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

[surfing69]

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.

[Veka2]

Quoting Xircal "That being the case, there might be a page design fault which is affecting flash performance. "

I assume Opera Dragonfly is unfamiliar to both of you who participated in this thread? No matter you just need to know its a debugging tool that comes built in with Opera. http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/ Yep I cant say thats very familiar to me but I sometimes use it to investigate rogue websites. Know its time to see what lies hidden inside imdb.com. One of its features is an error reporting. Look what happens when I launched one trailer from IMDB front page!

Screenshot here: http://vvhhs.pp.fi/tsb/IMDB%20errors.jpg

Dragonfly reports 790 errors after that single click on IMDB. So its fair to assume the cause of this lies inside IMDB page design - right?

[surfing69]

Can someone please please sehd some light on the following question that hasnt been answered.

"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/ )."

someone has yet to explain this relationship.

[Guest]

surfing69 wrote:

Can someone please please sehd some light on the following question that hasnt been answered.

"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/ )."

someone has yet to explain this relationship.

Not for the layman perhaps, but explained here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/stage_video.html

The JW player you mentioned is just a web based player (as opposed to a desktop version) which sites can embed. It can play virtually all formats such as HTML5 as well as Flash and is open source.

[surfing69]

yep - ur right .Certainly not for the layman!  My brain turned to mush after a few paragraphs.

I was asking this question in case this had a bearing on the issues i was seeing. Youtube doesnt appear to use this type of web based player and I was wondering why IMDB uses this instead of the stand alone flash player.

[Guest]

Probably because the JW player is open source and therefore free. If Imdb wanted to use the Adobe flavour, they'd have to purchase a licence.

[zeeshan_xt]

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.

[_maria_]

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.