26 November 2012, 23:59

We've encountered a problem when adding video to a page as internalmedia, it adds OK but it won't play. The video plays OK in IE, but not in any other browser unless the page is made Public, giving a user specific permission to view the page doesn't help.

When it fails the access log will contain a pair like this:
"GET /artefact/file/download.php?file=427656&view=145685&download=1 HTTP/1.1" 303 -
"GET /artefact/file/download.php?file=427656&view=145685&download=1&login HTTP/1.1" 200 9016

It looks to me like Mahara is asking the video plugin to authenticate itself through a login page, which it obviously can't do. I'm guessing that IE pulls the video itself rather than leaving it to the plugin, so doesn't run into the problem.

I tried a clean install of 1.6.1 on a VM. Enabled all file/internalmedia types. Created a single page and added a .wmv video as embedded media. I'm seeing exactly the same behaviour, the video will only play if the page is public.


This used to work so I'm not sure what's changed. We upgraded to 1.5.2 in the summer so it may have stopped working with that upgrade. Or it might be that the browsers have changed their behaviour, but I've tried Chrome, Firefox, & Opera and they all behave the same way, and I've tried a couple of different media plugins.


Mahara versions 1.5.2 & 1.6.1
RedHat Enterprise 6.2
MySQL 5.5

27 November 2012, 2:51

I noticed that 1.6.2 has just been released so I tried that one too. Still the same behaviour.
I've also tried it from several PCs and that doesn't make any difference either.

22 January 2013, 2:29

Is this just a problem with wmv?

We could not see wmv at group or institution level (despite it being ticked in internalmedia config)

then tried mp4 and it appeared and embedded OK

Did you try any other formats?

Wmv is most convenient when rendering a video from our editing software on our Windows machines - and results in smaller file size. (with files we have tested)

Would be good to have a fix (other than public access) for wmv. Meantime will have to use mp4 and more storage space. (and/or spend time tweaking rendering settings)

03 March 2013, 20:18

Hello,

I wasn't successful with a WMV file on demo.mahara.org either. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1074974 for more info. Were you able to upload a WMV file into your own portfolio and have that displayed properly?

Cheers

Kristina

04 March 2013, 22:13

This bug seems to be a different issue to what we're seeing, I can add a WMV to my own portfolio and it plays fine so long as the page is public, it won't play otherwise. I tried an old unpatched WinXP machine with old browsers on, and the problem didn't happen, so I think browser behaviour has changed at some point.

04 March 2013, 23:15

Hello Gary,

Thanks for the additional information. It gets more mysterious. It is on our radar because the bug is on the tracker and this conversation is linked there.

Cheers

Kristina