ShowVids serves an average of about 400 customer downloads every month without any issues. Sometimes, though, things don't work exactly as expected. If you're having difficulty downloading your videos, please read through this guide.
All ShowVids videos are standard MP4s, encoded using the widely accepted industry standard H.264 codec (don't worry about that part!). They will work on pretty much any device that can play MP4 videos, e.g. Windows PCs, Mac, iphone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, smart televisions, gaming consoles and portable media players. They will play using your device's default media player as well as in pretty much any other video player software. We recommend VLC Player for the widest compatibility across different platforms.
The first thing to confirm is that your device is able to play other MP4 videos. Please try and play any other MP4 file on your device. If that works, then follow this guide to work out what's going wrong for you. If it does NOT work then I'm afraid there is something going wrong at your end and you'll need to fix that first.
These troubleshooting steps assume your device is capable of playing an MP4.
1. We don't recommend trying to download videos to mobile devices running iOS or Android. The video should play on any device, but downloading to mobile devices can be problematic as they can sometimes struggle with large files. Additionally, your device might try and play (i.e. stream) the video rather than downloading it. It is far better to download to a pc or laptop first and then transfer it to the mobile device.
2. Make sure you have downloaded the entire video to your device before trying to watch it. Don’t try and stream (play) the video from the link. If you do this, it will almost certainly freeze at some point. Also, each time you try and view the video is counted as one of your downloads.
3. Make sure you have enough free storage space on your device. These videos are between 2GB and 5GB and you will need at least that to successfully download.
4. Don’t try and download over a cellular network – make sure you are connected to wifi.
5. Try a different browser, e.g. Chrome or Firefox.
6. Try connecting to a different wifi network, e.g. at work, if possible.
7. If you are using a VPN, try turning it off before you download.
8. You could try temporarily disabling your antivirus or firewall, but this would be at your own risk! Make sure you turn it back on again after you’ve finished downloading.
9. If you have ordered multiple videos they might be downloaded as a compressed zip file. The file should be decompressed before viewing and this should work with your device’s built-in decompression tool. However, we’ve had reports that some Mac users have had difficulty opening zip files. Try changing the file extension from .zip to .rar. If that still doesn’t work, and you are unable to unzip the files on a different device (e.g. a Windows laptop), please contact us and we will send the files separately via a file transfer service.
Finally, consider buying the video preloaded on a USB stick for an additional £5 (including p&p). Contact us to arrange this.
If none of the above helps you to download your video, please contact ian@show-vids.co.uk for further help.