IE7 Flash Video Troubles -- "Click to Activate"

First off, thanks to all who have helped to develop G2. Fantastic work from a great community.

I have the Flash Video module installed and am running into a minor issue in IE7. When I load a video page, the flash player does not activate until the user clicks it -- "Click to activate and use this control". (See attached GIF.)

Sample URL:
http://www.alyandgreg.com/main.php?g2_itemId=3270

The weird piece of this puzzle: I also have the MP3 Audio module installed, and that Flash player loads without having to click to activate it:

http://www.alyandgreg.com/main.php?g2_itemId=3246

Has anyone seen/solved this issue? I have not been able to find a definitive solution in this forum.

Thanks!

GDW

You can use SWFObject.
you would need to replace the sprintf in gallery2/modules/flashvideo/classes/FlashVideoRenderer.class

return sprintf(
		'<script type="text/javascript">
		// <![CDATA[
		function divResize(id, nw, nh) {
			var obj = document.getElementById(id);
			obj.style.width = nw + "px";
			obj.style.height = nh + "px";
		}
		// ]]>
		</script>
		<div id="flashvideo" style="align:left;width:525px;height:292px">
		<div id="soContent" style="width: 100%%; height: 100%%">
		You can place alternate content or a message for your users to see if they do not have flashplayer/or the correct version or javascript enabled. This content gets overwritten by SWFObject.</div>
		</div>
		<script type="text/javascript">
		// <![CDATA[
		var so = new SWFObject("%s", "%s", "100%%", "100%%", "8.0", "ffffff");
		so.addParam("flashVars","%s");
		so.addParam("wmode","transparent");
		so.write("soContent");
		// ]]>
		</script>',

		$playerUrl,!empty($params['id']) ? $params['id'] : 'movie', $flashVars);

You would also need to include SWFObject somewhere in the head of your site.
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.yoursite.com/swfobject.js"></script>

Hope this helps

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery

Guys,

I think that the issues described above were due to permissions errors when updating files. Let me continue to futz with this and I'll post my progress if/when I make any. In the meantime, I've just gotten FFMPEG installed, so that will help in the short-term.

Thanks again for your help. I'll post my solution when I figure it out.

GDW

So my site has the same problem. Guests to my site are getting confused, writing to me that they couldn't get the video to work.

Was there a reason this wasn't handled in the Gallery 2.2 release? I feel like maybe something is configured wrong with my site. Is everyone having this problem?

So let's say I need to go in and modify the code. I wasn't clear which of the options described above is best. Nor am I familiar with the Gallery code to know where all I need to edit things. Could I ask nicely for explicit instructions what needs to be edited? (I'm proficient at bash, vi, and getting files to my installation.) Also, what would be the best way to handle this in the future when I upgrade Gallery -- make the changes again?

Thanks,
Erik

p.s. I greatly appreciate the hard work folks are doing with Gallery. My family is really getting into uploading their own pictures. Video is the next big interest of theirs, so I'd like to get it to work nicer.

Suprsidr,

Excellent! It worked! Thanks so much! Great job!

A couple of hints for others.

The "just unzip in gallery2/modules" is replacing & adding a few files suprsidr has zipped up in gallery2/modules/flashvideo/. You can use FTP if you copy each of the files in the zipped package into their respective places (mirroring where they are in the zipped file.) I actually did this since it was a tad easier for me (as my Mac unzipped the file already). BTW, I also backed up the old gallery2/modules/flashvideo/ directory beforehand.

At first it didn't work for me (still had the blank box). So I cleared my browser's and Gallery's performance caches and then it worked great.

I'm just so happy. Now I don't have to give any explainations how to play the videos. It just works as it should. Hopefully this will get into the next Gallery release.

Thanks,
Erik

welldone! just uploaded it to my site, U rock thanx

Did you try this one from 4 posts up?
-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery

There is no reason the resize should stop working only in xtreme. the flvplayer calls an external js function to resize a specific div which the flv module writes to page.
So the function is there, and the div.
Did you clear gallery's cache (including any performane cache) and your browser's cache as well?
I showed another how to use flowplayer http://gallery.menalto.com/node/61786
-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery

@Wayne:
Are you going to submit the change for review?
We could well use the Eolas fix in the official versions of the flash / mp3 modules.

Are Java applets also affected by the Eolas issue? Can't remember. If so, the JS file could probably part of core or in lib/javascript/ such that not all such modules have to include the same js file everywhere.

--------------
Documentation: Support / Troubleshooting | Installation, Upgrade, Configuration and Usage

Both of those scripts look pretty good.
I haven't used either and I don't know what drawbacks UFO has.

What I like about UFO is that it's for all embed/object types, not just for SWF.

I think you should start by adding what ever script you prefer to both modules (video and mp3).
Later, we'll add UFO or any other general purpose embed script to G2 and then we can use that for all object/embed content (swf, applets, embedded non-flash video players, ...).

