Embed Troubleshooting

If you are running into issues getting a Wistia embed working properly, this help page serves as a good first step and includes many things to check and try that may alleviate your troubles.

Here are some common challenges, and how to overcome them. Never give up. Never surrender.

Fallback Embed

The Standard inline embed, while awesome, doesn’t work in every situation. We plan for a lot, but we can’t plan for everything. If you’re not seeing your embed, or something is funky, try using the Fallback (iframe) Embed.

To get your Fallback embed code, select Fallback under the Embed Type heading on the Embed & Share modal:

Then, give us a holler, so we can improve the Standard Embed! You’ll get our undying love for making Wistia better. 💙

Black Bars on the Top and Bottom or Sides of the Video

Does your video look sort of like this one?

*(Note: this is just an image as an example, not a playable video!)

Those lines on the top and bottom (or left and right) are the worst! That can happen if the dimensions of your embed code don’t match the dimensions of your video.

You’ll want to make sure your videos are embedded responsively in this case. Otherwise, be sure that you’re not manually adjusting the size of the video in the embed code outside of the Wistia environment. Feel free to give us a shout if you need help on this front!

Black bars can also appear when your thumbnail image does not share the same aspect ratio as your video. If you’re looking for more information on this, head over to our guide on uploading the right sized thumbnail, and take a look!

This Video is Not Authorized to Be Embedded Here

Do you see this big white box when you embed your video?

This means you have Domain Restrictions turned on. Domain Restrictions is a security feature you can use to ensure your videos are only embedded on the sites you permit. To change the domains where your video can be embedded, you’ll need to be the Account Owner. This can be done from the Account Settings menu.

Video Not Resizing Correctly

There are generally two ways in which a video might not display at the size you’d expect.

The first situation is embedding in WordPress using oEmbed, but the video is displaying at smaller dimensions than what you set on the Embed & Share screen. If that’s happening, it’s possible that your WordPress theme specifies a maximum width for content embedded with oEmbed. See this tip in the Wistia WordPress help page for details on fixing that.

The second situation is when you’d like your video to be responsive, but it’s not changing size when it should. First things first, make sure you’re using the Responsive option. If that option is set, but your embed is still not responding correctly, check to make sure that the parent container (that’s the HTML element surrounding your video, like a set of <div> tags) is set to the width you’d like. That’s what the embed code will use to determine how wide the video should be.

If you’re having a problem with the size of your video and the tips above don’t do the trick, send us a link to the video and we’ll help you get it looking great!

Embedding Channel Episodes

Looking for how to embed your Channel Episodes? Check out our handy guide here!