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Player stops halfway through video.

I've looked through this forum ...I've looked through this forum and found a few related topics, but nothing that really answers what is causing this problem.

We are showing our church services through the FLV player, and at certain times, the video just stops playing at random times. It appears that the player has actually stopped downloading and just assumes that the video file has finished. For example, I have a 53 min service playing, and it stops completely at 14 minutes. Or, I have a 20 min video and it stops completely after 5 mins.

It's not just my machine either...as I've seen a few reports of FireBug causing the issue. I've had reports from other people that the same problem is occuring...both through IE and Firefox.

Any suggestions? Is this a server issue or a player issue? The videos were converted using the Flash 8 Video Encoder as I always do...and never had any issues until recently.

34 Community Answers

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JW Player

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As a follow up...it almost appears as if the player is downloading the video too fast. So, percentage-wise, by the time the bar reaches the end of the progress area, it considers that the end of the video.

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JW Player

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I am having this exact same problem. A very small percentage of almost completely Firefox/Mozilla users' videos just plain stop loading at a certain time, and return to the beginning as if the video has completed... even though there is 25 minutes left.

The loading bar will load up to the "cursed time" and the bar will fill up as if the video is done loading. Then when the play bar gets to that "cursed time" the video stops.

Hard refreshes don't help. Is there any way to get the video to reload?

I need to fix this problem.
Thank you for your time.
Ashton

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

This also happens to me. I would love to know how to fix it. I hope someone finds out soon

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JW Player

User  
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Anyone out there with a solution????

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

I also would love to know how to fix this.

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

No one knows?

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JW Player

User  
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Well... I was afraid of this...

Since there isn't a solution, here's my two bits:

I have had this problem happen to me once. I had just set up the new video server, and there were 1000 people on the site watching videos, and my video did that exact thing. Just stopped at a given time as if that was the end of the video. I tried hard refreshing, deleting cookies, temp files, etc. to no avail. The video will start loading again, but never gets past that point.

As I had mentioned it only seems to be happening on Firefox/Mozilla browsers.

I did go through and make some changes to my server settings, like max users and bandwidth limit. I have had fewer problems, but they still are happening, and there are no problems with the server.

I hope this helps.
Ashton

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JW Player

User  
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Am I missing something? Is there supposed to be someone from LTV who checks the bugs list and comments on the bugs, or is this a fan-based "forum" where we figure it out?

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JW Player

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Jeroen usually checks the bugs once a week or so.

The rest, we figure out.

If you've purchased a license, I guess you could try contacting Longtail Video directly. I don't know what their support terms are.

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JW Player

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I've ran into the same problem. We're a church trying to archive our sermons online and the videos will randomly stop about 3/4 of the way through. We've tried a player that will handle .mov, .mp4, and .flv and all formats have the same problem on and off. I read in a forum that if you may need to change the audio freq to 44100 but that didn't fix our problem. Although, taking out the audio completely seems to fix it, unfortunately sermons with no audio aren't very effective.

If I find a solution I'll be sure to post.

Right now were looking at paying for a streaming server and seeing if that fixes the problem.

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JW Player

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@Wade,

Could you post links to some of those defective video files?

I'd like to do a detailed analysis of a few of them.

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JW Player

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I got this problem today and the first thing I try was to upgrade the memory usage of my server but nothing change. So I set it back to normal and start reading the forums.

I found a post saying the problem could be with the mod_deflate compression of Apache.

http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/forum/Setup-Problems/8407/Firefox-Buffering-Issue

And another from JeroenW saying the same thing. this post is follow by the htaccess file you need to make;


bc.. # disables compression on gifs,jpegs,pngs,mp3s and flvs
# for the mod_deflate compression
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
\.(?:gif|jpe?g|png|flv|mp3)$ no-gzip dont-vary
</IfModule>

# for mod_gzip - note; note totally sure about this one as i don't use it
# however this should work.
<IfModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.gif $
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.jpeg$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.jpg$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.png$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.flv$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.mp3$
</IfModule>




see the original post here:
http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/forum/Setup-Problems/5237/streamObject-bytesTotal-returning-1-in-safari-ie


By this moment, everything is working fine with this.

What I understand from the forums is:

The flv file is compressed by the apache server so it sends wrong or missing length of the video and that's why the video player's buffering stop promptly . Maybe It's really that?! I hope that will works tomorrow !



and I hope that helps.

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JW Player

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So far so good. I pasted the code into my htaccess and added my .mp4 and .mov file types and it works great so far on 3 of my videos that would freeze up before.

This is awesome! Thanks guys! I'll test tomorrow to make sure.

Lefty, I can still post those video files if you still need them. I'd try the fix first though.

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JW Player

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Yeah, hold off until you see if the gzipping is the culprit.

I've always used mod_deflate with Apache2 (for about 8 years now), so I've never seen this problem.

I guess mod_gzip is for some older version of Apache.

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JW Player

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Thank you MX. I've implemented that change, and will see how it goes.

Now to confirm, this code basically tells Apache not to compress the files right? Will this increase the server load for those file types?

(Also, should that space in ".gif $" be there, or does it matter?)

Thanks for that MX

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JW Player

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The server load will probably increase.
I read this about mod_deflate;
bc.. Compression takes CPU power to apply, so it doesn't come for free for most dynamic sites. You will need to find a balance between available CPU time and network speed.

