What can cause movies to play some times and not play at other times?

[Bill]

I've been seeing some wierd behavior on some mpegs for a gay freesite - at times the movies play just fine when clicked, but a short time later, only one frame appears in the WMP, and a flashing 00:00 appears where it usually shows the seconds rolling by.

I clear the cache on the player, and sometimes the movie plays, sometimes it don't.

Likewise, clearing the temp internet files, sometimes it plays, sometimes it don't. On one gallery page, ther mpgs all play go to the next, and they don't.

I go to a FHG with mpegs - they don't play. I go to an older freesite with mpegs - they play just fine.

Any video experts recognize this behavior?

[stuveltje]

i have an different issue, sometimes i cant see the movies from free sites in firefox, but when i check them in IE they do work, it drives me nuts.

[Bill]

A bit more data.

The movies all play just fine when clicked from the local disk.

This only happens when clicking on the movie link on the webpage.

I can download the movie with save target as from the webpage - it plays just fine when clicked from the disk, and the size is as expected.

The movie sizes look fine viewed with the ftp tool. I've reuploaded the movies several times.

The problem happened once when I forced quicktime to play the videos - all other times quicktime played them as expected.

The problem is primarily with windows media player.

WMP doesn't fire off any codecs messages.

It happened at first with WMP 9, which is what I was originally using. Thinking it might be a prob with the player version, I upgraded to WMP 11, but the problem was still there.

If I change settings in Privacy in WMP options, the mpgs will often play - but a little time later, they go back to a single frame, and the flashing 00:00.

This is probably something obvious, but movies aren't one of my areas of knowledge.

I hope someonw has an answer for your problem too, Stu.

[stuveltje]

i am sorry bill for hacking your thread, wasnt ment to be, but i can understand your issue, i dont have an solution for you, if there is one thing in bizz which can drive me nuts then its al the movie things, i hope you find a solution soon or otherwise someone will have an solution for you

[Cleo]

Are the mime-types set correctly for the server?

[Bill]

I wondered about that - which is why I went to another domain on that same server and tested another older freesite with mpgs. They played just fine. I just went to that site and tested again - played just fine.

I thought that should indicate mime types were set okay - and, that the fact that _some_ of the mpgs on the domain with the problems play okay should mean the domain in question doesn't have messed up mime settings.

[[BV]]

Why don'y you post some examples so others can try.

Sounds like it's your computer so if you have another one to test with or let others test also you can narrow down where the problem is.

[Bill]

Yeah, I had thought about doing that, but these are hardcore gay fetish clips, so I thought I'd spare the tender eyes of GG&J from that. ;-}

But here's a test page:

http://www.gay-fetish-xxx.com/club-leather/test-1.htm

If I click "save target as", they download fine and play fine. But if I juts click on them, I get the flashing 00:00 and one frame, and they don't play.

I downloaded democracy player, an open source player/torrent/streamer, set it to be the default for mpegs. when clicked, the videos don't stream, they download, then play just fine.

But I'm pretty sure they don't play in anybodies WMP - I subbed a test site with these vids, and MML rejected it, presumably because the mpgs didn't play for him either.

The mpgs play fine from the disc, they play fine when downloaded, but won't stream.

For the moment I'd given up on them.

[Bill]

It just did it again - I clicked on every movie on that page - no play, flashing 00:00.

Then, I went to the options page for WMP, and in this case I returned the privacy settings to their default state. Then I clicked on an mpg - and it streams immediately and plays just fine.

Then I click on another mpg - and it's back to the flashing 00:00 and no play.

two off the mpgs now play just fine, 4 don't.

I have no idea what is happening.

[Licker4U]

I just checked two and with RealPlayer they were fine

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Bill

http://www.gay-fetish-xxx.com/club-leather/test-1.htm

Clicking on a movie crashes Safari.

Downloading the movie and then trying to play it in QuickTime crashes QuickTime.

Also tried playing the movie in Mplayer but it plays a second or two and then crashes Mplayer.

[Bill]

See what I mean - it's just fucking wierd.

I just downloaded a clip, and played it in quictime, it played just fine.

Then I set quicktime preferences to play mpegs - and dang if it didn't crash quicktime.

A few days ago I set quicktime to play mpegs - it froze once, then every other time played them just fine.

I have to believe it's something specific about the way these clips were prepared - I've basically given up for the moment on these clips.

These are sponsor clips - other clips, in a different niche, from the same sponsor, play just fine every time.

My next step is to go back to the sponsor and get new clips to test, but they just converted to NATS and things are still in a transition stage, no access to alternative clips yet.

[Cleo]

Mplayer says that these are mpeg-ps clips.

[[BV]]

my eyes my eyes , eek lol

but yah something is not right with the server, does not play for me (WMP) and if i download to drive and then play it works fine.

what host are you using? have you asked for their opinion? has to be something with the server unless those mpegs have some sort of weird encoding codec,

to see if its the encodeing upload one of my clips to your server and let me try it, i know my clips work and i would like to see how they work on your server,

if they dont work on your server then that would verify it's something wrong with your server.

download this clip and put it on that test page: http://www.beachmodel.com/free_galle...eme_bikini.wmv

[Bill]

I think Cleo has found the problem. These are mpeg-ps, that's why they download, but stream irregularly.

I'll need to get new clips, or maybe find something to convert them.

I tested mpegs on the gay fetish FHGs from that sponsor, they also fucked up, I'll have to tell them.

The mpeg-ps theory explains every effect we've seen - playing some times but not others, playing differently in different players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_stream

"Program stream (PS or MPEG-PS) is ... a container format designed for reasonably reliable media such as disks, in contrast to transport stream which is for data transmission in which loss of data is likely."

---

I had actually tested that theory a number of times before, BV - because it did seem like there was something about the way the server was delivering the files that was causing the trouble.

I uploaded that .wmv, there's a text link to it, it streamed just fine for me.

[Bill]

Does anybody have an idea how to convert mpeg-ps to mpeg-ts?

Thats mpeg program stream to mpeg transport stream.

Preferably with a free tool.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Bill

I'll need to get new clips, or maybe find something to convert them.

Try this
http://cleoslinks.com/crap/gay-porn-for-bill.mpg

I did a fast convert using Episode Pro but probably a $500 Mac program isn't what you are looking for.

[Bill]

Yep, that plays as expected - I got the mild impression that it was a different size in the player, tho.

And nope, I don't want to spend anything at all to convert these, if I can avoid it. I'm looking at a free free converters from nonags, but I'll have to wait til tomorrow to test them out.

That does seem like a good test of concept.

I'll give another rteport on this tomorrow.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Bill

Yep, that plays as expected - I got the mild impression that it was a different size in the player, tho.

I just grabbed a default settings file so it was probably the wrong aspect ratio.

This is the program that I'm using to generate the H.264 movies for Angel's new site and I spent a week tweaking the settings files for those.

It's amazing how many variations of mpeg there are.