Troubleshooting & FAQ

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Ram Chouhan Full-Stack Engineer edited this page Sep 6, 2026 · 1 revision

🛠️ Troubleshooting & Frequently Asked Questions

1. Connection & Networking

Q: My friend cannot connect to my room using the 6-character code.

Symmetric NAT / Strict Firewalls: WebRTC establishes direct peer-to-peer connections using STUN. If both peers are behind strict corporate, university, or cellular symmetric NATs, direct P2P connections can be blocked without a TURN relay.
Fix: Try connecting from the same Wi-Fi or have either peer connect via standard home broadband or hotspot.

Q: The video stream appears black for the participant.

Ensure the participant clicked inside the browser window to grant autoplay permission.
If streaming a local video file, ensure the file format is supported natively by the browser (H.264 / AAC inside .mp4, or VP8/VP9/AV1 inside .webm). Codecs like HEVC/H.265 or Dolby DTS audio may not be supported by all browsers.

2. Audio & Video Playback

Q: YouTube video starts muted for participants.

Browser Autoplay Policy: Modern browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari) strictly forbid media with sound from autoplaying without prior user gesture on the page.
Resolution: MovieNight starts remote YouTube iframes muted to guarantee immediate synchronization. Participants simply click the stage or the unmute notification to enable sound.

Q: Direct video URL displays CORS error.

Some web hosts forbid cross-origin media extraction. When hosting on Node.js (npm start), MovieNight automatically proxies video chunks through /proxy-video?url=... with valid HTTP Range headers.