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Cannot play on Windows 7 and IE 11

We cannot play the video 'Error loading media file cannot be play' on our site.
http://www.knolio.com/course/7/
We supply normal 'file' url download h264 video.
If additional plugin required, at least it should prompt the user the right action.

You can use IE 11 and windows 7 at www.browserstack.com as a test machine so our test is standardized. Although, one of our test machine can play the video. But several machines of our customers site cannot.

Most surprisingly, we found same problem here:
http://www.jwplayer.com/

(Your demo video has the same error message.)

19 Community Answers

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MisterNeutron

User  
0 rated :

First, JW Player does not require any browser plugins. It's just using Javascript, which is enabled by default in every browser.

Second, on your test site you have some sort of serious server problems. Attempting to access your 7:48 video directly (i.e., not with any player script at all), my browser tells me that the download will take over 3 hours. It then fails, resulting in a saved file of only a few KB.

Third, do not rely on any emulator or test site for IE11. The only reliable test is to use an actual installation of IE11 on an actual Windows PC.

Finally, the main JW Player demo page obviously works in IE11 on Win7 - if not, hundreds of thousands of people would have complained about it long before now. If you're getting a failure on a specific PC, reset IE to its default settings - Tools, Internet Options, Advanced - and disable any addons or extensions you're using.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

I just went to your site in IE11 and I see the issue. It buffers a while, then it displays an error message. How did you encode the file?

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MisterNeutron

User  
0 rated :

Ethan, I don't think the encoding is the primary issue (it might be wrong, but it's impossible to find out). Try putting the address to the MP4 directly into your browser and try downloading it. I couldn't even get that to work.

And I'm seeing the error in every browser, not just IE11.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

I was able to get it to play in FF, but I had to press play wait a long time, then press it again. But yeah, the direct MP4 is having issues as well, so might be server related.

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kris

User  
-1 rated :

Sounds like we test more than you do.
Google Chrome can play fine on both windows and mac, everytime.
Firefox on mac os is fine.
This is specifically a combination of jwplayer and IE11 that can reproduce the issue even on your site.

Using the file url directly also works.
You might have a serious network problem if you cannot download this
https://knolio-cdn-2.s3.byteark.com/MEDIA/user/2/courses/7/preview_video_8411_normal.mp4

And please pay attention to browserstack.com. You shouldn't just disregard the results.
I tested that Chrome on windows 7 can play the video so it is not a server side nor network problem from their side. When I choose IE11 on the same machine it just could not play.

browserstack servers should reside in the US I'm not sure but it is a different geographical area than our server which is in southeast asia.
We both can play the video so you still think it is a server and network problem from our end?

My client uses a home pc to test it and it displays the same result on IE11.

I'm not saying this doesn't work at all. I'm saying Windows7 and IE 11 that seems to be the problem. Maybe more versions on IE have issues. But we have tested Mac OS and Chrome extensively. For paid access, we also provide many data stream type to support multiple browsers/platforms (with signature validation) and that has worked for us until we test on IE.

It sounds like you are focusing more on finding that I'm guilty rather than trying to sincerely help me.
I have spent a lot of effort and time to figure out how to use and setup this product properly.
I am expecting a serious analysis of the problem from JWplayer side. If I don't configure anything properly please tell me. but it can play on other platforms and even IE9. Please help.

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kris

User  
0 rated :

encoding is h264 anything specifically you need to know?

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MisterNeutron

User  
0 rated :

Ethan and I are not in the same place, and aren't using the same ISP or network. Neither of us can play your video, or even download it, in any browser. (I don't work for JW Player - I'm just another user.)

Neither of us has any problem viewing the video on the main JW Player site in IE11.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

I am in New York and I have no issues on our homepage in IE11 either. If we had issues on our homepage, we would receive many complaints about this issue.

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MisterNeutron

User  
0 rated :

kris: "I am expecting a serious analysis of the problem from JWplayer side."

I'm sure you are. Normally, I would download your video, host it on my own server, and set up a test page to access it. That would tell me whether it's a server problem. I might then run it through HandBrake to see if it's an encoding problem.

But I can't even download your video to test it.

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kris

User  
0 rated :

Dear Ethan,
Please be aware that you are receiving two complaints right now; one from me and one from my client. Please see screenshot below. It's the issue on JWPlayer homepage.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fSmjkkf3JEYno3YmVSUDlsUkE/view?usp=sharing

What details you need to figure out what's the issue? I'm not sure yet if we can provide remote desktop for you.

We are suspecting that the local cdn that we use might not be accessible by some regions. However, that does not mean you can conclude that JWPlayer and IE11 work 100% of the time. As far as we have seen, only some machines (windows 7) have the problem but that includes normal home PC that my client uses. So please find the link below. We provide many types of stream data sources (one uses AWS cloudfront that pickybacking S3, it should work anywhere giving enough trials for the edge location to pickup the file)

http://test-jw.s3-website-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/

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MisterNeutron

User  
0 rated :

At least make sure the server is using the correct MIME type of "video/mp4" when it serves the file. The amazonaws servers usually get this wrong, often with a MIME type of "application/octet-stream." You may have to go into the amazonaws console to fix it.

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MisterNeutron

User  
0 rated :

Also, your pages must have a proper DOCTYPE. That will trip up some browsers, especially IE.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

rtmps + cloudfront – keep in mind that RTMP is a Flash only protocol. Flash will need to be installed for IE (activeX version for this to work).

m3u8 + cloudfront – This is actually an mp4 file, with an incorrect mime-type, just like MisterNeutron said. It needs to be video/mp4. IE is very picky about this. It won’t happen in Flash mode if you set the primary variable to Flash, though.

rtmps + m3u8 + cloudfront – This also works, but is RTMP, so Flash is required.

cloudfront- This is also RTMP, which needs Flash.

The m3u8 link will not work on the desktop, since your player key is Pro, and m3u8 on the desktop only works in Premium.

byteark – This has the correct mime-type (video/mp4).

If you would like to do a screen share and go over these issues, we can certainly do that. Please contact support directly (submission is on – https://account.jwplayer.com/#/home). I can’t do a screenshare over our public forums.

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kris

User  
0 rated :

Thank you MisterNeutron and Ethan for your help.

I checked the MIME type issue with the video that you couldn't play earlier (because of region or whatever), it has been using the correct mime type??
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fSmjkkf3JEbjd3R0UwR3Z6N1E/view?usp=sharing

So this still does not explain why the video cannot be played on IE11. what can we do?

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Yes, this file has the correct MIME TYPE.

I would set primary to flash, something has to be wrong with your IE install, since neither of us can replicate the issues on your page, or our homepage.

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kris

User  
0 rated :

but we can replicate the issue, would you please help us if we can get you remote access to the machine?

We will also add flash but will it notify users if flash plugin is not installed? Or it will just say error content cannot be played?
I think I saw that happen once with Firefox on a mac when flash is not installed and users didn't know how to fix that.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

If a user does not have Flash installed, it will fall back to html5 mode. If the browser does not have html5 support, the player falls back to download mode.

I can certainly take a look for you, but please contact us directly if you want us to take a look, you have been posting on the public forums.

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kris

User  
0 rated :

Thank you. i will do that. i wasn't able to find where to get direct support before

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Np

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