Member Avatar for GordonUK

Hi everyone,

I wonder if anyone can help me with this problem im having.

I have a website which has a video page on it. We are using the flow video player which plays flv video files. I recently uploaded some videos all of them in flv file format and most of them are playing perfectly but now i am having problems getting some of the uploaded videos to play. One of the videos in particular was playing perfectly and now it will not play at all. When you click the link where the thumbnail is and it goes to the video player page it seems like its attempting to load on the video player but then nothing happens and the video player itself does not even display any controls ie the stop, play, rewind buttons etc.

I just wanted to know if anyone has encountered this same problem? And if anyone had any ideas what could be causing these problems? I have since tried to upload even more videos in the flv file format and none of them are playing. I also want to point out that all of these videos that are not playing on the website video player are successfully playing on my computer.

Many thanks.

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Brief recap and context from the thread: is using Flowplayer with FLV files; some FLVs load fine while others fail and the player controls never appear. correctly suggested ruling out client-side issues first. The combination "controls absent + no load" usually means the player never gets a valid FLV stream/metadata from the server, so server-side delivery (headers, transfer mode, corruption, access) is the most likely culprit.

A practical diagnostic checklist (run one item at a time and observe results):

  • Fetch the FLV URL directly (browser or curl -I) and confirm an HTTP 200 and a sensible Content-Type. The FLV MIME should be video/x-flv. If missing or wrong, add an Apache type line like:

    AddType video/x-flv .flv

    (see Apache mod_mime docs: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_mime.html)

  • Inspect server access/error logs while attempting playback for 4xx/5xx, redirects, or unexpected responses (hotlink rules or auth pages can return HTML instead of the FLV). Apache log guidance: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/logs.html

  • Confirm uploads were done in binary mode (not ASCII). FTP clients left in ASCII will corrupt binaries. FileZilla explanation:

  • Verify file permissions (eg. 644) and that filenames have no spaces or characters that need URL-encoding.

Other common server-side traps to check:

  • Compressed output (mod_deflate) accidentally compressing FLVs — exclude .flv from gzip. See mod_deflate docs: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_deflate.html
  • Cross-domain restrictions if the SWF or FLV is served from a different host — a proper crossdomain.xml is required for Flash cross-domain access (Adobe notes: )
  • Corrupt or missing FLV metadata: old Flowplayer versions hide controls until onMetaData fires. Re-muxing or updating metadata often fixes this (ffmpeg can remux: ffmpeg -i input.flv -c copy output.flv; ffmpeg docs: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html). Alternatively use flvtool/yamdi to inject metadata.

If direct fetch returns the correct headers and the file looks intact, the problem is likely Flowplayer config or a cross-domain/permission issue. If re-uploads in binary mode and fixing MIME headers still fail, re-mux the FLV to regenerate container metadata and re-test.

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Member Avatar for donaldw

Code? :)

Member Avatar for GordonUK

Hi DonaldW,

I have been assured by web design team that the code is working fine as all the other videos are playing successfully.

As i said before one video that i uploaded in the form of a flv file was working successfully like all the other videos and now its not playing at all. I have since uploaded other videos too and none of them are playing as well. And so im urgently trying to find out why so that i can solve this problem and upload some more videos. At the moment we only have 17 videos uploaded and it would be great if we could upload some more soon.

We are also using the flow player which is an off the shelf flash video player.

Any thoughts on what could be causing this would be gratefully received.

Many thanks.

Member Avatar for donaldw

Presumably you haven't made any server side changes (actual servers settings or changes to the code where you use the player) or I'm sure you would have checked those first and it doesn't seem like there would be much that could be changed with the video files or to an off the shelf player.

Sounds simple and fairly obvious, but it might be worth checking...Are you only trying the videos on your development machine? It could be possible that your flash player, web browser or other settings on that machine may have gotten mucked up and is preventing the videos from playing. Perhaps try it on multiple machines/OSes/browsers/flash versions/etc. to make sure it's a server side issue rather than a client side issue.

Edited by donaldw because: n/a
Member Avatar for GordonUK

Hi Donaldw,

We are actually trying the videos on the website itself and so all of the flv file videos are being uploaded to the website which is online and thats where we are experiencing the problem. 17 of the videos are still playing successfully while one video which was playing successfully is not now playing successfully.

Since then i have tried uploading other videos and none of them are working either. Each time you click on the thumbnail of the video and you are taken to the video player page itself it appears to try to load the video but nothing actually appears and there are no player buttons ie the play, stop, forward buttons either being displayed.

I can play all of the videos successfully on my computer and so im really puzzled at what the problem is especially as one video was playing successfully and now its not.

Many thanks for all your help.

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