Question

flash swf won't play even though mime types are updated

Asked by: thefumbler

I received a swf movie file from a web developer that I need to put on a virtual private web hosted server running 2003/IIS6. The file (with associated files as listed below, works fine when loading the html doc on my local desktop but only shows the player on the website.
AC_RunActiveContent.js
SkinOverPlayStopSeekFullVol.swf
thevideo.flv
thevideo.html
thevideo.mov
thevideo.png
thevideo.swf

I have tried several different mime types for flv files, this is what I have so far:
flv video/x-flv
mov video/quicktime
swf application/x-shockwave-flash
mp3 audio/mpeg

Any idea? It's supposed to get up today.

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Asked On: 2008-03-17 at 14:37:58ID23248584
Tags: Microsoft
,; Windows 2003/IIS
,; iis 6
,; flash movie on a virtual private server
Topics: Microsoft IIS Web Server
,; Adobe Flash
Participating Experts: 1
Points: 500
Comments: 15

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Answers

by: meverestPosted on 2008-03-17 at 15:38:40ID: 21146911

take a look at the web server logs for any clues

you may have a path problem in the html file: when viewing from the server, right click on the broiwser window and view source.

go through the html, and make sure that all references to a file actually exist in the right place,

e.g. if you access the server like 'http://servername/movie.html', and see this in the code:

<PARAM NAME="Movie" VALUE="flash/SkinOverPlayStopSeekFullVol.swf">

then copy the "flash/SkinOverPlayStopSeekFullVol.swf" to the url, so you try to open:

http://servername/flash/SkinOverPlayStopSeekFullVol.swf

to make sure that the file actually exists.

you may, for example, discover that the html is in a subfolder, and the media files are referenced from the server root.

Cheers.

by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-17 at 15:57:50ID: 21147101

thanks for the quick response, meverest.

For testing, I put everything all of those files in a the same subfolder and I don't get an error when I go to each file by browser. For example I even changed the extension of a couple of the files to *.txt and as expected the browser sees the raw code.

The web server log is attached...looks fine to me...all 200's.

Can you see anything I'm missing? Most of the site is running in aspx pages and this movie will be in an aspx page eventually, but for testing its in a basic html file.

http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.html 200 0 0 8585 437
2008-03-17 22:42:22 65.61.47.x GET /httpdocs/flash/thevideo.swf - 80 - 67.173.44.255 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727) http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.html 200 0 0 51087 406
2008-03-17 22:42:22 65.61.47.x GET /httpdocs/flash/SkinOverPlayStopSeekFullVol.swf - 80 - 67.173.44.255 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727) http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.swf 200 0 0 7174 93
2008-03-17 22:42:22 65.61.47.x GET /httpdocs/flash/thevideo.flv - 80 - 67.173.44.x Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727) http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.swf 200 0 0 0 156
2008-03-17 22:42:22 65.61.47.x GET /httpdocs/flash/thevideo.flv - 80 - 67.173.44.x Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727) http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.swf 200 0 0 0 93
2008-03-17 22:42:23 65.61.47.x GET /httpdocs/flash/thevideo.flv - 80 - 67.173.44.x Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727) http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.swf 200 0 0 0 93

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by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-17 at 15:58:31ID: 21147113

here's the html source for thevideo.html file

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>thevideo</title>
<script language="javascript">AC_FL_RunContent = 0;</script>
<script src="AC_RunActiveContent.js" language="javascript"></script>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<!--url's used in the movie-->
<!--text used in the movie-->
<!-- saved from url=(0013)about:internet -->
<script language="javascript">
	if (AC_FL_RunContent == 0) {
		alert("This page requires AC_RunActiveContent.js.");
	} else {
		AC_FL_RunContent(
			'codebase', 'http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0',
			'width', '240',
			'height', '180',
			'src', 'thevideo',
			'quality', 'high',
			'pluginspage', 'http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer',
			'align', 'middle',
			'play', 'true',
			'loop', 'true',
			'scale', 'showall',
			'wmode', 'window',
			'devicefont', 'false',
			'id', 'thevideo',
			'bgcolor', '#ffffff',
			'name', 'thevideo',
			'menu', 'true',
			'allowFullScreen', 'false',
			'allowScriptAccess','sameDomain',
			'movie', 'thevideo',
			'salign', ''
			); //end AC code
	}
</script>
<noscript>
	<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="240" height="180" id="thevideo" align="middle">
	<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
	<param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" />
	<param name="movie" value="thevideo.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />	<embed src="thevideo.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="240" height="180" name="thevideo" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
	</object>
</noscript>
</body>
</html>

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by: meverestPosted on 2008-03-17 at 16:12:58ID: 21147257

Hi,

you're right - the web logs show that there is no problem on the web server side.

perhaps this is a browser security thing, as in 'allow shockwave player on intranet zone' etc. have you tried it with a browser on some other computer, or use firefox/IE7?

