Why can't I play this on Microsofts's site??
 

Hi all

I have Firefox 2 with all the plugins and can happily play flash files (Flash player 9beta installed)
I wanted to run a Flash demo about Microsoft Exchangeon the Microsoft site but it refuses to work saying I don't have the required plugins... but I do have flash! Here is the link that won't work:

Click me

The link to this file is on This Page and states that you need Flash player.

So, is there a problem with:
i) my browser
ii) the website

I'd appreciate your thoughts. Thanks

Maybe you should ask them.

I downloaded the demo from the site but does not play under mplayer. It is a wmv file but my guess it is one of the ones that is not supported by current codecs. I did get it to sort of play under xine but audio only, no video. What I did was right click on one of the demo options like 56k, 100k, 300k. I copied the link to the clipboard. Then I use a tool called mmsrip http://freshmeat.net/projects/mmsrip/ and use the link with it. It downloaded the file but it of course does not play. The link is a mms:// and as far as I know is not supported under Firefox. A Microsoft thing. With the mms:// link bookmark you can use totem or mplayer or others to play like this.

mplayer mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/exchange/ExchangeSP2_Demo_56k.wmv

Brian

Thanks for the answer Brian1

It is rather pathetic of Microsoft to make it almost impossible to learn about one of their products unless you use IE and Windows to view the bl**dy thing!!

The more I learn about them the nearer I get to joining the "I hate Microsoft - they are evil" brigade....

It played on firefox with mplayerplug-in and user agent switcher
http://chrispederick.com/work/useragentswitcher/

Did not try his first link just the second. I had tried the useragent when messing with the second link. I switch to windows mode of useragent. I also have the mplayerplugin as well. The page came up with an error and then the player box but nothing happened.

To jlo sandog.
What version of mplayerplugin you have?
Which codec packages have you installed?
If you can list all your codecs with size of files?

I must be missing one since I can play the audio and not the video.

Thanks for your time.
Brian

I have mplayer version mplayer-1.0-0.33.rc1.fc6, mplayerplug-in 3.31, and the latest codec package from the mplayer site. But with the latest mplayer you won't need additional codecs to play wmv files. They have now implemented VC-1/WMV3/WMV9 video decoder to FFmpeg/libavcodec.

Forgot to mention that the links given above took almost a minute to load the video so be patient.

Sorry to Adrian Baker to sort of taking this thread a little off base.

Thanks for the info jlo_sandog. Still one question as to what you mean by the last sentance. They have now implemented VC-1/WMV3/WMV9 video decoder to FFmpeg/libavcodec.

I have the the same versions of mplayer and mplayerplugin. Also installed the latest essential codecs from mplayer site. Still I can here the audio but no video from the wmv file.

Wonder if this is related to other vmv file that I cannot play. I can play about 90% of them.

Again thank you for your help.
Brian

It means that FFmpeg doesn't need a windows dll file to decode wmv files, they have a native codec/library. See the mplayer site for release highligths of their latest release.
I'm not sure why you only hear and not see video. The only other thing I can suggest is that you check your .mplayer/config file setup. Mine looks like this

# Write your default config options here!
afm=ffmpeg,
vo=xv
ao=alsa

I noticed in your profile x86_64. If you have mplayer.x86_64 the wmv files wont work. For that you need mplayer.i386

Thanks for noticing the x86_64. Been actually working a regular 32bit notebook right now. Didn't have that info in my config file. Just the remmed out line. Will do some reading over at the mplayer site.

Again thanks for the help jlo sandog. After 7 years of Linux you can always learn something new everyday.

Brian