Flash Video Works in IE, not in FF or other Browsers

[ringer37]

Hi, I'm an internet marketer who does seo and marketing for businesses. One of my clients has a flash video on their intro page, and it does not not display properly on all the browsers.

If you view the webpage on IE, video plays fine. If you view the page in FF, Chrome or Safari, all you see where the video is supposed to be is a solid brown box.

I'm not an expert web developer so I don't know how to fix this problem. Any suggestions you have for me would be greatly appreciated!

you can see what I'm talking about at ecbanquets . com

Also, here is the embed code.

<tbody>

<tr>
<td align="middle" valign="center">
<div align="center"> <object id="site"
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0"
classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="770"
height="380"> <param name="movie" value="flash/intro.swf"> <param
name="quality" value="high"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#6E8BA4"><embed
src="intro.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#81765C" name="site"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" align=""
width="770" height="380"> </object> <br>
<br>
</div>
</td>

</tr>
</tbody>

[rocknbil]

Welcome aboard ringer37, the short story is other browsers don't properly render the video via the object element, they require the embed element.

<object>
....
</object>
<embed ....>

Unfortunately IE would then display two videos, so the legacy solution is invalid html by nesting the embed in the object element

<object>
....
<embed ....>
</object>

There are many ways around this but require working with HTML5 or Javascript . . . to get you through short term, look up a page with video and view source, see how they are nesting <embed> inside <object> and how to assign your parameters to embed.

[dukelips]

<object width="996" height="330" data="filename.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" id="revvervideoa17743d6aebf486ece24053f35e1aa23">
<param name="Movie" value="filename.swf" />
<param name="base" value="http://www.websitename.org" />
<param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false" />
<param name="AllowFullScreen" value="true" />
<param name="AllowScriptAccess" value="always" />
</object>

[bwnbwn]

I have been looking into this all day as we have high number of clips I use for selling services. Looking into the new firefox browser nothing works, so I went to foxnews to see how they got them to play, well vidoes don't play there either for me.
Tomorrow I will foget ff and figure a way to get GC and IE9 working and go with that.

[Hoople]

I took the 'embed' code (below) that Youtube.com offered and entered it here [tools4noobs.com...]

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aJ0cbHFr2ss" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Which gave:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" style="width:560px; height:315px;" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/aJ0cbHFr2ss">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aJ0cbHFr2ss" />
</object>

On Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) it works on: Firefox 7.0.1, Safari 5.0 (7533.16), Google Chrome 10.0.648.133 beta, Opera 11.50 Build 1074 and Internet Explorer 6 SP1 (via Wine Tricks).

Works 0n Windows 2000 Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and Firefox 7.0.1 as well. Video is Brett at Pubcon :-)

[bwnbwn]

IE 9 is what my issus is with Crome. The new FF I won't even worry with for now. I will look at your solution tomorrow thanks. My eyes are so blurry now I am done.

[rocknbil]

All of these are essentially "hacks" to convince various browsers to play along and will always be a pain. This is easily solved with SWFObject.

1. Download SWFObject [code.google.com] For the sake of demonstration, we'll put it in a directory, "JS."

2. Add it to the head of the document. We'll create the file "video.js" shortly.

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/swfobject.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/video.js"></script>

3. Create a "player" element. It's best to load this player element with alternate content, like a screen capture of the video. If Javascript is enabled, doesn't matter, it will be replaced. Make the object the size of your video.

<p id="my-player">See the video here</p>

CSS so you can see what's up:

#my-player {
display: block;
margin:0;
padding:0;
height: 275px;
width: 445px;
text-indent:-50000px;
outline:none;
border: none;
background:url(/images/screen-capture.jpg) top left no-repeat;
}

(The text-indent property, in combination with outline: none; allows me to use a plain text content for S.E.'s and optionally the container can be an anchor. This is NOT considered black hat hidden text.)

4. The contents of video.js:

window.onload=function() { loadVideo(); }; 
// 
function loadVideo() { 
 if (document.getElementById('my-player')) { 
 var params = { allowScriptAccess: "always" }; 
 var atts = { id: "myytplayer" }; 
 // Put the following on ONE LINE 
 swfobject.embedSWF("http://www.youtube.com/e/YOUR VIDEO ID HERE?enablejsapi=1&playerapiid=ytplayer", 
 "my-player", "445", "250", "8", null, null, params, atts); 
} 
} 
function onYouTubePlayerReady(playerId) { 
ytplayer = document.getElementById("myytplayer"); 
if (ytplayer) { ytplayer.playVideo(); } 
} 

5. Load it up. Again, make the adjustments for the size of your video in the Javascript, it should match the CSS and the size of your alternate content.

Basically SWFObject manages all the differences in modern browsers and allows you to use clean (X)HTML output in your pages. When it loads, it overwrites the content of my-player.

The previous example uses the YouTube API [code.google.com], which gives you control over the video directly from your page. The only feature used in the example is to auto-play the video - "autoplay" is not used in the API. You can do all sorts of things: control volume, mute, playlists to display before and after the video - using the old school <object><embed> robs you of all this functionality.

"But I don't wanna use Javascript!" If you're using a YouTube video in your pages, you already are. Join the dark side. :-)

[mdsww]

Here is the code I generally use to embed my swfs:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" width="669" height="293">
 <param name="movie" value="flash/header.swf?button=0">
 <param name="quality" value="high">
 <param name="menu" value="false">
 <param name="wmode" value="transparent">
 <!–[if !IE]> <–>
 <object data="flash/header.swf?button=0"
 width="669" height="293" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
 <param name="quality" value="high">
 <param name="menu" value="false">
 <param name="wmode" value="transparent">
 <param name="pluginurl" value="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">
 FAIL (the browser should render some flash content, not this).
 </object>
 <!–> <![endif]–>
 </object>

Not sure if that helps?

[bwnbwn]

rockinbil this is what I had to do but, this still doesn't work in FF 7.0.1. I have to move on and just forget FF for now. Not my ideal option but I have spent more than enough time on this.

[rocknbil]

Well that bears some investigation . . . I'll get mine updated today.

[rocknbil]

Update: Just installed FF 7.01 and (sorry to?) report . . . no problems, the method used above works just fine. bwnbwn, I'd be more likely to suspect a flash plugin?

mdsww there are two things you should consider about using that code. The first is the proprietary conditional hack for IE, it doubles your code maintenance. Being proprietary - a feature supported only by MS browsers - it may not be supported forever (not like MS ever eliminated anything valuable whether we liked it or not . . . .) The second is all that code is not helpful to search engines not does it provide alternate content if your user has Javascript or Flash disabled (which is basically how S.E.s roll . . ) It's also far more code than it needs to be. :-)

[bwnbwn]

rocknbil your correct I needed to add the plugin for FF for them to play. I am working now as well.

[bwnbwn]

rockinbil can u update adobe and see if you can view flash in IE 9 windows 7? I was just prompted to update adobe and now all my videos I did in flash are not playing. They are there just blank in the view but sound is coming through video is playing just white now.

Chrome and FF are fine just IE 9 7. XP is fine in 8

[rocknbil]

Working fine, got latest player version on the sites?

[bwnbwn]

Found the problem. Last nite computer updated but there was an optional update that wasn't installed. I added the optional update installed rebooted and am fine now. Jeeze I have looked at everything then it hit me to see what updates were done last nite and if any were missed. Thanks