Note
We’re saying goodbye to Soapbox on 9/1, but you can still record with Wistia. Learn more.
Note
Longer Soapbox recordings will put a larger strain on your computer’s local hardware. If you are experiencing difficulties with longer recordings, we recommend breaking them up into smaller 10–15 minute-long videos to see if your experience differs.
Soapbox Isn’t Loading
Things aren’t loading for you in Soapbox? Start by fully restarting Chrome (quit the application if you’re on a Mac) and try again. Sometimes Chrome simply needs a restart to clear out the funkiness.
What do I do if Soapbox can’t see my devices?
First, check to make sure that Chrome can see your devices. You can see that on the Video Capture tab of your Media Internals Chrome page: chrome://media-internals/ (note: that URL will only work in Chrome since it’s a link to a Chrome settings page)
That will display the devices that Chrome can record — if it’s an empty list, then Chrome can’t detect your devices (and neither can we). We rely on Chrome’s ability to access camera and audio, so you’ll need to grant Chrome access to your device in order to use it with Soapbox.
Poor Quality Webcam or Audio Problems
Soapbox can be a pretty usage-intensive extension depending on your settings. If you’re having troubles with video and audio streams being captured smoothly, the first step is to look into issues with your system resources. There are two main ways to do this:
Use the Options for Soapbox to turn your settings down to find resolutions or frame rates that work better for your computer. You can do this by right-clicking the Soapbox icon and selecting Options — this will take you to a page where you can tweak your capture settings. Smaller videos with lower frame rates require fewer resources, so some combination of these settings should get things to both look nice and record smoothly.
Quit any resource-heavy applications you might be using, as they might conflict with the Soapbox extension. Depending on what operating system you’re on, this can be done in different ways. On a Mac, you can use the application Activity Monitor. On Windows, the Task Manager program fills that need. These applications will let you spot things using lots of RAM or CPU, and those will be the things that will impact your ability to use Soapbox seamlessly and ensure your recordings look and sound great.
Thumbnails are not appearing in Soapbox
If you finish editing your video, and notice that a default thumbnail is not generated, this can be from an error that occurred in the uploading process. To fix this, you can click on a video to re-initiate an upload, and re-initiate generating a thumbnail. You can also customize your Soapbox with a manually selected thumbnail.
In addition, we recommend checking out the steps on this page to enable Streaming Uploads. This feature can help with thumbnail issues moving forward!
Recording Does Not Begin
If you’re using Soapbox on a Mac, you should know Apple has added some additional security features when it comes to applications recording your screen. If your Soapbox recording doesn’t start, you’ll want to make sure Chrome has permission to record your screen and access your webcam.
Navigate to your Privacy & Security settings within your System Settings:
Within this menu, ensure that Screen Recording permissions are enabled for Chrome:
While here, make sure that Chrome has the proper permissions for your Camera and Microphone as well.
Helpful details to send when you’re alerting us to an issue
Generally, it’s helpful for us to know as much about your viewing and recording environment as possible. The base level details that are helpful to send along if you’re seeing issues with Soapbox include, but are not limited to:
Specific version of Chrome
Specific version of your Operating System
A link to the Soapbox video in question
General computer specs (such as CPU cores/speed, amount of RAM, etc.)
If applicable, external cameras and drivers