Unable to load video / An error occurred while loading a higher-quality version of this video

While I am still experiencing this problem on both my iPhone and my Macbook, I had a chat with support and we discovered that if I logged into the iCloud WEBSITE on my browser, all the videos were still playable *on the website* —so I was able to download a backup of my videos from the iCloud browser site (minus all edits and filters unfortunately) onto an external hard drive, which took about 13 hours. So at least the raw footage is safe. Even on the browser site, the videos will sometimes still spontaneously stop working and display a caution symbol. But reloading the page resets them back to working order again.

So between the "duplicate" workaround and the iCloud.com workaround, I am confident that my videos still *exist* and haven't been corrupted or destroyed. But it's still unacceptable that I can't get them to play through iPhoto on any of my devices.

Accepting the terms an conditions for iCloud fixed the problem.

Your iPhone maynot have enough space to store all high-resolution photos and videos from iCloud.

Please compare 

Settings>your name>iCloud>Manage Storage

And

Settings>General>iPhone Storage

This will give you a fair idea of how to manage your device storage.

Some of the links below may help

1. Manage iCloud Photos iCloud Photo Library Help - Apple Support 
2. Manage your iPhone Storage --> Manage your photo and video storage - Apple Support
3. Manage your iCloud Storage → Manage your iCloud storage - Apple Support

As of 11th Feb 2024 this stupid bug is still not fixed.

Let me share more information on this bloody bug:

> I have 3 phones, phone A (iPhone 14 pro) doesn't have this issue, phone B (iPhone 14 Pro) has this issue.

phone C (iPhone XS Max) has lightly different issue. The videos have grey thumbnails, but seconds are showing, and there's no error message

> This bug with videos also causes photo download to stop

> If I edit the videos, they will be downloaded, errors cleared, however they still have grey thumbnails

> Duplicate and delete does seem to work, this fixes the grey thumbnail as well. However it feels unsafe and stupid.

Ok, so I have this issue too, with videos recorded on macbook, they don't play on iphone or ipad, they have this error and on macbook are fine. I've talked with apple support 1h and they don't have a solution for this problem yet, meanwhile I found a temp working solution: Install another video player from appstore and they will work fine! Not with all video players will work, in my case, worked with the one with blue play icon, I don't think I am allowed to say the name of the app here. Cheers!

For me, it seems like the error was with the cloud and the download needed to be forced. I was able to recover a video with this error by duplicating the video.

I tried most of these suggestions and nothing worked. I then decided to try and duplicate the video and it worked!! Hopefully this helps.

I've found some solutions for you. Try the fixes below. I know it's too late, but it can still be helpful for someone who has the same issue on their iPhone.

1. Deactivate the storage optimization for photos. If you have activated the storage optimization for photos, your iPhone forces high-resolution videos to be stored only in iCloud and low-resolution videos to be stored on local storage. Go to your iPhone Settings > Go to Photos > Deactivate Optimise iPhone Storage option.

2. If you've enabled the data saver, turn it off. The data saver feature limits your data usage.

3. You should allow unlimited data for syncing. To do that, Go to your iPhone settings > Go to Photos > Scroll down and Tap on the Mobile Data option > Turn on Unlimited Updates

4. you can log in with your Apple ID on the iCloud website.

Any of the fixes should solve your error. However, you can also read this article, where I got these fixes that worked for me: How to fix unable to load photo or video error on iPhone

okay, this is what worked for me!

1. go to ur iCloud
2. choose apps using iCloud and click on Photos
3. check if u have ur syncing off (caused by prioritising optimisation over syncing itself lol)
4. if u do - turn it on (worked for me), if u dont - check if u have downloading originals in photos (type in Optimise storage and pick Photos)

Here is your solution go to the photo/video that will not load and tap the edit button in the top right from there it should load and fix your problem.

Low data mode prevents videos to load at high quality

turn it off an it’ll be fixed

I agree it is a bug, or a change to the supported media types that has not been communicated.

I started at chat at Official Apple Support and eventually was transferred to a senior support engineer and we had a phone call to discuss the problem. I would recommend doing the same so that they know it impacts more users.

Did my message just got deleted from this thread?? I updated my situation. So most of my videos are apparently gone… yes, apple responded to me and my videos are gone!! So im not happy right now, i got like 4000 videos on icloud since launch of iphone 4… and they say theres nothing they can do… sorry my bad english but yea this is the situation now.. like 1/3 of the videos get this error message..

Thanks for talking to support. That is the only way that these types of issues will be addressed.

Is there anything different about the videos that play and don't play.

I found my issue only was with MP4 videos with the H.264 codec.

Any videos recorded on my phone with HEVC codec did not have the issue.

Had the same topic several time. One video is still not accessible after almost one year.

All videos have in common: their size - longer than 6 minutes.

My current "frozen" video is edited on the iphone. I was able to replay it after deleting editing features. But still I cannot upload or share anything or dublicate.

Very frustrating. I am really thinking about recording on oldschool cameras again. Since Jobs is no more, things are getting worse anyways. I am sticking to apple as long as I can feel his soul. Once this is vanished, I will change systems completely and do some brain jogging.