Instant play of Quicktime movies no longer work with Firefox 4.x

[jbaugh]

I have multiple QuickTime videos on my web site. They are set up for instant play when the page on which they reside is opened. This works fine when using any of the following browsers:
Safari for the Mac
Firefox 3.x for Mac
Internet Explorer on Windows
Firefox 4.x on Windows .

But with Chrome for the Mac AND Firefox 4.x for the Mac these videos will not instantly play. The videos only begin playing after a 2 minute pause while the entire video file is downloaded.

And this is not problem specific to my site. For example, go to »www.projecta.com/Page.asp?NavID=231
and try to play any of the QuickTime instant play movies. (For some odd reason the first QT movie on this list seems to be an exception and actually seems to instantly play with all browsers. The others behave differently depending upon the browser used as outlined above.)
Any ideas about the cause for this behavior?
 How I can fix it so that viewers of the videos can instantly view them regardless of the browser used?
Thanks
John

[Herve]

But with Chrome for the Mac AND Firefox 4.x for the Mac these videos will not instantly play. The videos only begin playing after a 2 minute pause while the entire video file is downloaded.

QuickTime's files need a special order "to be played immediatly".

Usually, the index of a QT file is at its end (so you have to load it first, to begins its display)

When you export from QTPlayer, you will see a check "Prepare for the internet"
if you check it, the index is at the begining (and you can display the movie before its complete loading )
But you certainly didn't check it…

Here is a tool (terminal use) to move the index from bottom to top:
http://www.movieconverter-studio.com/_PUBLIC/qt-faststart.zip
how to use it:
- drag and drop the "qt-faststart" file from Finder to terminal window
- drag and drop your movie file from Finder to terminal window
- give an output path (eg: drag'n'drop your movie file again, remove the trailing space and add a second ".mov" suffix)
- validate
(the index will be move, your new file is ready for the internet now)

bye

[jbaugh]

Herve,
Thanks for your response. First of all, I did not create or edit my movies in QTPlayer. They were edited in FCP then exported to Compressor for coding as streaming video. The web pages in which the videos "play" were created by Freeway Pro which created the html coding. The "instant play" option was chosen and indeed in looking at the html code the instant play flag is set to "true". For almost three years these movies have played instantly when accessed through Internet Explorer for Windows, Firefox versions up to version 4 for the Mac, all Windows versions of Firefox and assorted other browsers which have recognized them as instant play videos. They continue to work in all versions of Safari for the Mac. They just don't play properly under Firefox 4.x or under Chrome. This would indicate to me that there has been a change in the way these latter browsers handle html code. The coding was perfectly adequate to provide instant play with earlier browsers.

When I get the chance I will try to use your suggested means to modify the movie index.

By the way the videos I referenced above were not created by me. They are supposed to be an example of instant play QT movies someone posted as a tutorial. My own instant play QT movies can be accessed at:
http://lccut.org/video-resources/

You will see that my videos behave just as the video on the other site behave depending upon which browser is used–– instant play with "older" browsers and "play only when file is completely downloaded" with Chrome and FF 4.x.
John

[jbaugh]

Here's the response I received from FW support. They are aware of this problem and attribute it to problems with Firefox 4 and Chrome.

Hi John

There seems to be an issue at the moment with the way that Firefox 4 (and to a certain extent Chrome) handles QuickTime movies. If you go to the test page on our site at <http://users.softpress.com/keith/firefox4test/> you'll see that it is very erratic in what it shows and how it plays - but note that you may need to wait a while in between clicking on Firefox 4's Refresh button to see that the results change from one refresh to the next.

Freeway is certainly publishing the code correctly, so this is does not appear to be a Freeway issue - though we would like to get to the source of the problem so we can advise customers on the best options to fix things. If you Google for "firefox4 quicktime movie problem" (without the quotes) you will see that this is not a problem specific to Freeway users.

Leopard users report that Firefox 4 displays and plays QT movies fine, but Snow Leopard seems to have problems. This may be due to the way that QuickTime and Firefox 4 play together, as Leopard and Snow Leopard use slightly different versions of QuickTime.

You should, however, be aware that non-Mac users will always need to download the QuickTime plug-in (which many PC users are reluctant to do, and some may not be allowed to by their IT department) for them to be able to see the movies play. The only truly universal method for offering video content on a web page is to use Flash .flv files and then use the FLV Player Action so that iPhone/iPad users will see an alternative (non-Flash) movie which is created by the Action. See the movie tutorial at <http://www.softpress.com/support/tutorials> (Episode 14) for details of how to set this up.

As soon as we find a workaround for the problems with Firefox 4 and Chrome, we will put up an article on our KnowledgeBase at <http://www.softpress.com/kb/>. It might be that Firefox and Chrome will release a new update soon to fix the problem, in which case we will tell you which version you need to download an install.

Best regards

So it has nothing to do with how the QuickTime movies themselves were formated.
John

[blanx]

I'm using Firefox 5 beta now, and the problem remains. Any combination of 32bit/64bit kernel and/or Firefox doesn't help either.
The first one at http://www.projecta.com/Page.asp?NavID=231 seems to be encoded with Sorenson Video 3 codec, aka. QuickTime 5.0.2, which Apple now seemly calls "legacy codec", and it's in a .mov container. The rest are .mp4 and using H.264 codec, so I started thinking, perhaps it's at least indirectly related to the MP4 preference that Apple/Microsoft have vs. WebM with Mozilla/Google/Opera... But then again, Opera plays all of the embedded QT content just fine with autostart/autoplay just like Safari does, without having to fully download the video. Go figure...