Source=http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/linux/apache-2-mod_deflate-benchmark.php

For the space, it's surely an mistake. But for myself, I only use this code for my needs. So I can't confirm.


bc.. <IfModule mod_deflate.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
\.(?:flv|mp3)$ no-gzip dont-vary
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.flv$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.mp3$
</IfModule>



Anyways, I think the code who really do the job is:

bc.. SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
\.(?:gif|jpe?g|png|flv|mp3)$ no-gzip dont-vary



more details on mod_deflate here (now including gzip):
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.html

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JW Player

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Today, I got a 500 Internal Error. So I remove the .htaccess file. Maybe you should not try it. Maybe the right thing was just to reset Apache afterall ??

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JW Player

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I'm having the SAME problem, for a very long time. As far as i can tell, my site DOES NOT use deflate or gzip.

Any other hypothesis?

Could it be my apache keepalive settings????

-Adam

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JW Player

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Tried editing the htacess file but no luck (so far)
It would be great if somone could find a fix for this.

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JW Player

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This is a bit weird, one of the files on my website finishes but the rest don't. Another thing is that all the files buffer quickly but one buffers every 5-6 seconds but for a very short period if time and them sticks on buffering 8%

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JeroenW

JW Player Support Agent  
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We encountered this before on a few servers, and disabling the apache mod for FLV / MP4 files (which cannot be compressed anyway) worked. It’s still a strange issue though..

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JW Player

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Thanks a lot for the solution given.

# disables compression on gifs,jpegs,pngs,mp3s and flvs
# for the mod_deflate compression
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
\.(?:flv|mp3)$ no-gzip dont-vary
</IfModule>

# for mod_gzip - note; note totally sure about this one as i don't use it
# however this should work.
<IfModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.flv$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file \.mp3$
</IfModule>

I was finding solution for last 20 hours and finally found from this topic.

Thanks a lot...

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JW Player

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i have a same problem with mp3 files in flash player 9.
when i update it to lash player 10 every think is ok.
i found that this problem occurs only in mp3 files with sampling rate less than 44khz.
i player versions <4 (like 3.x) there is not such issue and it is very strange.
i dont have a solution yet (but upgrading to flash palyer 10)

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JW Player

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Hi there... I have the same problem
But I dont have any control over the web server my Web page is hosted.
Is there a way to change the setings of the flv transfer compresion with code included in the web page...???

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JW Player

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I have the same problem with the .flv files in my web page www.vidaplena.net

I get the problem with IE. Have not tryed with other Internet Browsers.

Some files play fine from begining to end. Others stop at some point of the playing like if the file download has finish, even if it has not do so.

I seems to me that the problem has not to do with the explorer you use (IE, Firefox, Google, etc) but with the way the file is sent from the web server to the Internet client., because the files play Ok locally.

I use to have a similar problem with another player FLV Maxi Player) but after changing to JWPlayer I have seem that the problems remains. So it seems the issue does not relay in the player.

In some forums they said the problems has to do with the audio sampling rate (they said when the rate is too low it fails), but I tryed re-encoding the .flv files with an audio samplin rate of 44.1 Khz and still problems remains in th same files. However, the ones that played well before, still play fine after the audio re-sampling.

So it seems that the issue has to do with the data on the file and the way it is treated when sended from Web server to client.

Another thing I notice is that the same file some times plays fine and others stop playing some time along the way. However I have seen that the stoping happends at a very similar point of the video. For example if it stops once at 44.34 min, next time it stops at 44.38 min and so on.

For example, in my web page, if you play Nueva Medicina 1, you will always get it right, but Nueva Medicina 2 generally stops at 50.30 min +/- 5 secs
This files has a Mono Audio Bitrate=8/64 Kbps and Frec=22.050 Hz.

Now, you said that the solution for the files to play fine is to disable "deflate mode". How can I do that from the html code that I have in my .htm files...???

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JW Player

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Video stops playing

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JW Player

User  
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Well after 6 months of the deflate code working, our videos are stopping again. Not sure what has changed since then, but if anyone has any ideas PLEASE post them.

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JW Player

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here are some ideas;

- re-upload the video
- reset apache
- host the file on a different directory or another server
- if you use wordpress, try to upgrade the memory limit from 32mo to 64mo,128mo,...


hope it helps

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JW Player

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Im using opera and im getting the same thing.

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JW Player

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re-upload the video - did not work
reset apache - did not work
different directory/server - did not work
do not use wordpress

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JW Player

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I had a similar problem - JW Player is stopped before the end of the video. I found that browser use caching for pseudostreeme http content. So I modified the headers in the htaccess:
bc.. <FilesMatch "\.(mp4|flv)$">
FileETag None
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header unset ETag
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"
Header set Pragma "no-cache"
Header set Expires "Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT"
</IfModule>
</FilesMatch>

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JW Player

User  
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My client is seeing this in the new 5.4 version as well. FLV file, fairly long (7 mins) and big (70mb). Stops about halfway through. Seeking locks it up and it starts over. Is this just a massive bug that hasn't been solved? Code below. Thanks.

bc.. <!-- Video div holder -->
<div id="welcome-video"></div>

<!-- Video script -->
<script type="text/javascript">
jwplayer("welcome-video").setup({
flashplayer: "/site/code/v/player.swf",
file: "/site/code/v/videos/scramxvid.flv",
skin: "/site/code/v/skins/glow.zip",
image: "/site/code/v/videos/poster-scramvidx.jpg",
width: 394,
height: 250,
autostart: false
});
</script>

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JW Player

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Check that -- 20mb file size. Still though, issues present and I don't see a reliable fix on this thread. Please address. Many thanks.

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JW Player

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Well, I feel silly. Same exact issues as the posters above and it appears the video was corrupted on upload. I put up a fresh upload and all appears to be working at the moment. Will re-post here if the issues come back.

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