Flowplayer and Android/Windows Phone

[SoundHunter]

Hi all,

I notice some problems with Flowplayer at my jDownloads installation on Android and Windows Phone.
The player will on both devices play the content (in my case a MP3 file) in Flash.
The only problem is: Google and Microsoft banned Flash on there devices.

I don't know of the latest version of Flowplayer has the same problems but maybe there should be an option to switch between the Flash or HTML5 Flowplayer.

Interesting point, on iOS (Apple) works the player great in HTML5...

Hope someone has an idea how to fix this problem...

Thanks!

Best Regards,

SoundHunter

[SoundHunter]

I found a (non-supported by Flowplayer) website with a alternate way of integrating Flowplayer Flash and HTML5 to support almost every browser.
The URL: http://flowplayer.blacktrash.org/graceful.html
Maybe it is worth it to take a look at it and do some testings with it.
I have no idea how easy or difficult it is to insert this into the code of jDownloads 3.2.

I hope that Arno can do something with it!

Thanks in advance!

Best Regards,

SoundHunter

[Arno]

Hi,
i have not really experiences with this issue.  
So i am not sure what here is the best solution.

It exist also the HTML5 Video Flowplayer but he can not play audio.
But perhaps should we use a simple HTML5 video tag when flash is not supported by the clients browser.

<video width="320" height="240" controls>
 <source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>

and for audio:

<audio controls>
  <source src="horse.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>

[SoundHunter]

That can be a solution, only small problem is that I need mp3 support on my site, which isn't officialy supported indeed in the HTML5 player.
I read on their forums that mp3 files should work on the HTML5 player but because of the name "videoplayer" they don't support it official.

Maybe something like this (I think you need the video/mp3 type to work with HTML5 and Flowplayer but we should test that out:

Code Select Expand

<div id="player" class="flowplayer fixed-controls" data-engine="audio" data-embed="false">
<video>
<source type="video/mp3" src="http://example.com/filename.mp3"></source>
</video>
</div>

I should be great if someone has a little bit of time left to try making this work in jDownloads so I can test it out for a while.
If it works ok, the websites with jDownloads will be more compatible to all browsers including browsers on Android and Windows Phone devices.

In the second post called website has a workaround to implement a combination of the flash player and the HTML5 player.
If flash is possible: use flash, if not: use HTML5 (if it will indeed play mp3 files  )

Thanks in advance for any help!

Best Regards,

SoundHunter

[Arno]

Hi,
please contact me again next week, when we have fixed the most bugs. 

[phipper]

Hi there,

I also came across the problems with flowplayer and devices not supporting flash for streaming audio. A big problem for me is, that the message of not having flash bricks my template (screenshot attached).
The HTML5 <audio>-Tag is provided at mostly every browser for ogg and mp3, only Opera just provides ogg.

So my prefered solution would be a fallback to the <audio>-Tag when flash is not supported, with this also my problem with the template-brick is solved

Arno, what's the current status here?

Best greetings!

[gelöscht durch Administrator]

[Arno]

Hi,
okay i see your problem.
I will see what we can change here.

[phipper]

Hi Arno,

gibt es schon Überlegungen in diese Richtung? Ich würde auch zur Hand gehen, wenn es an Unterstützung hapert.

Grüße!

[Arno]

Hi Phipper,
Hilfe ist immer willkommen, erst Recht da ich gerade wirklich sehr viel um die Ohren habe. 
Einige Links hatte ich schon einmal zusammengesucht, mehr aber leider noch nicht gemacht:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3345224/flash-and-html5-the-fallback
http://henriksjokvist.net/archive/2009/2/using-the-html5-video-tag-with-a-flash-fallback/
http://www.videojs.com/

Solltest du also die Möglichkeit haben, kannst du ja gerne schon einmal anfangen. 

[isabeaux]

Hi There,

This has always been a problem for me. I have just found a work-around.

My considered issues:
- mp3's are 99% of my downloads (no videos).
- I use the preview player, I'd wish the player wouldn't show the direct link, but I have no way around that esp because Flowplayer shows it as well. So I have to live with it, since the only option would be to not have a preview player.
- Many of my users have iPads and iPhones, unfortunately. downloading with these devices creates all kinds of issues, so I've had to ask for them NOT to try to download from these POS devices.
- Which leaves the preview player as the only option for them, but the flowplayer is flash, so again, useless for these poor people.

After much back and forth, this is how I've solved it:

in the file /components/com_jdownloads/views/download/tmpl/default.php line 782:

Code Select Expand

            $mp3_player = 
            //'<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="components/com_jdownloads/assets/mp3_player_maxi.swf" width="200" height="20">
            //<param name="movie" value="components/com_jdownloads/assets/mp3_player_maxi.swf" />
            //<param name="wmode" value="transparent"/>
            //<param name="FlashVars" value="mp3='.$mp3_path.'&amp;'.$mp3_config.'" />
            //</object>';   
'<audio controls><source src="'.$mp3_path.'" type="audio/mpeg"></audio>';

You can see I commented out the mp3_player_maxi code and replaced it with the simple audio controls, which work across the board.

In the configuration panel, under Media Player tab, I've selected NO under the Activate Flowplayer?.

I don't think this would work for someone that has videos as well, but it's now working well for me.

I hope this helps someone, it was a headache for me.

Thanks
Tomás