| Why won't my audio and video files play properly? |
| User Opinions |
|
No users have voted.
|
|
Thank you for rating this answer.
|
When you are linking to audio and video files and they do not play properly, or they do not play properly for all browsers, there are several possible explanations. The correct solution depends on the type of problem your visitors are having. Mime Type ProblemsFirst, if the audio or video file opens as "text" (gibberish in the browser window), your web server is almost certainly not recognizing it as audio or video at all. Your web server is responsible for telling the web browser what type of information a file contains. A file extension, such as .wmv, is not something that your web browser should try to interpret; it is the responsibility of the web server to make such decisions and send the correct mime type name to the web browser. For instance, if the filename is mymovie.wmv, the web server is responsible for recognizing this and sending a Content-type: video/x-ms-wmv header to the web browser as part of its response to the browser's HTTP request. If the server does not do so, the browser is entirely correct to display it as plain text. This is necessary because file extensions do not necessarily have the same meaning on all systems, and some URLs do not have a file extension at all. To correct this problem for Windows Media files, and to learn about mime type configuration in general, check out Microsoft's content hosting and deploying pages, which offer a complete guide to configuring common web servers (including both Apache and IIS) to recognize Windows Media mime types. The advice given there is also useful for configuring servers to map other file extensions to other mime types, such as audio/mpeg for .mp3 files and audio/x-pn-realaudio for .ram, .rm, and .ra files. If you are not the web server administrator, ask your web server administrator to do these steps for you. If they are not cooperative -- which they should be -- there is a workaround if you are permitted to run CGI scripts. See MimeSlapper for more information. Missing Player SoftwareOf course, when you choose to use audio and video files, there will always be users who simply do not have the required player software. MP3 is an open standard, although not a royalty-free one, and players are available for all systems. RealMedia files, as well as MP3 files, are playable on nearly all systems with RealPlayer. Macintosh users will already have Apple's QuickTime Player, which can be used to play .mp3 files. Linux users will want to install MPlayer in addition to RealPlayer.
|
| Visitor Comments |
|
No visitor comments posted. Post a comment
|
| Attachments |
|
No attachments were found.
|
Search the Knowledgebase
Browse by Category
Print this page
Email this page
Post a comment