IIS STREAMING NOT WORKING AND PAID SUPPORT HAS A LOUSY REPONSE TIME Created May 23, 2010

funy.
bad signal for all flowplayer users.

That link cannot be viewed by anyone other than probably you and site admins.

What IIS streaming are you talking about? The one I posted on the forms a while back? I dont know of another one that requires IIS. I doubt it would be officially supported if that is the one to which you refer.

Hi,

Yes it was a request about using Pseudo Streaming with IIS, I added corrections to your original post in your thread (hope you dont mind - just typo fixes).

Basically I was told to use the 3.2.1 dev plugin (that just crashes)

When using the older plugins the control bar will drag to the point, then jump to the begging of the movie again.

Flow player support started responding to the paid ticket, after a few days, then took a few more days to reply again.

And now 2 weeks later its like that Disney sound of crickets on an empty night no one bothers to reply.

Im using their 3.1.5 (since apparently even buying you 100 licenses does not get you upgrades to their less buggy new release despite lots of promised features not working in the one I bought).

But yes I am just trying to get the ability to jump or skip, People who partnered with us to use our system are now basically dumping us, because we cant provide basic functionality that flow player supposedly has, and flowplayer support has proved to be horrifc when it comes to client service.

What even more anoying is that my ugly home made flex video player managed jumping with no problem with out any modifications to IIS.

Yet this thing I paid good money for cant do that simple task.

Sigh, If anyone knows how to make this work I would greatly apreicate some help on this...

Please and thank you in advance.

I've also been waiting for a whole week for official/paid support. I get the impression this last release was a bit rushed, and everyone's overwhelmed.

Alex

True but then they should make support free, cause this is not PAID quality of service... especially since we already PAID to buy their product, most of which does not work, and guess what all the bug fixes are in the new version but we are not entitled to that version. despite having paid to get said features.

Either they have no business training and its an honest case of no idea about good service or someone is dishonest...

I hope it improves or that they start refunding those they don't help, because right now I look like an idiot and its damaging my business because I was the one that suggested Flow Player.

I have to jump onto the dogpile as well.

I just paid for a license Saturday and basically couldn't get it working in 'commercial mode'. Maybe some of the experts at Flowplayer could document some common install issues better. I think you should also provide at least 90 days of support to new customers. I realize the horrendous cost in both staff and time this would mean, but imagine the improvement in customer satisfaction. Thanks for listening. PS Even though I am very technical I had issues, I can only imagine what non-technical people experience... Try to come up with methodology for people to just be able to install your wonderful software in 'standard' environments as well as get rid of the attitude that if it's used in a plugin environment for many popular web applications you won't help. These packages drive sales, get it?

I agree the docs are lousy, jump around referencing random versions, and their are lots of mistakes in examples.

There is no proper set of documents per build, do a new build, do a new set of docs to go with it. (this is called professionalism *hope flow player dev are taking notes here).

And whats really annoying is if they fix a bug your not entitled to the bug fix even though it fixes a feature you TECHNICALLY PAID FOR. (*legally thats called Fraud - add to notes - nudge)

And forum the responses are shocking too. Its pretty much sink or swim, which defeats the point of community really.

Basically they treat clients like shit, I am regretting buying 100 lics, I feel like some granny that got conned out of her life savings.

Bottom Line the product, the docs and the support are not yet commercial quality and they need to address that.

You cant take peoples money for things that don't work properly and give lousy support.

Pseudostreaming was working fine for me using 3.1.5 and whatever the current streaming plugin was at the time. I just started testing out 3.2.1 with the most current streaming plugin and it is also working just fine.

The issue of the seek button just jumping back to the begining actually sounds like you dont have the metadata in the file. I you did not run the flv through flvmdi or another metadata injector, you'd see that exact problem even if the rest of the configuration is correct.

If you did inject metadata, I suppose it could also be that some other part of the server side configuration is not working and you'd get the same results.

Maybe as a test you could point your player to play a file on one of the flowplayer streaming demos on this site and see if it works or not, to determine if its your player configuration or the server configuration.

I'm not sure if I can help, but the more info you provide the better. I also dont see how they could officially support my script because its just something I was sharing with the community, not really something guarenteed to continue working through future revisions of the player, and certainly not something their developers had a hand in.

Hi,

Firstly thank you so much for offering to help...

I pasted my server config to your IIS stream post, it is a copy paste from my config files so its accurate.

Ok so I did the meta injection as documented.

Here is a test rig -http://www.plentyoporn.com/video9.asp?id=1802

Video File -http://www.plentyoporn.com/files/video/{F6036FE6-1CBE-49B7-A3AF-6B3E3108730F}.avi.flv

In thoery I should be able to jump but I cant...

