1301446 - Firefox wrongly reports that a .mov file is corrupt - should just download the file like chrome

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P3)

Description

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

I tried to access this video with Nightly - http://web.archive.org/web/20071008021132/http://www.michaelverdi.com/video/mjplaystartrek.mov and got an error stating, "Video can't be played because the file is corrupt." 

The problem is that the file is not corrupt and if you visit that url with chrome it will just download the file to your computer where it is perfectly playable (with Quicktime).

Comment 1

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

we only have partial quicktime support. we really only support mp4 fully.

Comment 2

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

(In reply to Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya] from comment #1)
> we only have partial quicktime support. we really only support mp4 fully.

Sure but would this stop us from just downloading the file?

Comment 3

[sarlalian]

We are running into this as well, and previously we were automatically registering the video/quicktime and video/x-quicktime mime types to automatically open in Quicktime on macOS.  This behavior is now broken as the browser appears to try and decode the video, which fails, and once it fails it won't hand the video off to the registered application.

Comment 4

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

(In reply to sarlalian from comment #3)
> We are running into this as well, and previously we were automatically
> registering the video/quicktime and video/x-quicktime mime types to
> automatically open in Quicktime on macOS.  This behavior is now broken as
> the browser appears to try and decode the video, which fails, and once it
> fails it won't hand the video off to the registered application.

You can check what codecs are supported using JS canPlayType, rather than assuming that all data in the container can be played.
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/embedded-content.html#dom-navigator-canplaytype

and only if the result is "probably", attempt to play the file

Comment 5

[sarlalian]

We really have a strong preference for being able to open the file in an external application, as none of the web browsers we have tried have support for stepping through individual frames on a video.

Comment 6

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

(In reply to sarlalian from comment #5)
> We really have a strong preference for being able to open the file in an
> external application, as none of the web browsers we have tried have support
> for stepping through individual frames on a video.

And you can still do that.
As content provider, check what is supported and only offer the file for download rather than playback.
As user, right click on the link and select "Save Link As".

I will open a new bug so that unsupported content in a supported container aren't played.

Comment 7

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

Actually, Nightly (and firefox developer edition) no longer indicate that the file is corrupted.

Instead it displays "Video format or MimeType is not supported"

at this stage, you can download the video by doing a right click on the video.

I'm closing this bug as works for me, as the original bug was about stating the file was corrupted. this has been corrected.