README.md

Video app — deployment & upload troubleshooting

When uploads fail on a deployed instance but work locally, this is commonly caused by missing environment variables or the runtime not allowing temporary files to be read by the server.

Quick checks:

• Ensure the server environment has the API key available under VITE_GEMINI_API_KEY.
  • Locally the dev server reads .env (see package.json dev script) or you can set the environment variable before running the server.
• If your hosting provider prevents the runtime from writing to /tmp, change multer's destination in server/index.mjs to a writable location.
• If your hosting provider prevents the runtime from writing to /tmp, set the VIDEO_UPLOAD_TMP_DIR env var to a writable directory; the server will use that directory for temporary uploads.
• If the upload fails the server will now return a helpful JSON message in the response body (e.g. { "error": "VITE_GEMINI_API_KEY is not set on the server" }). These messages will be visible in the UI.

How to run locally for quick debugging:

1. Add a .env file in /video with a valid key (or set VITE_GEMINI_API_KEY in your shell):

   VITE_GEMINI_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

2. Start the app:

   npm run dev

3. Use the included curl helper (test-upload.sh) to simulate uploading a file to the server:

   ./test-upload.sh /path/to/sample.mp4

This will show the raw API response and help identify cases like missing API keys, invalid mime types, or other upload errors.

Advanced testing:

• When some deployments strip or normalize Content-Type headers, the server will accept application/octet-stream uploads for files with a known video extension (e.g. .mp4) and will promote the MIME type accordingly. Use test-mime-fallback.sh to explicitly test that behavior:

  ./test-mime-fallback.sh /path/to/sample.mp4