SillyDog701

[Markalark]

Hi,
WMF files need to be completly downloaded in Firefox before Windows Media Player will launch and play the clip. IE buffers and begins play after a few seconds. What am I missing?

Thanks

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

[Fulvio]

WMP and IE are part of the same family, and you can set up IE to play WMP as if it was integrated.
As for the files, there are several possibilities. One is that the files are embedded, and there should be only the buffering delay to open an embedded player. The second possibility is that you are downloading a file to your hard drive. The results are obvious. The third possibility, which are probably referring to, involved opening WMP. You will need some help, in such case. You may be able to open the file, using the Media Player Connectivity extention. I use it, successfully, to open WMP with embedded files. It should work with files which you just want to listen to.
Should it not work there is the IE Tab extention, which may help. It, basically, embeds IE in Firefox. I use that extention very sparingly, but it is there to open some pages which are more pro-Microsoft pages, than Microsoft itself.
I am opening msnbc.com as IE, and I see more difference than if I had opened IE.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Hyperjackalope Firefox/1.5.0.1

[Ramona]

Mark,

You may simply need the ActiveX plugin which is specifically for Windows Media Player. It is not the dreaded ActiveX that IE uses, but was developed specifically so users could play streaming media. You can install the plugin here: ActiveX plugin for Firefox 1.5.

Here is a test page for streaming media: Media Test Page

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

[Markalark]

Hi Ramona,

Your file at... "WMV File •• Transformer" launches Windows Media Player and plays the file with no problem in Firefox. I'm wondering why your wmv file works and mine doesn't. I simply converted a clip froma a DVD to wmv format using a conversion program and uploaded to the server. I must be missing a step. As a Website designer I'm in new territory with streaming video.

Mark

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

[Antony]

Hi Ramona,

Your file at... "WMV File •• Transformer" launches Windows Media Player and plays the file with no problem in Firefox. I'm wondering why your wmv file works and mine doesn't. I simply converted a clip froma a DVD to wmv format using a conversion program and uploaded to the server. I must be missing a step. As a Website designer I'm in new territory with streaming video.

Mark

Hello Mark,
Allow me to jump in.

Do you have a test page of your WMV file (and the HTML page with the code) we can take a look?

To actually "stream" a media file, the media file must be served from a special server. This holds true for all three popular media formats (QuickTime movies, Real video, and WMV).
What you described "WMF files need to be completly downloaded in Firefox before Windows Media Player will launch and play the clip. IE buffers and begins play after a few seconds.", it seems like you were referring to "fast start" (rather than "streaming").

I am no expert on Windows Media format, but from my QuickTime movies... it depends on how you create the QuickTime movie (for fast start or streaming).

"Fast start" means the movie will be played once certain amount of data has been downloaded.
"Streaming" refers to the movie will keep playing even if certain data has been lost during connection, and is usually designed NOT to be saved (at users end).

You might want to compare the difference between simply fast start (embedded) and streaming (embedded)

This page shows QuickTime Streams and auto-selecting best version based on users internet connection and QT version.

Hope these help.

Edit, correct sentences, sorry

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.8

[Markalark]

Thanks Antony,

Yes, "Fast Start" is what I'm referring to. I realize that this is not true streaming. After reading the info at Ramona's links, I see that it is normal for Firefox to download the file and then play. The video files I'm using are pretty large which is part of my problem. The 30 second clip loaded very quickly which gave me the illusion that it was "streaming". Thanks for all your help.

Mark

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1