Cheers.

by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-17 at 17:08:37ID: 21147510

Good ideas to check but....no luck.

On my main machine, I tried making the site a trusted site in IIS 7, and I just now installed the latest version of firefox on a notebook with the exact same result. The browser recognized it needed the Adobe flash plugin, which I accepted for install but then still get an image of the player bar with the play/stop/enlarge/volume controls with a scrolling green stripe where the progress bar should be.

It seems like there is something I'm missing on the server side, some translation to tell the server to tie the movie file to the flash player and serve up.

by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-17 at 17:50:02ID: 21147661

I also tried changing the .flv mime extension from

.flv video/x-flv
to:
.flv flv-application/octet-stream

and restarted IIS with the same result.

by: meverestPosted on 2008-03-17 at 20:41:56ID: 21148255

so what do you see when you try to get:

http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.swf ?

also, take a look at the log file headers to find out what are the last two columns - they look like byte counts maybe, which does indicate some problem with the transfer of the flash files.

another thing to help diagnose a bit further is to use an http analyser like fiddler (www.fiddlertool.com) on the server and on the client side so that you can see what data actually *is* sent and what is received by the client. (note fiddler only works with IE on the client side)

Cheers/

by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-18 at 05:59:47ID: 21150469

>so what do you see when you try to get:
>http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.swf ?
When accessing it I still get an image of the player bar with the play/stop/enlarge/volume controls with a scrolling green stripe where the progress bar should be.

Very strange though...the log file indicates that sc-bytes is 0 for the .flv file but not for the other related files (attached pdf). That would seem to indicate that the request succeeded (200) but that the server didn't send the file for some reason. Now why would that be?

I'll take a look at fiddler shortly.

logsnippet.pdf
- 3 KB
8 line pdf of web log file transaction

by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-18 at 06:51:13ID: 21150910

Fiddler is fascinating and a great tool - thanks for that, I'm sure I'll use it many times. But it gets more interesting....

Fiddler records 5 sessions when I go to that web page. And the last one is for the *.flv file, but Fiddler reports the result was "0" not 200 and a red triangle with exclamation point which indicates
"Response was a server error".

That's different than my IIS web log but it makes sense. It still leads me back to the server configuration.

by: meverestPosted on 2008-03-18 at 14:19:20ID: 21155955

>> http://mydomain.com/httpdocs/flash/thevideo.swf ?
> When accessing it I still get an image of the player bar with the play/stop/enlarge/volume controls with a scrolling green stripe where the progress bar should be.

that would be thevideo.html wouldn't it? I meant thevideo.SWF

but in any case, I think we have determined that the server is /not/ actually sending the file now.

So where did you add the mime type? I have noticed that sometimes adding the mime type right at the IIS root does not necessarily flow on to all web sites.

Try adding it on the actual web site concerned, or even on just the folder containing the flv file/s.

Cheers.

by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-18 at 15:14:05ID: 21156502

When I access thevideo.SWF file I get the same initial static image (a picture embedded in the swf file) when I load it locally from a folder, but the difference is that when I click 'play' for the one locally it runs and plays. When I click on 'play' on the web site, the image disappears and nothing happens. I can view source on what appears to be a blank page and its the same source before I click play and after I click.

I did add the mime type at the root, but also went through every level of folder and checked - it was there, but I edited /readded at every level just in case.

And yes you're right, in every case the log shows that no bytes are transferred for the .swf files but the log shows 200 code for that hit.

by: meverestPosted on 2008-03-18 at 15:34:31ID: 21156745

oh sorry, I meant to ask you to try opening the flv file :-}

normally you would expect to get a file/save prompt.

well, I'm stumped - did you check the actual file on disk - try to open it off the web server by UNC path - perhaps the file got truncated or something during copy?

Cheers.

by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-18 at 15:40:40ID: 21156821

yes I can play it fine when I use Remote Desktop to the server itself on the same folder its served up on via http (can't hear the audio of course doing that but the video plays).

I'm stumped too. It seems like I've done everything right. Unfortunately, I've had to ask the ISP dev team to look into it at $125/hr. I'll update here if they can resolve it.

by: thefumblerPosted on 2008-03-19 at 11:30:33ID: 21164305

The ISP resolve the issue as follows:
"There was a ASP.NET 2.0 mapping for .flv file types. I removed it."

Thanks for all the help meverest though!

by: meverestPosted on 2008-03-19 at 15:21:42ID: 21166491

Geez, and they charged you $125ph for that!?

Cheers,

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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flash swf won't play even though mime types are updated

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Microsoft

Windows 2003/IIS

iis 6

flash movie on a virtual private server

Microsoft IIS Web Server

Adobe Flash

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