Issues with Windows Phone 8.1 Playback

tom — Jun 12, 2015 03:41PM EDT

We've just installed JWPlayer 6.12 and it's working great across all platforms on desktop, Android and iOS. However, we we attempt to play the video in Windows Phone 8.1 we are always getting

"Error Loading Media: File could not be played"

jwplayer("vslvideo").setup({
file: '/assets/media/video/SS_150428_VSL_2_all.mp4',
width: 384,
height: 288,
primary: 'flash',
ga: {}
});

I have tried with HTML5 and Flash playback with the MP4 and it just will not work in Windows Phone 8.1.

Any thoughts would be great. We went from VideoJS to JWPlayer because VideoJS was having issues with Desktop browsers but not mobile. So it looks like we swapped one issue for another and I'd really not have to manage to different players.

2 Community Answers

Up Down

MisterNeutron

User

Jun 12, 2015 08:00PM EDT 0 rated :

First, get rid of primary: 'flash'. There's really no reason to force visitors into Flash when 99% of them have perfectly good HTML5-capable browsers. The player will automatically drop back to Flash if it needs to (IE8 and Firefox under WinXP, but that's about it).

Not sure why the video is failing on Windows Phone - it should be able to handle a properly-encoded video. Just as an experiment, run the video through Handbrake with default options, plus check "Web optimized." That might fix it. http://handbrake.fr/

Up Down

Cooper Reid

JW Player Support Agent

Jun 16, 2015 08:59AM EDT 0 rated :

Hello,

This sounds like an encoding issue -

Please make sure you are using these settings in your encoding: http://support.jwplayer.com/customer/portal/articles/1403635-media-format-reference#video/. Some browsers are more stringent than others about encoding requirements. I typically use Handbrake (free on Mac) to encode video files.

Here are a few screenshots of my encoding settings:
http://cl.ly/image/0g1D3o3b1Z2v
http://cl.ly/image/3Z0d3y0u3F1I

Also, please make sure that the request for your video is returning a proper mime-type that corresponds to your video format:
http://support.jwplayer.com/customer/portal/articles/1403635-media-format-reference#video

-Cooper

This question has received the maximum number of answers.