# Can't get WebMoviePlayer to work **URL:** \ **Category:** Web\ **Created:** [November 27, 2013, 7:27pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644 "2013-11-27T19:27:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/jay_madren/32/6425_2.png) [@Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Jay_Madren)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 7:27pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/1 "2013-11-27T19:27:29Z")
I am having difficulty getting the WebMoviePlayer to work on FIrefox and IE. Chrome and Safari usually work. I’ve tried an Ogg version for Firefox as well as an MP4, yet it always tries to load the flash player, then nothing ever happens - no controls or anything. On IE 10 it loads the player, but gives the error “Unsupported video type or invalid file path.” I’m trying to use the player on a webcontainer, but I also tried a separate webpage with the same results. This is using 2013R3. Any ideas or suggestions? ---
**Author:** ![Andre\_Kuiper](https://forum.xojo.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Andre\_Kuiper](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Andre_Kuiper)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 7:45pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/2 "2013-11-27T19:45:36Z")
+1 ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_O\_Lone](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/greg_o_lone/32/49_2.png) [@Greg\_O\_Lone](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Greg_O_Lone)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 7:47pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/3 "2013-11-27T19:47:22Z")
The issue is that the browser makers could never agree on what format should be used, so when the technology appeared, Webkit used H.264 MP4’s, Firefox used .ogg and Internet Explorer didn’t support the Video tag. If you’d like to see the current state of things, [check out this url](http://html5test.com/compare/browser/chrome-31/firefox-25/ie-11/safari-7.0.html). This is one of my favorite tools for figuring out what browsers support which technologies. If you scroll down to the section titled “video” you can see which browsers support which formats. I’ve preconfigured this link for the latest browsers. ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/jay_madren/32/6425_2.png) [@Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Jay_Madren)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 7:58pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/4 "2013-11-27T19:58:33Z")
[quote=49332:@Greg O’Lone] The issue is that the browser makers could never agree on what format should be used, so when the technology appeared, Webkit used H.264 MP4’s, Firefox used .ogg and Internet Explorer didn’t support the Video tag. If you’d like to see the current state of things, check out this url . This is one of my favorite tools for figuring out what browsers support which technologies. If you scroll down to the section titled “video” you can see which browsers support which formats.[/quote] How is this supposed to help me get it working? I following the Xojo documentation, which basically says to use ogg for Firefox and MP4 for the others, and that it will try HTML5 video, then fallback to Flash. But it’s not working on Firefox and IE. What else am I supposed to do? Do you have an example project that demonstrates it working correctly? There’s plenty of sites out there that play videos on all the major browsers, so why can’t Xojo? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_Hare](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/tim_hare/32/176_2.png) [@Tim\_Hare](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Tim_Hare)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/5 "2013-11-27T21:16:23Z")
What format is your MP4? I mean, which codec? ---
**Author:** ![Bob\_Keeney](https://forum.xojo.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@Bob\_Keeney](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Bob_Keeney)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/6 "2013-11-27T21:23:07Z")
FWIW, for my training videos I was able to get everything working using mov/mp4 and ogg formats. I think it’s FireFox and Chrome that uses ogg by default (though I believe newer versions of FireFox support mov/mp4 now). I was never able to get Flash working despite trying for many months. I know that Dan Taylor over at WebConstomControls has been working on a video player but I don’t know where he’s at on it. You can always contact him and bug him about it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Maurizio\_Rossi](https://forum.xojo.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@Maurizio\_Rossi](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Maurizio_Rossi)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 9:47pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/7 "2013-11-27T21:47:35Z")
Use an WebHtmlViewer instead of a WebMoviePlayer. It works. ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/jay_madren/32/6425_2.png) [@Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Jay_Madren)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 5:19am UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/8 "2013-11-28T05:19:50Z")
> [@49359:@Tim Hare](#): > > What format is your MP4? I mean, which codec? It’s H.264. Does it need to be something else? ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/jay_madren/32/6425_2.png) [@Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Jay_Madren)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 5:21am UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/9 "2013-11-28T05:21:20Z")
[quote=49384:@Maurizio Rossi]Use an WebHtmlViewer instead of a WebMoviePlayer. It works.[/quote] Yes, I was considering this. But I don’t think it will work with older versions of IE (8 & 9). ---
**Author:** ![olivierV](https://forum.xojo.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/919ad9/32.png) [@olivierV](https://forum.xojo.com/u/olivierV)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 7:01am UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/10 "2013-11-28T07:01:33Z")
> [@49502:@Jay Madren](#): > > Yes, I was considering this. But I don’t think it will work with older versions of IE (8 & 9). iFrame (webHtmlViewer) is an old object, it is supported by IE since version 4. But actually, it is not normal that webMoviePlayer does not work. Have you tried with other videos? Sometimes a video is encoded poorly and poorly recognized. ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/jay_madren/32/6425_2.png) [@Jay\_Madren](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Jay_Madren)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/11 "2013-11-28T15:02:58Z")
> [@49519:@olivier vidal](#): > > iFrame (webHtmlViewer) is an old object, it is supported by IE since version 4. What I mean is, unlike Chrome and Firefox, IE won’t play a video by itself - it just downloads it. There needs to be a player object on the page. > [@](#): > > But actually, it is not normal that webMoviePlayer does not work. Have you tried with other videos? Sometimes a video is encoded poorly and poorly recognized. I have tried several different codecs without luck. I am now going to work on placing an html video player in a webhtmlviewer. ---
**Author:** ![Maurizio\_Rossi](https://forum.xojo.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@Maurizio\_Rossi](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Maurizio_Rossi)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 5:27pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/12 "2013-11-28T17:27:15Z")
Hi Jay, you don’t need to place an html video player in a WebHtmlViewer. You only need to set the url of the WebHtmlViewer to the video file. The browser, using the MIME type, is able to play the file without any special WebControl. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_O\_Lone](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/greg_o_lone/32/49_2.png) [@Greg\_O\_Lone](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Greg_O_Lone)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2013, 3:39am UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/13 "2013-11-30T03:39:18Z")
Webkit, Chrome, Firefox 24+ and IE 9+ should all play MP4s with H.264 encoding natively, and our code should be asking the browser whether or not it can play the file. We have a Flash fallback for playing on earlier versions of IE and Firefox, and for other MP4 encodings (whatever flash supports). The reason I gave you the URL is that I’ve found that users who have a better understanding of how the underlying technology works, make better choices about which video formats to use… Even if that means delivering different formats optimized for each browser. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Albrecht](https://forum.xojo.com/user_avatar/forum.xojo.com/richard_albrecht/32/817_2.png) [@Richard\_Albrecht](https://forum.xojo.com/u/Richard_Albrecht)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2016, 6:11pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/14 "2016-04-11T18:11:26Z")
@Jay Madren Were you ever able to get it to work reliable? I am fighting with it now. On my local machine in debug it seems to work fine, on the server it works maybe 2 out 4 times. When it doesn’t work it just shows an empty video player. Do you have any code you could share? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://forum.xojo.com/uploads/default/original/1X/455b4dcc0e61630e9f81940004ddffa49c432a46.png) [@system](https://forum.xojo.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2020, 4:57pm UTC](https://forum.xojo.com/t/cant-get-webmovieplayer-to-work/12644/15 "2020-10-29T16:57:47Z")