Player issue

[chapperz66]

I recall reading a number of posts regarding the songcrafters player not working with various software variants.  It has not been a huge issue as I can listen by downloading the songs.  It has seldom worked on my latest laptop (it is Windows 8 - not sure if that is why.) 

Interestingly it has just worked fine and played Phantasm777's song, and yet it won't play any of the others I have tried to play this morning.  P777's song displays the old style player when I first go into the post whereas most of the other posts show what appears to be the new style player which does nothing when I hit play.  When I chose the option for the old style player, it converts to what appears to be the old style player - but resolutely refuses to work.

I am not hugely computer literate so apologies if the above is not very technical - and in any event it is not a huge problem.  I can cope with downloading songs to listen to.

Paul

[chapperz66]

Actually, I appear to have stumbled on a resolution.  The player does indeed revert to the old style and works provided I do not hit play on the new style player first.

I'm sure somebody clever will understand why that it is - but I am not that soldier   >

Either way I am happy - I can play some other peoples songs now so feel free to ignore the above!

Paul

[64Guitars]

For various reasons which I'll explain here, we currently have three different MP3 players.

1) Flash player - This player has served us fairly well for several years. It requires that Adobe Flash is installed and working on your computer. Adobe Flash gets updated occasionally on your computer and sometimes these updates can introduce bugs that will cause problems with the player. But, eventually, a new Flash update from Adobe will correct the problem and the player will work just fine again. A bigger problem is that Apple doesn't support Flash on its iOS products (iPad, iPhone, iPod) so our Flash player won't work at all on those devices. Because a lot of our members are accessing the site through iOS devices, I created a new player that doesn't require Adobe Flash.



2) HTML5 player - This player uses HTML5 technology to play MP3 files without using Adobe Flash. Because it doesn't require Flash, it will work with iOS devices. However, HTML5 is a relatively new and evolving technology which is not yet supported equally by all browsers. Older browsers don't support it at all. And some newer browsers which claim to support HTML5 have certain quirks which may cause the player to fail or behave badly (stopping part-way through a song, for example). Also, some browsers rely on the computer's operating system to play the MP3 file instead of doing it themselves in the browser. Firefox works this way, and I think Safari might also rely on the operating system to some degree. So, obviously, your choice of browser and possibly even your operating system will determine which, if any, of our players will work for you. I use Firefox under Linux and the HTML5 player has worked quite well for me. The only problem I occasionally run into is that a very few MP3 files won't play in it and I have to switch to the old player to hear the song. It seems like these problem MP3s are ones that were exported directly from a Micro BR. I don't know why that should be a problem, but it appears to be. Fortunately, most people export their songs to WAV files then convert them to MP3 using Audacity or some other program, and those files play just fine in the HTML5 player (for me anyway).



3) Basic player - I added the basic player as a third option because people were reporting some problems with the HTML5 player and I wanted to see if those problems had anything to do with the user interface that I created. When you select the basic player, the song is played entirely by your browser in HTML5 and the user-interface is supplied by the browser. Because it's supplied by the browser, it will look slightly different in different browsers, but the basic functionality should be there (Play/Pause, mute, etc.) Here's how the basic player looks in Firefox 27:



When a page is first loaded, it checks to see if your browser supports HTML5. If you're using an older browser that doesn't support HTML5, the Flash player will be loaded automatically. Otherwise, the HTML5 player will be loaded. Unfortunately, some browsers that support HTML5 don't yet implement it well enough to always play our MP3s reliably. So I've included two buttons in the lower-right of the HTML5 player to allow you to switch to one of the other players. If your browser supports HTML5 but songs won't play in the HTML5 player, you can try the basic player. If they still won't play, then your browser doesn't implement HTML5 audio correctly. In that case, you can reload the page and try the old Flash player. Of course, if you don't have Flash installed on your computer or it isn't working correctly, then that player won't work either. In that case, all you can do is download the song and play it in VLC or some other media player installed on your computer.

The browser industry is gradually shifting to HTML5 and all of the current problems will eventually be fixed (I hope). When (if) that happens, we'll no longer need the old Flash player because everybody should be able to use the HTML5 player without any trouble as long as their browser is up-to-date. But, until all of the browsers implement HTML5 audio properly, we'll just have to tolerate all of these little annoyances. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to fix it because the problem is with the browser and/or operating system.

The best advice I can give is to try several browsers and use the one that works best for you when you visit Songcrafters. There's nothing wrong with having several browsers installed on your computer (I currently have 7 of them). So if you have a favourite browser that you want to continue using for general web surfing, you can still use it, but maybe you'll want to use a different browser just for Songcrafters. Like I said, Firefox works quite well for me, so you might want to give it a try. You can download it for free here:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

One final thing I should point out is that the HTML5 player and the basic player are only available for MP3 files attached to posts. They aren't available when the MP3 file is hosted offsite and the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags are used. That's why Phantasm777's song loaded in the Flash player automatically. His songs aren't attached to the post because he hosts them on his own server and links them to our player with the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags. The Flash player is the only player that's currently available when the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags are used so it gets loaded automatically. Our jukeboxes also use a variation of the Flash player, so they won't work on iOS devices or any computer that doesn't have Adobe Flash installed and working properly. One of these days, I hope to create HTML5 players for offsite MP3s and for our jukeboxes, but I haven't got around to it yet.

[64Guitars]

Actually, I appear to have stumbled on a resolution.  The player does indeed revert to the old style and works provided I do not hit play on the new style player first.

When you click Play in the HTML5 player and it fails, this failure must be interfering with the normal operation of the other controls in the player. Just click the Reload or Refresh button in your browser to reload the page, then click the "old player" button to get the old Flash player. Or, as you said, try to remember not to click the Play button in the HTML5 player if it consistently fails in your browser. Just go straight to the old player instead.

[chapperz66]

Thanks.  Everything works well in Firefox mode.

Paul

[phantasm777]

I use ie11 and have used ie10 qo on the player for songs.
I always have trouble getting either to work via the newer player.

the newer one never works for me, and so I would hit older version which did nothing.

now I go to the song press older version, refresh and have to press older version again BEFORE the whole page loads completely to even get the old player to work. but if the song only has the old player on the page, it usually always works for me.

so the only way I can get the new player to work is to press old player - refresh and click old player again before the page fully loads. cause if I wait till after it loads it never gets enabled. I wonder if this will work for anyone else having problems. it can be frustrating trying to listen and getting nowhere, but I think I found a solution for me.

[Tootler]

I use Firefox in Linux Mint on my PC and the Flash Player works fine. It shouldn't because Adobe withdrew support for the Linux version of Flash sometime ago. I can only assume that the Open Source community have produced a suitable alternative.

OTOH, neither the HTML5 player nor the basic player work properly in safari on my iPad. Somewhere just after 2mins (exact time varies) the playback jumps back to the beginning - happens with both players. Leave it running and it will skip back again but at an earlier stage in the song. 

I've not checked my little Android tablet but I will do so and report back.