Who is this for?

You may want to read this guide if:

• You work with a browser-based video player and have encountered an issue or anticipate encountering issues.
• You've stared at a MEDIA_ERR_DECODE in your browser console and thought "maybe I should find a different profession." This guide may not fix it, but may provide some commiseration.
• You, like all of us, often forget about what tools are available for debugging browser-based video playback.
• You want a collection of handy snippets of code to copy and paste into the browser.

You may want to lightly skim this guide if:

• You want to learn about how video plays back in a browser. There are already great online resources for this, which this guide will link to. Some general topics will be covered, and a short guide is provided, but the primary goal of this guide is to help with debugging.

You may not want to read this guide if:

• You don't want to run, or look at, any code or command line utilities.
• You want to dive into the code of a video player. There are multiple video players out there. The topics and tools covered in this guide are generic enough for any browser-based video player.