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Hello, we have a problem with the (pro version) of the FV flowplayer plugin.
We are running wordpress version 3.8 and are using the “Presso” theme.In firefox, the audio for the video plays but the visual parts are not there. The video only plays if it is expanded to full screen, but the video is still black with sound after full screen is exited.
Videos work fine in Safari, Chrome, and Opera. Just Firefox is the issue.
Here is a link to an example:
http://www.poncho.tv/here/white-night-2014/In the admin side of WordPress, after three dots “load”, there is text in the upper left hand corner of the player that says “Admin note: Checking the video file…” and then it says “null”. The video displays just black but the sound is there, and the progress bar and other controls appear.
I’ve trawled through the support posts, so I will write some more information about our server that I think will be helpful:
– I have set the mime types in the .htaccess file
– We are running PHP 5.3.3
– Debug mode is turned off in the wp_config file
– Debug mode in the server is also disabled
– cURL is enabled
– magic quotes are disabled
-in the admin panel under FV WordPress Flowplayer settings, when I press “Check Videos”, there are no errors, and when I click “Check Template” there are no errors – unless W3 total cache plugin is enabled – in that case it says “You are using W3 Total Cache with JS Minify enabled. The template check might not be accurate. Please check your videos manually.”
– our PHP info page can be viewed here: http://www.poncho.tv/phpinfo.phpAny help would be greatly appreciated! This is an urgent problem as we are launching our (video-based) website tomorrow, and Firefox is a very popular amongst our viewers.
Cheers,
Amelia
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Hi Timothy,
I’m sorry for the issues you are facing.
Does videos play in Firefox when W3 Total Cache is disabled?
It could also be an encoding issue: Martin will take a look later today.
Making the web work for you, Alec
Hi Alec,
Thank you so much for the prompt reply.When W3 Total Cache is disabled, the problem still remains the same in Firefox. We have tried disabling all other plugins as well, and still the problem remains.
Hi Timothy,
Martin will look at your site today. Thanks!
Hello Timothy,
does your template offer an option to disable the fitVids script which is included in it?
This script tries to make FV Flowplayer responsive and it already is responsive. So that causes the issues you are seeing. It affects only the Flash player. As your video is MP4, it plays in Flash on Firefox on Mac. It works on Windows.
Please let us know how it goes.
Thanks,
Martin
Hi Martin,
Thank you so much for your reply. I will have a look and try to find out if we can disable the fitVids script. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Hi Martin and Alec,
There wasn’t an option to disable the fitVids script via the admin panel, but I tried the method of disabling the script – by following the instructions on this site:http://forum.pagelines.com/topic/30739-can-fitvidsjs-be-disabled-from-the-theme/
And still the problem remains.
also, now this text appears below the video player (while the player reads “Admin note: Checking the video file…” and then disappears it says “null”):
“Adobe Flash is disabled for this page, click player area to enable.”
I have also discovered that IE also has this problem in addition to Firefox.
Hi Martin and Alec,
After conferring with the author of the theme, I have disabled the fitVid script the correct way – by commenting out the line of code in the main.js file that contains the line which calls fitvid.js. (So, please disregard my previous two posts).This has fixed the firefox and IE problem described above in most of the computers that I have been testing on – except sometimes the video can be a bit jerky/laggy in firefox, AND/OR sometimes the video’s image can drop out occasionally.
Also, in the admin panel, the “Admin note” still reads “null” after a few seconds. Is this a bad thing? What does “null” mean in terms of the video?
Thanks again.
Hello Timothy,
1) Video checker reporting “null” – your PHP is set with display_errors to “On”. That might be causing the issue if some plugin shows some warning in the Ajax output. We are currently re-working the video checker, so this kind of issues will be solved in one of the next releases.
2) Regarding the jerky/laggy playback – please let us know what browser version on what OS you used and it you had Flash installed.
3) Regarding “Adobe Flash is disabled for this page, click player area to enable.” error message – how long did it take for the page and FV Flowplayer to load?
Thanks,
Martin
Hello Martin!
Thank you very much for your detailed reply. We really appreciate the care you’ve taken to answer our queries.1) Regarding the “null” message: I understand that you are reworking this and can expect updates in future releases, which is very good news. But is this message something I should be worried about now?
2) The jerky/laggy playback happened on Firefox version 27 (up to date), on Mac OS 10.6.8. But I am testing it on a Mac OS 10.7 now and am seeing that the jerky laggy bits only happen at the very beginning of each video (if at all) for a few seconds.
3) When the “Adobe Flash is disabled for this page…” error message appeared, it disappeared very quickly. The page and player only took about 2 seconds to load on most computers. However, occasionally on one computer (running Mac OS 10.6.8 on Firefox), the player would take a very long time to load (upwards of five minutes if it loaded at all).
As of now, I have tested our site on four computers, and only one is having occasional difficulties. (this is good!), but I may still have to investigate why the video occasionally drops out/doesn’t load on the Mac OS 10.6.8 with Firefox 27.
We really appreciate your help so far. I will try to do more testing. Thank you!
Hello Timothy,
1) I checked your video on our test site and video checker is not reporting any issue for it, saying “Video OK”.
However it might not be so simple:
2) Now that you mentioned that it’s just in first couple of seconds, I’m noticing it too. It’s probably caused by poor video performance of Firefox on Mac. Safari plays the video much smoother, although in this case (MP4 video) Firefox on Mac can only play the video using Flash and Safari uses HTML5.
What you can try it to re-encode the video in Handbrake. For instructions, tips, and screenshots check our encoding article. That will make sure the right buffering and H.264 profile settings are used making the video more compatible.
3) I would suggest that you make sure your Flash plugin on that computer is up to date. Are you using any slow extensions on that Firefox? The Flash warning appears when the player is slow to load to detect the Flash failure and that can be caused by other aspects too. The more difficult solution is to also provide the video in WebM format so that Firefox on Mac can play it in HTML5 (use Fireogg of Miro Video Converter).
Thanks,
Martin
