MP4 file streamed by Flash Media Server 4 cannot be played but Windows Media Player can play it normally at same PC

[tom_mtn86202372]

The MP4 is shifted to the top of screen and can't be played with flash player.  But the same MP4 can be played by Window Media Player without problem.

Attached the screen of MP4 shifted to the top of screen and the meta-data of media retrieved for reference.

Not sure if it is the player problem or any settings in flash media server 4 can help.  Already posted the similar to the Flash Server Forum but no response yet.

General

Complete name                            : C:\SC\Testing\Orig\01SD00000836800101030000078642.mp4

Format                                   : MPEG-4

Format profile                           : Base Media

Codec ID                                 : isom

File size                                : 86.5 MiB

Duration                                 : 9mn 54s

Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable

Overall bit rate                         : 1 222 Kbps

Video

ID                                       : 1

Format                                   : AVC

Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec

Codec ID                                 : avc1

Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding

Duration                                 : 9mn 54s

Bit rate                                 : 901 Kbps

Width                                    : 480 pixels

Height                                   : 270 pixels

Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9

Frame rate mode                          : Constant

Frame rate                               : 25.000 fps

Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.278

Stream size                              : 63.8 MiB (74%)

Audio

ID                                       : 2

Format                                   : AAC

Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec

Format profile                           : LC

Codec ID                                 : 40

Duration                                 : 9mn 54s

Bit rate mode                            : Variable

Bit rate                                 : 317 Kbps

Channel(s)                               : 2 channels

Channel positions                        : Front: L R

Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz

Compression mode                         : Lossy

Stream size                              : 22.5 MiB (26%)

[_maria_]

Thanks for posting the screenshot.  According to the screenshot, you're trying to load a file from your local system.  If so, this feature was disabled by default in Flash Player 23.  See the section "Disabling local-with-filesystem access in Flash Player by default" in the Release Notes Flash Player 23 AIR 23 release notes for more information, including how to re-enable the feature.

[tom_mtn86202372]

@m_vargas

Thanks for your reply.  Already tried other MP4 files but they can be played normally and no need to change any settings of media server or flash player.  Does it mean that is not related to settings but the MP4 file?  However the same MP4 file can be  played normally in Window Media Player.  Thus, not sure what the problem is.

[_maria_]

"Already tried other MP4 files but they can be played normally and no need to change any settings of media server or flash player."

were were those files located?

[jeromiec83223024]

If he's serving them up to himself via FMS, we're treating them as network assets, so the local-with-filesystem thing isn't in play.

In this instance, my guess is that we really don't like the way this video is encoded.  It's quite possible that Windows Media Player is more forgiving that we are to a particular encoding problem. 

I'm not sure why the transport controls on the video are getting displaced, but it may be that we're just treating the video as very small (e.g. 1x1 px), so the UI is collapsing up to it or something... it's hard to know.  Flash Player isn't a video player per-se, we're basically a language runtime, so the video player and the controls, etc, are high-level code that's running on top of us.  Admittedly, that video player UI is probably demo code that someone wrote at Adobe, but it's a big company, and demo code isn't always perfect.

My recommendation would be to run that video through Adobe Video Encoder to see if a usable video comes out the other end.  If re-encoding it with a high-quality encoder works, that's by far the easiest path.

There are a lot of less-than-great video encoders in the world, and lots of poorly encoded videos.  It's also the case that we're probably offloading the video decoding to the dedicated hardware on your machine, which is less forgiving than our software-based codecs, but the software codecs come with a big performance and power penalty.