Re: WMP 11 problem with streaming video on Vista

Thanks again, Neil. I've tried your suggestions and the problem still
persisits. I cleared my IE cache and adjust the connection speed from
"Autodetect" to various speeds and none seemed to cure the problem. My
download speed is 10Mbps. Thanks anyway.

One thing curious about this issue is that the video plays fine in the
miniature window once the WMP is minimized to the task bar. Does the player
re-neogiate with the server once it is swithced to or from miniature mode?
How does the player render the video differently in window mode and miniature
mode?

Thanks!

"Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]" wrote:

OK so that's a (relatively) special case. The video is hosted on a
"streaming media server". One of the properties of a streaming server
is it can split the steam if the user doesn't have enough bandwidth to
play back the content at the bitrate required.

The first step of that server would be to try to negotiate with the
player, and decide if one of several streams were at a bitrate that
the player *thinks* it can download quick enough to play.

If that fails then it might drop back to just-audio and I think you're
seeing that here - the video checks out fine and is pretty standard.

So what I'd do is go to Now Playing, click the small dropdown menu
below, choose More Options -> Performance tab.

If the "Connection Speed" is set to "Autodetect", change it to just
below what you think your broadband connection speed is - for example
if you've got 4mbps broadband, set it to 1.5mbps, if you have 1mbps
set it to 768kbps and so on.

If it's already set to one of those values, try to knock it higher a
level or set back to Autodetect. Obviously, you can't realistically go
*above* the download speed your ISP provided for your broadband.

FYI that clip requires 759Kbps, 350kbps or 100kbps (badly) so it
should play on most machines with video - it's only when it gets down
to Dialup levels that it won't show video.

You might also find it's ended up in IE's cache with only the audio -
in that case, go to the IE browser, select Tools -> Internet Options
and hit the Delete Files button.

HTH
Cheers - Neil

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:36:02 -0800, Consolas
<Consolas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks for you help, Neil. Here is an URL to a video that has the problem
that I mentioned.
http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/nba/nbacom/recaps/recap08_371_sacmil.asx

I was able to play all the WMV files on my hard drive without any problem,
so I am not sure what's causing this.

Cheers,

Jason


"Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]" wrote:

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:49:00 -0800, Consolas
<Consolas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I started to have trouble viewing stream videos (WMA format) with WMP 11. It
used to work fine until a few weeks ago. The audio plays fine but I don't see
the video in the player. The interesting thing is: when I minimize the player
to the task bar and turn on the mini-screen, the video show up fine in the
tiny window. So it doesn't seem to be a codec issue.


I'm not sure I have an answer for you right away - I'll have to think
about it for a bit. One thing I wonder though - does this only affect
videos streamed from the internet ? What happens if you find a Video
file (WMV) on your local hard disk somewhere - does that play OK ?

If you can post any website URLs with the video player on them I could
take a look directly to see what they're sending.


Have any of you had seen the similar problem before? Is there a way on vista
to re-install WMP 11?

Not really, no, it's all a bit awkard.

HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2007
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

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Digital Media MVP : 2004-2007
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

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