Videos won't play in FireFox...

Hello,

I'm uploading some video "E-Cards" to a website, and one of them won't play in Safari. (Also, in Google Chrome)

Here's the URL:

www.rubberchickencards.com/ecards/smiling-dog/2430/

None of them will play in FireFox. Any idea why the one video won't play in Safari, and why none of them play in FireFox?

We're suppose to launch on Sunday, and this is a real problem.

Thanks very much for your help!!! Eddie

The video link from page source says video is not on server (or badly linked)

Quote: The requested URL /cards/I+Wonder-Halloween-SD.mp4 was not found on this server.

Firefox needs a plugin to play Quicktime videos.
I see it in Safari, but says "loading", and never plays, even after 10 minutes.
What file type are you uploading, what are the details?

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your response to my question.

Can FireFox users download the plugin that allows them to see quicktime movies, or does the web designer install it?

The one movie that doesn't play was processed just like all the others, so I'm not sure why it's not working. I'll take it down until I can figure it out.

Please tell me more about the FireFox plugin scenario. Thanks!!! Eddie

It should install with QuickTime itself, but is a plugin. So a Windows user who doesn't have QuickTime on their PC won't get it. When they install QuickTime, they'll have the web browser plugin. Macs, come with Quicktime installed, so it should just work.

Dang... I've tried it on both of my Macs, and it doesn't work.

I get this error:

"Video format or MIME type is not supported."

Does that make any sense?

From memory: Firefox doesn't support H.264/mp4 video. It does support WebM; in the future I think they're going to support H.264 again. Chrome supports WebM and while it's officially dropped H.264, that hasn't actually happened yet. Safari supports H.264 and not WebM. Yes, it's a mess.

The usual route is to use a player component like JW Player, and let that handle browser compatibility issues. You can configure the player to try H.264 first, then WebM, and failing that fall back to Flash playback of H.264. In practice, I usually omit the WebM option and serve up just H.264, either natively (if supported) or via Flash.

Alternatively, upload to a hosting site (YouTube, Vimeo, etc), embed their player, and let them handle compatibility.

I get H.264 in Firefox all the time.

Thanks for this info. I will pass it along to our Web guy.

This FireFox issue is really goofing up our launch.

Thanks,

Eddie

www.rubberchickencards.com/ecards/smiling-dog

It's a little hard to tell from the release notes, but I think Firefox started playing H.264 natively again last year sometime. So it'll depend on the precise version you're running, though from the version adoption charts I think most of the Firefox installs out there can cope.

Thanks for prompting me to check, Ben - I've not kept up with Firefox and wasn't aware they'd implemented their policy change on open codecs.

I hate how convoluted web browsers are. So much for standards that increase productivity and end user experience.