Well, PeterWright, I can tell you that this is one of the biggest reasons that formats like WMV and MOV are giving way to simple compatibility of an FLV inside a flash player.

Well, PeterWright, I can tell you that this is one of the biggest reasons that formats like WMV and MOV are giving way to simple compatibility of an FLV inside a flash player.

That is neither an accurate nor fair statement. It is a player issue, NOT a file-type issue.

you sure its not a website issue ? I went on your site and under music tried to play the clip and I also got the little red cross on white background in the top left corner .

Peter,

Is your firewall perhaps disabling Media Player?

John

Thanks for the replies guys,

I tried disabling my firewall - no difference John.

All I know is that up till yesterday when it died, my ancient PIII machine, also running XP Pro, played the video immediately when clicked.

So, there must be something different between that machine and this, and apparently winrock's and no doubt other machines, but I no longer have the old machine operating to try and find out what that difference is.

If anyone's got the time, I'd be interested to know if the video plays on your machine:
www.allroundvision.com.au
go to the Music screen and select from one of three versions at the bottom.
Thanks

I went to your web site and the video did not play. The red X in the upper corner indicates that the file can not be found. This is almost certainly an issue with the site, not the browser or media player.

If it played instantly on that old machine, but doesn't play now on a newer, faster one, I'm wondering if it may have been playing a cached local copy and/or wasn't really resident on your web server. That could explain why the rest of us can't find the file, too.

Maybe you should take a look at the link in your page source and make sure they're pointing to your video file on the web.

Thanks for checking John - this is weird. I just checked with Cute FTP and the files are definitely sitting there, and as I said they always played fine on my other PC..

Maybe I need to contact my server for a clue ....

edit - thanks cbrillow - I have definitely played it on other peoples computers in the past. I do have the wmv sitting on my HD, but is it really possible to access this when on an online browser?

From your web site, I just played "This is a recent live performance with a friend, Jude, at the Hainault vineyard" and it played fine.

thanks johnmeyer - I knew I wasn't going mad!

So I wonder what the essential difference is that makes this work on some but not on others?

Peter, FWIW, it won't play on my computer, either.

<EDIT>

For such a simple page, there seems to be an inordinate amount of source code there.

Nada too Pete / // sorry chum .. you have email from me WITH pngs off of IE and FireFox.

G

Jay, you're right, it's a player issue, but that's exactly the reason why Flash and the flv format are taking over--wmv apparently demands a player that is somewhat flaky and sensitive. I had exactly these kinds of issues last year, which is why I switched my website over to flv videos, with no playability issues since then.

My point is I've never had any player issues until WMP 11 came along. The problem I have with most Flash video I've seen is it looks like crap. I'd rather have no video than crappy looking video.

Agreed, but the "crap" issue is one of bitrate. At this point I think flv looks nearly as good as wmv at a given bitrate, so I goose flv by ~25% to compensate.

riredale, e-mail me, please... jay at gooddogproductions dot com.