Video not working

micknewton · September 29, 2008

Can someone please tell me why these videos will no longer play?

http://www.on-sightphotography.com/gallery/5993521_MiTtQ/1/374472318_scouM

When I click the play button, nothing happens.

Did the videos somehow get corrupted, or is this a problem with SmugMug's code?

I recently added some minor customization to the gallery description, but I don't think that would have any effect on the videos.

docwalker · September 30, 2008

Micky, Can you try clicking on the video window and not the play button? See if the video will play for you. They are for me.

I think you are seeing the play button bug. Clicking on the video will get around it. This is not how it should work. I have reported this to the programmers. Hopefully we can get it fixed soon.

micknewton · September 30, 2008

Okay, I clicked on the image instead of the play button and it took me to a single-image view. Then I clicked the play button and it tried to play the video, but it displayed the "you need to install flash" screen...

...which is strange since I already had flash v9.0.47.0 installed. But what the heck, I clicked the install link. It immediately pops up this dialog...

...so I close Firefox, then reopen it and try the video. Same thing. It tells me I need to install the flash player (that I supposedly just installed). So I clicked on the "Adobe Flash Player Support Center" link. The Adobe site has a page to let you determine what version of the player you have installed. It showed that I already had v9.0.47.0 installed...

...at this point I decided to uninstall the flash player completely, then re-install the latest version. So I closed Firefox again, uninstalled the player using my control panel, rebooted, went back to the Adobe site and downloaded the latest player, closed Firefox again, installed the new player, rebooted again, then went back and checked the installed version again on Adobe's site. It said I now have v9.0.124.0 installed...

...then I went back to the gallery and tried the video again. Nothing. Nada. Zip. It displayed the player, but no video.

So I decided to download the video and try playing it outside of the site. I logged into the site and tried to download the video, but when I hovered my mouse over the video it didn't display the "Save Movie" menu item. So I switched the gallery from journal style to smugmug style, then it displayed the "Save Movie" item...

...so I saved the movie to a temp folder on my C drive. When I looked in the folder the file was there but it had zero bytes. No video.

So I did the "Save Movie" thing with the other two videos in the gallery. These two files downloaded correctly, and the files actually had about 4.5MB of video as they should.

I tried playing the second video in the gallery by clicking the image, then the play button. This video opened up in the player and it did play, although the video controls were screwed up. The start/stop control worked, but the position slider did not.

Apparently the first video got lost or corrupted somehow. Hopefully, she saved a copy of the video and can replace the lost one.

All of this is a bit strange because when I first started helping this person with her site, all of the videos played without any problems. And I don't think any of the customization changes that I've made since then would have any effect on her videos. It's all been simple changes to galleries and gallery descriptions, menubar, etc. The only significant changes that I made to this gallery was switching it to journal style and modifying the gallery description.

I did update my system to the latest version of Firefox. I currently have v3.0.2 installed. Would that cause any of these problems?

I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware that dgrin had a video forum. That's my fault for not looking around enough. If I had known, I would have posted this there.

Since you mentioned the "play button bug" I found this thread and read a few of the 65 pages. Apparently, I'm not the only one having problems with videos.

To recap...

1. The play button doesn't work.
2. In journal style, the "Save Movie" menu item is not displayed.
3. The page that plays the video didn't know that Flash 9 was already installed.
4. The Flash installer on that page didn't work.
5. The slider control on the latest player is out of sync with the video being played.
6. The gallery lost or corrupted one of the videos, even though the image of the video is still displayed.
7. In journal style, clicking the image of the video takes you to a single-image view, but there's no controls to go back to the other videos or to display the next/previous journal entry in the gallery.

Is there any chance that these problems will be fixed anytime soon?

Thanks for all your help Doc! It is much appreciated.

Mick

micknewton · September 30, 2008

I just discovered that #7 on my recap list was my fault. I had "display:none" set for that gallery's #albumNav_top, #albumNav_bottom, and #photoTools.

I removed those and now I see "< Prev 1 of 3 Next >" in the single-image view. Although, there's still no control (that I know of) that will take you back to the original journal view.

docwalker · September 30, 2008

Mick, I will make sure that the programmers see this. Thanks for the feedback.

We are checking on the video now to see why it is not playing.

docwalker · September 30, 2008

Mick,

Did that video ever play for you? I tired the last one and it works. The one you are pointing to does not and the database is not showing a valid video file.

Can you try reuploading it?

--Doc

micknewton · September 30, 2008

docwalker wrote:

Mick,

Did that video ever play for you? I tired the last one and it works. The one you are pointing to does not and the database is not showing a valid video file.

Can you try reuploading it?

--Doc

All three videos worked fine when I first started customizing her site, about a week ago. Now, only the 2nd and 3rd videos will play. The 1st one appears to be corrupted.

I'll ask her to reupload the 1st video. It may take some time as we are both on different schedules.

Thanks for looking into this!

Video not working

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