Player Error

[Pete C]

I've been getting the following message appearing on the player:

Error #: 4 (MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED) at 0:00undefined

I can't play anything on the main player or the link to the default browser. Anybody having the same problems? Seems to have started after a Windows 10 update a couple of days ago.

[Pete C]

The problem suddenly seems to have gone and the player's working again 

[Speed Demon]

Still cannot get an Apple device to play a song all the way through here.
I have no intention of ever purchasing another Apple device.

Apple management can take all their devices and jam them up their asses.
If they are actually all that wonderful it should not hurt.

[64Guitars]

I think most of the problems we have playing songs here are due to slowdowns in the server which results in a timeout in the web browser. Some browsers seem to be more sensitive to this than others. Chrome and Safari seem to be the worst in terms of timing out and aborting the playback. I find that Firefox usually works quite well, for me at least.

Slowdowns can occur even when the site's not very busy. We're on a shared server which means that if one of the other customers on our server gets very busy or has a software problem that eats up resources quickly, or they're being attacked by a hacker, it will slow down the whole server which means that Songcrafters will be slow too. Also, there's the usual internet traffic problems where things generally slow down during peak usage or if equipment on the route from Songcrafters to your computer is acting up. All of these things can cause the player to timeout and abort playback.

One thing I've learned over the past few months is that the problems we're having are almost certainly not caused by our players. They're caused by the server's occasional inability to serve the files fast enough. That's why our players will usually work flawlessly when playing songs hosted offsite (alonetone, for example). Since the mp3 file is not being served from the Songcrafters server, there are no timeout issues.

Another problem is that mp3 files vary a lot in the way they're created and formatted. That's why some files play flawlessly every time while others keep stopping. And some files immediately show the total song length, while others don't report the length till the song has played all the way through once. This creates a problem for the progress bar which shows the current position of the song relative to its total length. If the total length is not known, then the progress bar can't work. And neither can clicking the progress bar to change the position in the song. For example, if you click in the middle of the progress bar and the song is known to be 4 minutes long, then the song position will change to the 2-minute point which is midway. But if you click in the middle of the progress bar and the song length is unknown, what time should it change to? Obviously, it should change to half of the total time of the song, but since the total time's not known, it's impossible to determine where the halfway point is.

In the past few months, I've found problems in the code that serves the file attachments and fixed them. The players seem to be working much more reliably since I made those changes. I'll continue to look for other ways to improve the speed of serving attachments but I don't expect any major breakthroughs. Meanwhile, I'd recommend trying lots of different web browsers. As I said above, some browsers are more sensitive to timeouts than others, so you may be able to find a browser that works more reliably at Songcrafters than the one you're currently using.

[Mike_S]

64, that sounds like a a real difficult task, getting to the route of that. Like finding a needle in a haystack... the work you are putting in behind the scenes for a small community site like this is remarkable. Thanking you for your continuing efforts.

Mike

[Groundy]

I get it now and again Pete, but only on my Kindle Fire.
OK at the moment.


Alex

[Pete C]

Thanks 64 and Alex for your comments.

Got the same error again today using the Google Chrome browser - tried another browser and the player was fine. Tried Chrome again and it was working there too. At least I know its an intermittent problem and I can get round the problem.

Really appreciate the work 64 puts into this site and the help from fellow members !

Pete

[T.C. Elliott]

64... the work you are putting in behind the scenes for a small community site like this is remarkable. Thanking you for your continuing efforts.

+1

[Farrell Jackson]

In the past few months, I've found problems in the code that serves the file attachments and fixed them. The players seem to be working much more reliably since I made those changes. I'll continue to look for other ways to improve the speed of serving attachments but I don't expect any major breakthroughs. Meanwhile, I'd recommend trying lots of different web browsers. As I said above, some browsers are more sensitive to timeouts than others, so you may be able to find a browser that works more reliably at Songcrafters than the one you're currently using.

Thanks 64 for all that you've done to help with the players problem. Since you've done this I haven't had any problems with the players stopping short at all. My browser is Firefox.

Thanks!

Farrell

[Hilary]

Can you advise please - none of the songs play properly on my phone here (unless they are linked to another site) - they cut off part way through and start again at the beginning. I have downloaded Firefox which I thought would work but it doesn't - which of the browsers are supposed to work?? I know it's not Safari and Chrome.

Thanks