Mysteriously slow load time only in some browsers - please help

[base_one_sa]

We've been trying every trick to fix a problem with long lag time in video startup in some environments. In particular, there's a long time gap between the time the custom .swf skin appears and the video starts to play. Only some combinations of OS for the FMS server and client browser shows the problem, but for those combinations it is consistent and appears to be a constant of approximately 59 seconds, regardless of the length of .mp4 or number of times played in our custom .swf. (Our .swf accepts a supplied file location for the .mp4 to stream.)

On our main server (Win2008R2), we run a virtual machine that has Win2008R2 installed. If you click on the video URL from a Mac Safari browser on MacBookPro, the load is FAST (a few seconds). On the other hand if you click from IE on any Windows machine (VM or native, Win7 or WinX), the load is SLOW (one minute). If you try locally on the server virtual machine with the FMS and web server (IIS) installed, the load is also SLOW. The reference flash video (i.e. NOT through our .swf) loads FAST. You can see this issue by going to:

http://www.contentgalaxy.com/Publication/SampleVideo/SampleVideoHome.aspx

Try in Mac Safari versus Windows IE to see fast versus slow loading.

When running as localhost, with the FMS server and the browser on the same Win7 machine, the behavior is equally mysterious. If you click through IE, the load is FAST (again a few seconds). On the other hand, if you click through Chrome on a real Win7 machine, the load is SLOW (again about a minute). Finally, if you use a Win7 VM (VMWare) as localhost (with FMS on it) on a MacBookPro, both IE and Chrome are FAST. (We've reproduced the slow Chrome load on multiple real Win7 machines (32-bit and 64-bit), and the good IE behavior on real and virtual Win7 on multiple real and virtual machines.)

We are currently using FMS Development version 4.0.1 (i.e. version 4 plus latest patch) and Adobe Flash Professional CS5. In 2009 and 2010, we did a bunch of work on the same software using FMS Development version 3.0 and CS4, and no one recalls experiencing this poor load behavior in any environment.

(We've notice only one other minor issue between working on FMS version 3.0 and 4.0.1, which is in the handling of the logging status code. In version 3.0, we could count on a status of 408 being returned when the user finishes with a video. However, we don't see this status reliably in version 4.0.1 when running under Win7 VM, but do under native Win7 VM. Perhaps, this issue is further evidence that there are some things that have changed between FMS 3 and 4, which may or may not be related to the terrible load times we see in some environments with the latest FMS.)

This poor load problem from some browsers is really holding up our project, and I'd appreciate any help or suggestions.

[base_one_sa]

It took a bunch of time to track down the culprit (probably an ActionScript odd ball bug). When we passed the location of the file to play to our custom flash player (.swf), there was an unnecessary (but not illegal) forward slash. Once we removed the forward slash from the video file path, all browsers and operating system delays disappeared! Who knew?

[Nikhil_Kalyan]

Hi,

Good to know that the issue is resolved i am planning to give this a try but just saw the response. Sorry for the delayed response.

[pajuancho]

I am having the same problem here, would you please be a bit more specific?

i would really appreciate it!

Thanks

[pajuancho]

Could you be a bit more specific?

I have an issue whent Google Chrome loads in about 1 sec but IE takes about 4 secs to load somethimes even net 10000 on me and times out...