Known Participant

Question

Cannot play videos on IMDB or Rottentomatoes but can on Youtube.com

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
March 30, 2012
4 replies
20513 views

I have a desktop running XP(SP3), 3.0ghz intel cpu and 1.5gb RAM.

I use Chrome and IE8 browsers. I have DirectX SDK installed.

I have Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.228 installed which has been checked and tested to be OK on the Adobe site for BOTH browsers.

In case the flash player had been corrupted I have uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe flash many times with the Adobe uninstaller and with REVO.

For some reason I cannot playback videos using Adobe Flash on certain sites like IMDB and Rottentomatoes.com when the Adobe flash player has been integrated with JW and IVA players.

I can play all videos on YouTube and bbc.co.uk on BOTH browsers without any real issues.

In IE8:

A. when I try and play a trailer on RottenTomatoes.com, the playback window is blacked out with a small text field in the top left hand corner "Get Adobe Flash Player'. This is the same for every trailer on RottenTomatoes. The video playback here uses IVA player.

B. When I try and play the IMDB based trailers, playback is slowmo and jerky where the audio and video content are out of sync. The CPU is maxed out during this playback. When I try and play the video in a new tab, the playback window is blank/white and no playback occurs i.e. no flash player identified. IMBD uses JW player.

C. However when I play the test video at http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player it plays OK.

D. Trailers play OK in Lovefilm.com – CPU usage is normal

E. Trailers plays OK in digivers.com - CPU usage is normal

In GOOGLE Chrome:

A. when I try and play trailers in RottenTomatoes.com, the playback is in slowmo and jerky and video and audio are slightly out of sync. CPU usage is maxed out.

B. When I visit http://www.internetvideoarchive.com/IVA/Content and try and play the Muppet trailer, I see the same results. CPU usage is maxed out.

C. when I visit Lovefilm.com and play a trailer, playback is almost normal but still uses 100% CPU.

D. However when I visit Digivers.com who use IVA player with the Adobe Player, playback appears to be normal and CPU usage more or less normal.

I am not a internet/pc engineer but it would appear that IMDB are using a type of HTML5 player in some kind of combination with Adobe Flash Player. (?) I have identified the IMDB player as a JW Player (http://www.longtailvideo.com/ ).

I have spoken to IMDB and they say that it must be a local issue with my individual system configuration but I cannot understand the contradiction of being able to play flash videos on Youtube but not on IMDB or Rottentomatoes.com.

If it is a local issue, I wouldn't know where to look first. And if I need to download a MS update or some additional MS software, I wouldn't know what to look for.

I also have a laptop running i3 core and windows 7 but do not see this issue.

I would appreciate some feedback on this very annoying situation.

This topic has been closed for replies.

_maria_

Community Manager

Locking this topic due to its age. It's almost 8 years and rottentomatoes.com doesn't seem to require Flash Player anymore. Able to play/view a variety of videos without Flash Player installed.

Z

zeeshan_xt

Participant

I had exact same problem with IMDB videos and was able to resolve the issue. I had an ad-blocker add-on installed in firefox and was able to resolve the issue by excluding IMDB from my ad-blocker add-on. The videos started playing as soon as IMDB was excluded.

V

Veka2

Participant

Have to disagree with Xircal to post on Chrome forums. From here it looks like this is a bug in Adobe program and not browser related.

I have very similar proboblems with IMDB trailers with my old secondary PC in home. This is an old one I give you that.

-Dell Optiplex series 2,8ghz

-2gb memory

-running Win XP sp3 and perfecly updated

-for security running MS Security essentials and an outside hardware firewall

This machine is boosted up by replacing all HD´s exept of those used purely for storage with fast SSD ones and its cleaned up of garbage XP makes continually. Disks, registry etc plus there are some tweaks to boost an old XP added.

Difference is that I use Opera 11.60 but still experience very annoying jagging and out of sync voice on IMDB videos. Actually they are useless.

When Flash plug-in starts I see a whopping jump of CPU usage by Opera from 20-30% to 90-99%

I say this is a bug in Adobe Plash player and nothing else.

S

surfing69Author

Known Participant

Thank you for your valued input. I thought that I was going crazy and the only one with this issue.

As a result, I made the drastic decision to format my hard drive and reinstall XP. Without adding any other apps, I downloaded and installed all the XP updates including SP3 and IE8. I therefore have a clean system.

As a reminder I have

3.06ghz celeron D CPU,

1.5GB RAM,

Asrock PV4M800 mobo with onboard VIA/S3 display (which is currently running the best driver)

C drive = 300 GB SATA HDD

+ 2 internal back up IDE drives

+ 1 external USB back up drive.

I then downloaded Google chrome and the Adobe Flash player for IE8.

I then tried to play a video on IMDB and RottenTomatoes(RT) on both browsers.

