Apple Keynote: Embedded video immediately stops after it's been started

I am creating a keynote with multiple embedded videos within different slides. Some of them are played correctly but four out of seven stop immediately after they started. All videos are played automatically when the slide is shown. After a slide is shown the video starts as expected but stops after one to three seconds. This also happens when the video is started by a click.

As some threads suggest this could be caused by slide transisitons – but also after completely removing them from the concerned slides they're still not working. Also this bug can't be connected to damaged video files – as it will randomly disappear when the video is either placed on a different slide, a different keynote. Also resizing the image causes the time the video stops to change.

I've already tried all the below suggested solutions – which unfortunately didn't work:

  • https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7277240
  • https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7569923
  • https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5001413

I am using Keynote 11.1 on an Apple MacBook Pro M1 2020 with Big Sur 11.1.

All videos where cut and rendered by Adobe Premiere Pro 2021 into an MP4 format.

This bug seems to be totally random since some of the videos are just working fine while others do not. I hope someone can help.


From many try and error testing, I found that it was somehow related to Adobe Premieres output format.

I solved the problem by importing all the videos into iMovie and exported them again (in the same format, normal MP4). Afterwards they were played nicely and to their full length. Hope this will help some people :)