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

So, paying for 1TB of iCloud storage and also running into the annoying problem myself, I have an even better solution (bandage) for thus problem. When you see this error, it means one of the photos used in the memory does not have its high quality version not fully downloaded from the iCloud database. In my case, the Xmas memory that was auto-created had this issue but I could not simply duplicate the video and replace it as the memory itself wouldn’t allow me to add other photos to the set. So:

1. 3 dots, upper right corner of the memory.
2. Select Manage Photos, and select / deselect every photo / video and spot the ones with a mini cloud icon on the bottom right corner of its thumbnail. This means it is not fully downloaded from iCloud (or at least its not marked as such in the photo app’s registry due to a bug).
3. Long press media with the icon and Show in All Photos.
4. Go to media and select Edit.
5. Go to the trim function and trim 1 second of it from the end. Save Video.
6. Edit it again and set the trim back to full length.
7. Now iCloud has marked this media in its registry as fully downloaded from iCloud. You should be able to download the memory now and share as normal.

I figured a way. This works for cinematic videos which don't load. So I click on 'edit' and remove 'cinematic' by tapping on the button that says cinematic. This made the video load. Then I went back to 'edit' and converted it back to Cinematic, by clicking on 'Revert'. Now the video loads in Cinematic too. Hope this helps.

I know this is an old thread but for anyone else who comes across this the reason for the issue is most likely because your phone doesn't have enough accessible RAM to load the video. If you own a MacBook or IMac, connect your phone to it via USB or USB-C cable and open the photos app on the mac. Click the name of your phone and click the video that you would like to load. From there click import video and since your mac is significantly more powerful, it will be able to load the video. Note: Time to process may vary depending on size and quality of video. Hope this helps!

My videos are working.

My problem was not related t o the iPhone or iOS as Apple wrongly suspected. This was a problem with the Shared Album storage or the way it played the videos. The problem was limited to MP4 H.264 videos that I had converted from AAVI files and loaded onto my iPhone and then placed oi the Shared Album.

I knew it was not an issue with the iPhone as the videos would not play from the shared album public website link. This issues was reproduceable across multiple devices and also Widows PCs.

After multiple calls with Apple support they said they reported it to the developers and a couple of days later all videos started working again.

I would contact support and report your issue. I started with a chat and eventually it got escalated and I talked to a person.

Here’s what worked for me. I tried the Edit button solution but that didn’t work so instead I clicked on the 3 dots in the right hand corner and selected DUPLICATE. That caused the video to download and after it duplicated both versions were able to play. I deleted one version so I only had one. It’s a bit tedious to have to go through each one but that’s what worked for me. My other videos were fine from 2018 on so I only had to duplicate the years before that. Good luck!

I found the solution: Duplicate the video, it will download, then delete the created duplicate.

I hope I don't have to go through this every week...

Hello fellow iPhone users, I’ve found the solution to everyone’s issue.

• Select the video you wish to play.
• Next after you get the unable to load video message press ok.
• Next you want to click edit video from the top right corner.
• You’ll then see the video being downloaded.
• Lastly click cancel and enjoy your video. (Make sure you have storage cause otherwise it might not work)

Same thing happened to me, had to agree to the new terms and services in settings under your Apple ID then it started working

FIXED - Just writing back to say this issue was completely resolved for me after updating my iPhone to 17.2.1. It has been a frustrating couple of months.

Not sure if the update will solve everyone's problems here, as there seem to be a few separate issues going on. But check your version in case this works for you.

If you click the three dots in the corner and click duplicate, it will make a new copy of the video that you can play!

This happened to many of my old videos and this is the only thing that worked for me.

Good Luck!

Hi all, I have spoken to Apple again, but they are not sure what the issue is. They said they don’t have enough reports for the same but will get the engineering team to look in to it.

I have checked my shared Albums and random videos that used to play don’t play. However if you try to share them via Whatsup or other the video gets downloaded and then will play from shared album. It is a bizarre bug.

Hello fellow iPhone users, I’ve found the solution to everyone’s issue.

• Select the video you wish to play.
• Next after you get the unable to load video message press ok.
• Next you want to click edit video from the top right corner.
• You’ll then see the video being downloaded.
• Lastly click cancel and enjoy your video. (Make sure you have storage cause otherwise it might not work)

tl;dr: try making sure a video is fully synced with iCloud before moving it to a shared library

For those having this issue with videos in a shared library, I found that the problem occurs if I move a video from my personal library to the shared library before the video has finished uploading (synced) to iCloud. There seems to be an issue on Apple’s side with synchronizing the data across the libraries; a partial sync to a personal library causes the sync to the shared library to result in bad metadata, at least that’s my guess. Hope this helps some of you!

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.