1. Using Chrome

A. Playback in IMDB was slightly jerky/slomo where audio/video was slightly out of sync where CPU usage was almost 100% (not as bad as in IE8). However, when I clicked on 'open video in new tab', the playback was fine(CPU usage was about 85%).

B. Playback in RT was almost OK where CPU usage was almost 100%.

C. Playback in BBC.co.uk and Youtube was fine where CPU usage was about 40%.

2. Using IE8

A. Playback in IMDB was very jerky/slomo where audio/video was out of sync where CPU is >100%

B. Playback in RT is OK where CPU was ~80%.

C. Playback in BBC.co.uk and YouTube absolutely fine where CPU was ~40%.

As I said in previous posts, I cant get my head around the fact that if all these websites are using Adobe Flash , then why am I seeing these issues? Also no one has explained to be the relationship between the JW player that IMDB uses in conjunction with Adobe Flash or the IVA player which RT uses with Adobe flash .

Finally , another huge pain is the inability to reply via the forum. More often than not when I click on the link in the email from the forum i.e. 'view the full discussion' , it takes me to the forum but there is no 'Reply' icon available. Even after signing in, and if I manage to find my way back to the forum, the option to reply is still missing . This feels like a bug with the forum.

A

Anonymous

surfing69 wrote:
3.06ghz celeron D CPU,
1.5GB RAM,
Asrock PV4M800 mobo with onboard VIA/S3 display (which is currently running the best driver)
C drive = 300 GB SATA HDD
+ 2 internal back up IDE drives
+ 1 external USB back up drive.
Finally , another huge pain is the inability to reply via the forum. More often than not when I click on the link in the email from the forum i.e. 'view the full discussion' , it takes me to the forum but there is no 'Reply' icon available. Even after signing in, and if I manage to find my way back to the forum, the option to reply is still missing . This feels like a bug with the forum.

Time to invest in a new system I feel. You're CPU dates from 2004 and was designed to run software available at that time. We've moved on a bit since then and taking into account your onboard graphics, it's hardly surprising that your CPU is going ballistic when running Flash.

I don't know what the reason is with the missing "Reply" button though. I'll pass it on to one of the Adobe guys to see what he has to say.

A

Anonymous

Are you still experiencing the same problem?

There appears to be a bug in Firefox which may also affect other browsers where it concerns IMDB. Steps to reproduce in Firefox are as follows:

Visit http://www.imdb.com/features/video/trailers/ and play a trailer.
Exit IMDB and then install a Firefox Add-on.
Reload the IMDB site and videos on the same link will no longer play. Neither will any controls be visible.

I tested it myself today and found that restarting in Firefox 'Safe Mode' allowed the content to play, but it's unlikely to be an add-on issue since trailers played correctly before I installed an additional add-on. The bug is documented here: IMDB videos fail after installing Firefox Add-on

If the problem is still ongoing with you, could you try restarting Google Chrome in Incognito Mode to see if it makes any difference?

S

surfing69Author

Known Participant

thank you for your comments. However I am still seeing the same issues.

Setting Google Chrome to incognito showed no change i.e. no improvement for both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.

If there is something in my system that could be interfering with playback on these 2 website and not on Youtube, would you know how to trouble shoot it?

In regard to IE8, I found that I had set 'Compatibility View' settings for ALL websites. When I unchecked this option, I found that Rottentomatoes could now see Adobe Flash Player and I was able to playback trailers to a fashion. However the issue of playback on IMBD remained regardess of compatibility settings.

I havent tested Firefox but would anticipate that there would be no change.

I just cant understand why I can playback videos on BBC.co.uk, YouTube, Didivers and other sites that use Adobe flash player but NOT on IMDB and RT. Are they using a modified player platform? What are the JW and IVA players and what is their relationship with the Adobe Flash player?

A

Anonymous

In my particular case, the problem was caused by a privacy add-on called "Disconnect". It seems that when you land on certain sites, data is relayed to Google via a widget. On IMDB, that widget was being blocked by "Disconnect". More info on concerning the add-on can be found here: https://disconnect.me/tools By unblocking it and then refreshing the page, the video played normally.

There appears to be a privacy issue with this forum even because I have "Disconnect" enabled at this moment and the widget which would normally relay what I'm doing here to Google is being blocked. In that respect, whenever the Google widget is blocked, "Disconnect" displays a "G" icon in the Firefox location bar. Clicking it allows me to unblock it if I want to. See screenshot.

This doesn't help you any though since you don't have Firefox installed. Maybe you could consider installing it to see if it makes any difference. As I say, IMDB works just fine without the privacy tool enabled. I don't have any problems on Rottentomatoes either incidentally. Here's the download link to Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/

Do you have any security software installed like McAfee Site Advisor, or AVG Safe Search? These type of scanners can interfere with video playback as well.

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