Media upload: Error uploading .m4a files on atomic sites

[davipontesblog]

Steps to reproduce the behavior

On an atomic site on WordPress.com,

1. Go to 'My Site > Media'
2. Click on 'Add new' and upload a .m4a file, or drag and drop a .m4a file.

What I expected to happen

For the file to upload without issues. We mention here that this is an accepted filetype: https://wordpress.com/support/accepted-filetypes/#audio

What actually happened

If you have the calypso Media page show, you get a catch-all error message "1 file could not be uploaded because an error occurred while uploading.".

If you have the wp-admin Media page showing, you get one of two behaviors depending on how you upload the file:

• On drag and drop onto the Media page, nothing happens. Using the "Add new" button on the page, and either clicking on "Select files" or dropping the file in the drag and drop area that shows, nothing happens either.
• If you happen to click on the "Add new" link in navigation, which redirects to /wp-admin/media-new.php, then a more descriptive error message comes up:

Context

This cannot be reproduced on the user's simple site, and on my test simple site either, so it seems to be only happening on atomic sites.

Browser / OS version

Chrome Version 89.0.4389.114 (Official Build) (x86_64) macOS Big Sur 11.2

[davipontesblog]

User report on 3886023-zd-woothemes

[davipontesblog]

Working with the user to try and re-encode the file to .m4a which may help fix the issue.

[Robertght]

Converting the file to .MP3 helped and they were able to successfully upload the file.

[davipontesblog]

I tested re-encoding the user's own file to .m4a format, and the upload worked. I used https://amvidia.com/to-m4a-converter for re-encoding, with general settings applied. The file uploaded without issues.

Closing this issue.

[Nic-Sevic]

7291110-hc Another report of m4a uploads not working; informed user of re-encoding workaround

[zdavatz]

1. Yes, please reopen, that is me who has the same issue:
2. 
3. This is my file: https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/5a3a1847-73e1-41a1-aade-4d5c35464b3a
4. mplayer on Linux plays the file just fine.
5. I am now re-encoding the file with: ffmpeg -i file.m4a -c:a aac -vn file.m4a

[ChrissiePollock]

Another one 30178783-hc

[nicolynramos]

4226071-zd

[devNigel]

Another report: 4289442-zd-woothemes when uploading using Audio block.

[liviopv]

Also on 33477270-hc.

Uploading to the media library works and I'm able to upload using the Audio Block after adding the MIME Type to the site using a plugin, but the playback is inconsistent. It works sometimes on Chrome, but it never works on Safari.

[github-actions[bot]]

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