Maybe I should add XML files too?

I could even try a different form of FLV compression...?? File is currently encoded as H.264, I can encode as Sorenson Spark video codec H.263

What would XML files do? Can flowplayer use them?

flvmdi can also generate XML files as suplimentary MetaData Supply.

Its a feature as per their latest release (flvmdi that is).

*** Edit *** I generated an XML just to see its contents and it more or less just lists the changes and the new corrected meta data.

Nothing terribly useful.

That leaves the H.264 vs H.263 encoding as a Question mark and the IIS config.

Yeah, I know it can make an external xml file, but what does flowplayer do with that? I didnt think it could read those. Anyway, you shouldnt need it.

Heres a great way to test your server. In your browser, enter the address of the flv file with ?start=999999 on the end where 999999 is a key frame number. You wont really know any numbers so just guess. The higher the number, the smaller file you should get back as long as you dont give a number higher than the total keyframes, or else you'll get nothing back.

like this
http://myserver.com/video/myvideo.flv?start=123456.

If the file is normally 100MB, then you might get back 20MB or whatever. If you get the entire file every time, its not working. If you specify 999999999999999999 and for some reason you get a file back at all, its surely not working because your file couldnt have that many keyframes. It should return nothing to you.

If you do get a varied size file depending on the keyframe you specify, your server is working corectly and therefor it must be a flowplayer config issue... probably.

Is there code hidden in the JS that will make use of the querystring "start"?

To rule out an encoding problem I have setup this demo.

http://www.plentyoporn.com/videokiller.asp?id=52&start=12345

This uses flow players test file -http://www.plentyoporn.com/files/video/Extremists.flv

So it's not codec related.

I just tried this
http://209.172.32.205/files/video/%7BF6036FE6-1CBE-49B7-A3AF-6B3E3108730F%7D.avi.flv?start=99999999999999999999

And got the full size file back, so its clarly a server problem. If this doesnt give you nothing back or at least a smaller file, you certainly have a server config issue.

At this point I would even be willing to give you remote desktop access to see if you can spot anything, because minus correction on the typos I followed the instructions to the letter.

my msn is realityinc@hotmail.com

Right, Just rebooted, redid the config, and rebooted again.

Lets see what happens...

I get stream not found,

200, Stream not found, NetStream.Play.StreamNotFound, clip: '[Clip] 'http://www.plentyoporn.com/files/video/{AFC69B1E-B0A8-422E-8FC1-18FC18DB2495}.mpeg.flv''

The problem seems to happen when I add:

Add an entry for .flv. The Executable path is whatever the aspnet_isapi.dll path is for your version of .NET Framework. Check some of the other file types like .config to be sure. Set Verbs to "Limit to:" with the value GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG. Click OK get back to the site properties.

Isapi Caching issue perhaps?

ASP.net 2.0.50727

my instructions are based on a stock IIS 6 configuration. I have no idea what else may have been changed that could conflict with this.

Ok, removing the mapping solves the clip issue.

So I have aconflict between the handler mapping and the code...

Any ideas?

I'm not sure what you mean. You removed the flv file type mapping and then it started working? I emailed you.

I basically removed all configs, and rebooted, then followed the steps again

creating the mapping caused a new error

200, Stream not found, NetStream.Play.StreamNotFound, clip: '[Clip] 'http://www.plentyoporn.com/files/video/{AFC69B1E-B0A8-422E-8FC1-18FC18DB2495}.mpeg.flv''

removing the mapping

solved the error but did not fix streaming.

Its odd that it caused a 404, almost makes me think mime types lost the plot. Which is a default behavior when mime types are not configed correctly, but mime types should not have been affected by this change, and they did remain intacted.

Summary to this epilogue, is that the problem was with my server side code, and while Flow Player gave me lousy support "killebrewj" gave me awesome support.

I would like to thank killebrewj without his work IIS functionality would not be here.

I will update the IIS thread with one more step tonight.

I will also add some code for automating the keyframe injection in ASP classic for those using FFMPEG and or FVEC as their encoder.

Just to clarify, earlier smcbay linked to an asp page with something like ?id=50&start=12345 but this does not work.

To test you must put the ?start=12345 after the flv file in a direct file download likehttp://myserver.com/video/myvideo.flv?start=123456

It does nothing if you put it on the web page address.

Although I agree that flowplayer support is often slower than I'd like, especially when I've reported REAL bugs and I feel my concerns are ignored, none of the issues here were things related directly to flowplayer. ASP and permissions issues are things I doubt they would support.

Agreed, FLOWPLAYER WAS NOT TO BLAME - they just didn't bother to get back to me to tell me that they could not help further etc etc.