Video or audio does not play

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This article deals with not being able to play video or audio on websites.

Plug-ins

Firefox and Mozilla Suite can't play video and audio natively; they require the help of browser plugins provided by media players. You may already have the correct media players installed on your system, but this does not guarantee that you have the plugins as well. These articles will tell you how to get the most common plugins and how they should be set up.

Missing Plug-in Alerts

Getting missing plug-in alerts when you have all the plug-ins?

It is likely that you have encountered a piece of embedded media that doesn't work properly with the plug-ins in their default configuration;

Each plug-in contains a list of file extensions and MIME types which it will play. Most web pages assume that regardless of the file type, it will be played by the Windows Media Player plugin (since Internet Explorer does not obey those lists and usually uses WMP anyway). Firefox does obey those lists, so it will only use a plug-in to play a file if the plug-in lists that file type.

  • The Windows Media Player plugin lists only the Windows Media formats (.asf, .asx, .wm, .wma, .wax, .wmv, and .wvx), and WMP provides no way of changing that list.
  • Quicktime only lists the Quicktime formats
  • Real Player only lists .rpm (Real Media Playlist) (Real Alternative lists all Real Media formats).

So, by default, no plugin lists the commonly-used formats (like .mp3, .midi, .wav, .mpg, etc.) - if one of these formats is embedded in a web page, it will not play and you will get a missing plug-in alert, even though you have all the plugins (unless the person who wrote the web page took special provision to make sure it will work in all browsers, which is often not the case).

  • Of the three, Quicktime is the only plugin that has the ability to be reconfigured. If you want to be able to play those common formats, you need to configure the Quicktime plugin to play those formats in the Quicktime browser settings.
  • Another alternative is the Greasemonkey extension and IE Media Mimic script- this modifies all embedded media in every web page so that it will play with the Windows Media Player plug-in. In essence, it adds the 'special provision' that, as was mentioned earlier, many web page authors neglect to add.
  • The plug-in from the official Real Player 10.5 only lists the .rpm format, so often instances of other Real media files (.rm, .ram, .ra) will not work. The solution is to install the modified Real Player plug-in.

Coded for IE

Some sites are coded in an Internet Explorer-specific way. Here are a few ways to get around this:

  • Use the aforementioned Greasemonkey extension with the IE Media Mimic script. In addition to making embedded audio/video play with the Windows Media Player plugin, the script also modifies how they are embedded to make them behave in Firefox more like how they would behave in Internet Explorer.
  • Install the Mozilla ActiveX plugin if a compatible version is available for your browser, so that the Windows Media Player ActiveX control is used on sites coded for Internet Explorer.
  • Some web pages deny you access entirely unless you use Internet Explorer, often because they haven't bothered to test on other browsers, or because they think it only works in Internet Explorer. You can use the User Agent Switcher extension to trick them into thinking you're using IE, but it doesn't mean that it will then work.
  • If clicking on a video link gives you gibberish text instead of downloading, see this article for details.

See also