198809 - npr.org - Audio Archives smil goes to QuickTime instead of Real

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[kguru]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030106
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030106

The NPR audio archive does not work in mozilla.  When I open a link to listen to
an audio file archive, a window pops up with an error saying wrong MIME type. 
The audio archive also is not working in Camino and Safari.  It is working with
Internet Explorer

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Click on any audio archive link
2.If a window appears asking you to select a player choose the Real Player
3.

Actual Results:  
A window opened saying MIME error and Quicktime also opened, but nothing happened.

Expected Results:  
Real Player should played the audio file or the audio file link should have been
saved to the desktop.

Comment 1

[Greg K.]

WorksForMe using FizzillaMach/2003032013 clicking the NPR Hourly News RealAudio
link at left at the URL, <http://www.npr.org/archives/.

kguru, can you reproduce this problem using another Mozilla user profile?

Comment 2

[kguru]

Yes, it happens on every profile.  It also happens in Camino 0.7 and Safari.

Comment 3

[Frankie]

You need to be more specific. Name an exact audio file that you're having
trouble with. Extract the javascripted URL if possible.

The QuickTime streams work for me in Moz 20030312.

I don't use Real or WMP, so I can't test those, but the problem is most likely a
misconfigured helper app pref.

Comment 4

[kguru]

An example of the problem is on the following page. 
http://discover.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.jhtml?prgId=14&prgDate=January/6/2003

With a newly created profile, I clicked on the first audio link that says "The
Tavis Smiley Show: Listen to the entire show".  A window pops up asking me to
chosse either Real Player or Windows Media Player 9.  I choose Real Player.  The
content ends up trying to play in Quicktime and it says unsupported content. 
Other sites with embedded Real Player content work correctly.  The live
streaming audio on the NPR site is working correctly.

Comment 5

[Greg K.]

Using FizzillaMach/2003032013, the site tells me that "This NPR audio file is
only available for the Real player." I click that link, and a new window spawns
in which the QuickTime plug-in apparently loads, displaying an error message,
"461: Unsupported Transport."

I View/Page Info on that window, and no MIME type is displayed. Is NPR not
sending a MIME type with this URL?

Comment 6

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

please check if this problem still exists, because we want to get rid of
unconfirmed bugs.
Many bugs in here are strill unconfirmed, because eigher nobody sees the problem
or nobody is able to get to the page because of a required login.

(sorry for the spam)

Comment 7

[kguru]

Yes, the bug exists for all Mozilla based browsers (Mozilla Firebird, Camino,
and Mozilla Navigator).  Apple's Safari also encounters this problem.  Internet
Explorer works.  I have not been able to test Opera though.

Comment 8

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

hm.. IE ignored Mime-Types at all...

Comment 9

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

tech evang june 2003 reorg

Comment 10

[kguru]

I revisited this bug today.  Apparently the problem is that Mozilla associates
the .smil file that npr uses with quicktime even though it is a real player
file.  When I chose real player as the helper application it worked for me using
1.5 alpha.  On another note, the helper application preferences window is busted
on the 1.5 alpha build.  Is there another bug causing the helper app preferences
to disappear.

Comment 11

[Dave Aton]

I can confirm action by kguru. I had same problem (Mac OS X 10.2.8 and earlier
versions, Mozilla 1.5rc2 and earlier versions). Changing the helper for .smil to
Real Player fixed the problem. Should that be the default setting when Mozilla
ships? Is it a bug that it's not the default?

Comment 12

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

Dave, I am not an expert with plugins so I don't know if this is a bug in
Mozilla or the Real or QT installers. 

It works for me in Win2k using 1.5 and the free RealOne player. What version of
Real do you have on OS X and is it the latest?

Comment 13

[Frankie]

NPR sends SMI files with application/smil mimetype. The SMI points to RM files.
I don't know who's at fault here: Apple, Moz, or NPR?


$ curl
"http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=TAVIS&showDate=06-Jan-2003&segNum=&NPROldMediaPref=RM"
-I

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:20:07 GMT
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: NPROldMediaPref=RM; expires=Sun, 21-Mar-10 18:20:07 GMT; path=/;
domain=.npr.org
Content-Disposition: inline; filename=npr8336.smil
Content-Type: application/smil

*****

<smil>
<meta name="title" content="The Tavis Smiley Show - Monday, January 6, 2003" />
<meta name="author" content="http://www.npr.org/" />
<meta name="copyright" content="2004" />
<body>
<audio
src="rtsp://real.npr.na-central.speedera.net/real.npr.na-central/tavis/20030106_tavis_01.rm"
title="Reporters Round Table" author="The Tavis Smiley Show - Monday, January 6,
2003" copyright="2004" />

Comment 14

[kguru]

A similar problem also is occurring with video clips on demand from
www.cspan.org.  I am currently using OS 10.3.6 and Quicktime 6.5.2.  The Real
Player is version 10.0.0.  In the past these sites worked as intended.  At this
point, the only to get the Real Player to spawn is to view source and copy the
link into Real Player.  This occurs with both Mozilla 1.7 and Firefox 1.0.

Comment 15

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Is this still a problem for anyone? I've never had any issues with Quicktime trying to open RealPlayer files served from NPR (or anyone else, for that matter).

I'd be very inclined to call this INVALID due to bugs in LaunchServices, which is notorious for screwing this sort of thing up.

Comment 16

[kguru]

This problem was present as of a few months ago, but I do not currently have access to a Mac to verify this.  This bug did not impact Windows and Linux builds.

Comment 17

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

kguru: did you ever have the problem as filed on NPR.org, or did you only see it on CSPAN.org? If the latter, when you do run across another Mac, please file a new bug on that site, as I doubt they're the same issue. (And if they are, the issue in question is likely to be a bug in the OS, as I mentioned in comment 15.)

cl

Comment 18

[kguru]

As NPR now uses a different system for playing audio, I'm going to mark this bug as won't fix as it is no longer relevant anymore with the new player.  The original bug occurred on any site using real player files on Mac OS X.  The problem had existed across several OS's 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4.

Comment 19

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

An accepted and confirmed TE bug cannot generally be a WONTFIX, and NPR most definitely still uses RealPlayer for all their media, but I've never once seen this problem, so I'm inclined to call this INVALID instead, since it was very likely a LaunchServices bug.

Comment 20

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

By the way, comment 7 and comment 10 are also generally supportive of the theory that this was a bug in LaunchServices.

Comment 21

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

I just ran into this myself for the first time ever. A quick check of the LaunchServices prefs using RCDefaultApp

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14618/

showed that QuickTime had taken over the .smil association. Setting this back to RealPlayer fixed the problem, so this is definitely not a TE bug.