoder's status page at:
https://your-encoder-address/index.php#monitor
It shows whether the monitor is running, queue counts, free disk space, sites that did not accept alerts, and owner alert results. The job list shows up to 30 jobs; errors older than the configured 7-day period are excluded. It is not a complete history of failed videos. The tab refreshes every 30 seconds while open and visible.
Technical setup — for administrators
Ask the person who manages the Encoder server to complete these steps.
The alerts depend on a scheduled task (a cron) that runs every minute on the Encoder server. First, apply pending database updates in the Encoder's Update tab. If the task has never run or has stopped running, the Monitor tab shows a red warning and the installation command.
-
Docker: the current official Encoder image installs the task and starts the cron service automatically. Check the Monitor tab to confirm it is running.
-
Other installations: run this once, as root, on the Encoder server. Replace the path with your Encoder's installation directory:
sudo php /var/www/html/AVideo/Encoder/install/installCron.php
It must print Installed /etc/cron.d/avideo-encoder-... and runs as www-data. To check it later: ls -l /etc/cron.d/avideo-encoder-*.
Only root can install it. The task runs as the web server user, never as root, on the same server or container as the Encoder. The cron service must be running. The missing-task warning clears after the first run; any remaining errors are shown on the Monitor tab. If the server's PHP version changes, run the command again.
The times and limits above are the defaults. They can be changed in the Encoder's videos/configuration.php. For example, to alert owners after 2 hours of processing and to turn off the administrator e-mails:
$global['encoderMonitor'] = ['processingAlertMinutes' => 120, 'adminAlerts' => false];To turn off the e-mails to video owners, use 'ownerAlerts' => false. The settings in use are listed on the Monitor tab under Active settings.