> Too much??

Smaller, incremental changes make both of our lifes easier, but it doesn't sound like that much. It should be fine for a review.

--------------
Documentation: Support / Troubleshooting | Installation, Upgrade, Configuration and Usage

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery

url to a sample video?

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery

Ok, the problem seems to be a cross domain issue.
your gallery is at www.yoursite.com/gallery...
and the player is at gallery.yoursite.com...
try this:
in gallery2/modules/flashvideo/classes/FlashVideoRenderer.class
line 147 directly above:
so.addParam("wmode","transparent");
add:
so.addParam("allowScriptAccess","always");

see it working here.

-s

FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery

Nice one that fixed my prob too, as i was using a subdomain

cheers

Your files are probably owned by your webserver group, common if you use the preinstaller or some other install script.
try Bharat's Cleanup Script to change the permissions or I think the preinstaller itself has the same functionality.

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery

Thanks suprsidr!

Bharat's Cleanup Script did it. Everything works smoothly now. Thanks again!

Hi,

Not having much luck at all here. As advised in this thread ( http://gallery.menalto.com/node/65945#comment-239941 ) I came here for suggestions on how to make the Flash video player respond to controls. Unfortunately I'm still having inconsistent issues even after applying these suggestions.

Downloaded the zip above and expanded it on my PC, then FTPed to the modules directory, making sure it overwrote the pre-existing files. File permissions ended up as 664, and I don't use the preinstaller.

Cleared my browser cache, used Maintenance functions to clean template caches, database caches and user sessions. Even use shift refresh/ctrl refresh keycombos to try to avoid using any proxy cached material.

In Firefox 2.0.0.4 I can play the video at the following link without issues:
http://photos.dawsons.id.au/v/Family_and_Friends/AlexatPlay/BJD_20070610_133022-Master.flv.html
If I try to access the page in IE 6 SP2:
- it looks like it is loading OK
- displays a modal dialog box stating:
"http://photos.dawsons.id.au/v/Family_and_Friends/AlexatPlay/BJD_20070610_133022-Master.flv.html: Operation aborted"
- redirects to a "Cannot find server or DNS Error" error page
In IE6 SP2 other videos in this same album exhibit the same issues.

After experiencing this issue I tried the cross-site change above "just in case", cleared caches/proxies/etc, then retested. Same problem.

I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do now. If I can't reliably host videos on my site, and have family consistently able to access them, then there isn't much point in me having the site. Have had to expend a lot of effort to get to this point but still no joy. Would really like to see this problem dead and buried...

Thanks,
Matt

Worked like a dream. Thanks Suprsidr

suprsidr your zip package is excellent!
i cant seem to get it to work with flowplayer thou.
do you have a rewritten FlashVideoRenderer.class for that?

I got it, found your fix in another post, you should really update ur .zip fixes to replace to old

$playerUrl = $urlGenerator->generateUrl(
array('href' => 'modules/flashvideo/lib/FlowPlayer.swf'),
array('forceFullUrl' => true));
$flashVars = sprintf('baseURL=%s&videoFile=%s%%26x=&autoPlay=true&loop=false',
urlencode(dirname($src)), urlencode(basename($src)));
$extraAttr = ' wmode="transparent"';

with

$playerUrl = $urlGenerator->generateUrl(
array('href' => 'modules/flashvideo/lib/FlowPlayerWhite.swf'),
array('forceFullUrl' => true));
$flashVars = sprintf('config={videoFile: \'%s\'}&autoPlay=true&loop=false',
urlencode($src));
$extraAttr = ' wmode="transparent"';

Thanks
The upcoming G2.3 release includes this fix as well.
Also I have several ffmpeg versions on mysite that may work for you depending on your OS.

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2

Last check, the latest version of the rss module contained some mediaRss, but it was incomplete. But you may want to try it.
I've switched my flash apps over to mediaRss though.

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2

E2 includes mediaRss.php which is an external app that uses G2's embed api to access your gallery.
mediaRss.php is used like my xml.php so its not actually part of gallery.

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2

Hi guys

I have uploaded the zip folder from suprsidr (THANKS!), and resized my video. [i]I have also downloaded and installed the latest flash player, and yet i am still getting errors.

You can see here: http://www.thebreadcrumbtrail.org/gallery

The first image is ok as this links to an album.

The second image as you can see links to an FLV video which plays fine (But how do I resize the frame to fit the video size?)

The third video is still looking for some plugin. This is an MP4 video

Finally I have uploaded an MP3 as a link and it doesn't show anything

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks so much

James

What a mess that page is.
How are you posting those gallery items to that page?

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2

But its not inserting thumbnails its trying to embed the whole object and poorly at that.

-s
FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with The E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2