841108 - Video not working with Ooyala's video player

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

I'm running Firefox Beta and I tried to play a Flash video. It told me that Flash wasn't installed. The same video worked fine in the stock browser.

Comment 1

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

(In reply to Ben Hearsum [:bhearsum] from comment #0)
> I'm running Firefox Beta and I tried to play a Flash video. It told me that
> Flash wasn't installed. The same video worked fine in the stock browser.

Can you attach logcat from startup through loading the page?

Comment 2

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Also, did you sideload Flash yourself or did it come on the device?

Comment 3

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

I'll get the logcat shortly. I haven't done any sideloading of Flash, AFAIK it came with my phone. It's possible I got it through the Play store, I'll see if I can find out...

Comment 4

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Attachment: logcat

Here's the logcat. Also, I couldn't find any Flash in my Google Play apps, so I'm pretty sure I'm just using whatever came with the phone.

Comment 5

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Did you update the phone to Jelly Bean Android 4.1.x? The Play Store won't show Flash for 4.1 users. Please open the Android Settings, open Applications, select the All tab, find Flash and tap on it. You should then be able to report the Flash version.

Comment 6

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

(In reply to Kevin Brosnan [:kbrosnan] from comment #5)
> Did you update the phone to Jelly Bean Android 4.1.x? The Play Store won't
> show Flash for 4.1 users. Please open the Android Settings, open
> Applications, select the All tab, find Flash and tap on it. You should then
> be able to report the Flash version.

I sent the phone in for service recently and it came back with 4.1.1. I don't have "Flash" or "Adobe" listed anywhere in the "All" section of Settings -> Application Manager.

Comment 7

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Hmmm...it sounds like Flash isn't installed then. I'm betting the video you saw with the stock browser was <video>. Maybe it didn't work in Firefox because of a stupid UA detection? Can you share the url?

Comment 8

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/2/8/3965654/the-mma-beat-on-aldo-pettis-rankings-couture-white-belfort-and-more

Comment 9

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Yeah, this uses a <video> player on stock browser, but we don't get that and you apparently don't have Flash installed.

Comment 10

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Video provided by http://www.ooyala.com/, same thing on their front-page.

Comment 11

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Ah! Hooray for <video>, boo for UA sniffing...

Comment 12

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

https://twitter.com/ooyala/status/301806860493807616

#fixit

Comment 13

[Chris Leonavicius]

I've enabled html5 playback for all Firefox browsers that support h264 in our latest V3 version, so this should work for the Android version and the nightly Windows builds.  Non-h264 enabled Firefox browsers will still always play through Flash though, as none of our customers have webm streams.

Aaron, please get in touch with your AM or TS to get beta access to the latest version, or wait for our next full release in a couple of weeks.

Comment 14

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Hi Chris,

An update here, I am still not seeing support from the Ooyala player. At least in this instance, I just ran into an article on Digital Trends [1] that has an embedded Flash video. In this case I would have expected to be served H.264 for installations on devices without Flash installed (such as the case on my Nexus 4). On my HTC One *with* Flash installed, I get a 'You need to have the Adobe Flash Player to view this content" error message in the plugin window. 

In either case it seems like the Ooyala player here is not detecting a) H.264 capabilities (which have long-since shipped in our builds available on Google Play) and b) improper detection of plugin support available in Firefox for Android.

In either case, the user is unable to properly view videos and the user loses.

Chris, please provide us with an update here. Users are at the short end of the stick here.

[1] http://m.digitaltrends.com/car-videos/dt-drivers-seat-2013-cadillac-xts-goes-long-on-luxury-comes-up-short-on-tech/

Comment 15

[Chris Leonavicius]

By default, our player will not automatically fall back to html5 on desktop (ugh), unless someone overrides the platform parameter to point to html5-priority or html5-fallback. (see http://support.ooyala.com/developers/documentation/reference/player_v3_dev_defaultvideo.html)

As far as Android goes, we had a bug where we were detecting Firefox Android as a desktop OS, which I just fixed. 

Please continue to update if you see any more issues.

Comment 16

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

WFM in Firefox beta w/H.264 enabled and FxOS 1.1

Comment 17

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Works for me now, too. Though, I tested on Nightly.