The encoding service logs all its errors and warnings to the Event Viewer log.

To find this log,

1. Open the Event Viewer application on the server running the Encoding Service and open the log Applications and Service Logs -> VideoStream.
2. Check for any messages in this log to help diagnose issues.

The Encoding Service runs as a standard Windows Service outside of SharePoint. Open the Services snapin and ensure the service is in the “running” state.

The encoding service communicates directly with the Video Stream database. Ensure that:

1. The account under which the Encoding Service is running has DBO database permissions on the Video Stream Database.
2. The Encoding service’s configuration file is pointing to the correct database.
3. The encoding server can access the database server (for example, no firewall is blocking access).
4. If a Sql Server alias is used it should be created using 32bit version of cliconfig.exe or if created using Sql Server Configuration Manager is should be under SQL Native Client 10.0 Configuration (32bit) node, because Encoding Services is a 32 bit application.

If this is the issue, there will be error messages in the Encoding server error log and the video will be marked as Pending in the Encoding Console.

For further information, see Video Stream - Encoding Service, Video Stream - Encoding Console.

If the user who uploaded the video sees the Video Failed Encoding message in their activity stream.

For further details, see the Video Failed Encoding section for more information.