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HLS streaming not working on Firefox with no flash, so why doesn't it default to HTML5??

Question: I have a Premium account and I'm streaming with HLS a .M3U8 video hosted on Amazon. The 'player' I'm using is configured in the member's area and I have both "always use flash when available" and "use HTML5 for HLS playback" both checked.

It works great in Chrome, and IE... but in Firefox I get the error, "Error leading player: no playable source found". I think it's because Firefox doesn't have flash installed by default, at least I don't have Flash installed.

But I'd think that shouldn't matter right, shouldn't the player detect that flash isn't available, and use HTML5 for the HLS playback instead on Firefox?

Also, I'm not the first with this problem, discussed here a bit: http://goo.gl/6RSMxV

So what settings do I need to set to make HLS playback work in Firefox without flash, any help greatly appreciated.

11 Community Answers

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Jessenia

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Firefox does not natively support HLS, so our player must currently use Flash to play HLS streams. We are working on an update that will allow us to play HLS in Firefox without Flash, but it’s not ready to be released yet.

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Elven

User  
0 rated :

So what format would be best to use then? RTMP maybe? (But I think RTMP requires flash too) Or just normal streaming from HTTP, like from a regular Amazon S3 bucket?

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a...

User  
0 rated :

Hi Elven,

Have you tried Daily Motion's HLS.js library? https://github.com/dailymotion/hls.js

It adds HLS playback to Firefox without Flash. I assume you can customize the player to make it look similar to JW's (though I haven't tried this myself).

The library is open source (Apache 2.0 License) and there's a demo to see it working -> http://dailymotion.github.io/hls.js/demo/

You can probably use it as fallback when no HLS support is present.

Cheers.

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Jessenia

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

RTMP also requires Flash, you would have to play the .mp4 file until we release the update that will have support for HLS in Firefox.

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Dragan

User  
0 rated :

Do you happen to know the release date for the fix?

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Jessenia

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

We do not yet have a release date for this update.

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Elven

User  
0 rated :

Jessy, so my solution thus would be...

1) With PHP or javascript, detect if the browser is Firefox.

2) If the browser is Firefox, then fall back onto the JW hosted player.

3) If the browser is NOT firefox, then stream with HLS and Amazon.

Does this sounds about right?

I was thinking it doesn't make sense to test if flash is installed, as maybe Chrome natively supports HLS, even if Flash isn't installed. Right?

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Elven

User  
0 rated :

@ Jessy: Or even better yet, is there a way to detect if HLS fails for any reason, and then switch to the JW hosted player as a backup?

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Donni

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

If you have the user disable flash on firefox, you can then set an mp4 fallback in the embed.

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r...

User  
0 rated :

Hi,
we've same problem. If I set a double source HLS + DASH, and Firefox have flash disabled, why jwplayer doesn't play DASH stream compatible on Firefox?

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Donni

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

DASH is playable in Firefox 45, or higher, using JW Player 7.4.2, or higher. Since you’re a premium customer, you can create a reproduction page and send it to us via the CONTACT SUPPORT link in your JW Dashboard.

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