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Videos Won’t Play – JW Player, Internet Explorer, HTML5

February 19, 2013 by Charly Leetham 5 Comments

We recently upgraded a site to use the HTML 5 playback functionality of JW Player.  We set the player default to HTML5 with ‘fallback’ to flash.  Things were working wonderfully until a couple of clients told us they were getting the following problem:

The video could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported:

It turns out the error occured in Internet Explorer (I tested in IE 9 and experienced the problem), only – we didn’t seem to have the issues in Chrome, Firefox, on our iOS devices or on our android devices….

Internet Explorer & JW Player

The videos have an extension of .m4v (not .mp4), are hosted on Amazon S3 and we are using JW Player to display them on the site.   Initially I thought there was a problem with the initial rendering of the videos however, my understanding of the m4v format is that it’s Apple’s video file format, that closely resembles mp4 – the only real difference is that m4v allows the use of Apples DRM…. so I didn’t really think that was the answer.

After much digging around and a bit of testing, I found the issue to be “content type” http headers, the way Internet Explorer has implemented certain parts of the standards and the method that you use to upload videos to your Amazon S3 buckets.

This podcast explains how to fix the issue on Amazon S3.

PlayPlay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:08 — 10.2MB)

Content types for Internet Explorer and JW Player

m4v is not the only video format that can be set.  Here is a list of other Video Content Types (although there may be more).

  • video/mp4
  • video/mpeg
  • video/quicktime
  • video/x-flv
  • video/x-m4v
  • video/x-ivf
  • video/x-la-asf
  • video/x-ms-asf
  • video/x-msvideo
  • video/x-sgi-movie

Implementing this fix resolved the issue, I hope it does for you too.

Filed Under: Podcast, Video Tagged With: content types, html5, internet explorer, jw player, video, video content types

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Charly Leetham, from Ask Charly Leetham, is an Online Business Implementation Expert who helps Small Businesses and Solopreneurs harness the power of the Internet as a Sales Channel or Channel To Market. Get your dose of business inspiration and motivation to help you along. Compiled from the generous contributions of over 79 authors. Grab a free copy today. Motivating Your Mind, Inspiring Your Spirit by visiting www.AskCharlyLeetham.com today

Comments

  1. Kevin Crenshaw says

    May 21, 2013 at 12:19 am

    Hmmm. I’m getting the error you mention just trying to watch your podcast. Any other way of seeing the information?

    Reply
    • Charly Leetham says

      May 22, 2013 at 10:45 am

      Hi Kevin, Interesting. I’ve tested the post in IE7, IE8, IE9 and IE10 and don’t have the issue you report. However, you should have the download link on the post so you can view it on your PC OR you can subscribe to the iTunes feed for the podcast (https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/ask-charly-leetham-online/id415169033).

      Reply
  2. paulcounts says

    July 18, 2013 at 4:30 am

    Thank you so much for this! You saved me in a big way on a recent launch I was doing. My sales video would not work in Internet Explorer until you pointed this out! Awesome solution! Thanks again!

    Reply
  3. Staci says

    September 11, 2013 at 12:17 am

    I have been looking all day for how to fix this and thought I was going crazy because I couldn’t find a solution anywhere. Thank you SO much for this video, Charly…I seriously appreciate it!

    Reply
  4. Andy says

    October 11, 2013 at 10:15 pm

    Many thanks, just hit this exact issue, you’re a life saver!

    Reply

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