Another touchdown for Flash Video
August 18th, 2007 . by polyGeekFor years the NFL.com site has been using RealMedia for their video streaming. They finally updated their site and are now using Flash video. Go Team!!!
Beyond that they have greatly increased the amount of video they are delivering. Each game will have video highlights and they have lots of interviews and analysis delivered with Flash video. Their video player has maximum dimensions of 640 x 360 and has a full screen mode in IE but not Firefox.
I checked the source code of the homepage and they are also using the SWFobject to embed the HTML code dynamically to get around the Internet Explorer’s Eolas/ActiveX activation crud.
Preseason practice
On the downside I had lots of problems browsing to some of the videos and getting them to play correctly on a Win XP machine with IE7 and Firefox 2.0. Of course the commercials play just fine but the content often fails to queue up.
The video content navigation is handled in HTML so the problem is likely the Javascript communication between the HTML container page and the Actionscript. It’s amazing how often that gets messed up but as everyone knows Javascript can be more than a little finicky. Hopefully they’ll get that sussed out before the regular season is underway.
Close, but not perfect
They could have used video.Maru for their video player but it doesn’t look like they did. Oh well, I can dream. :-)
Fantastic
As a fan I couldn’t be happier. I’ll be on the NFL.com site on a daily basis during the football season. I don’t have cable TV because there isn’t much to watch besides football and the History/Discovery channel. The way things are going it won’t be much longer before I’ll be able to watch anything I want via the Internet.
Addendum: one day later
I’m working with one of the dev’s at NFL.com to help trouble-shoot the problems I mentioned above. Here on my system at home everything works flawlessly. At my friend’s house on the same setup I had all sorts of problems. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
Hi,
I’m part of the nfl.com team who developed the flash video gallery. I’m interested to hear more detail on the problems you had viewing videos. We’re continually trying to improve the experience for all users, but of course we’re in the early stages so there are bound to be some hiccups.
Thanks.
-Mike
@Mike, Thanks for dropping in. I would be more than happy to help out since I’ll be watching video on the NFL.com site on a daily basis.
Here at home on my XP SP2 system with Firefox 2.0.0.6 and IE 7 everything works perfect. Unfortunately that’s exactly the same setup that I was on yesterday at my friends when it wasn’t queuing up.
Here’s the experience I had yesterday: if I clicked on a link to watch a specific video from the homepage it would go to the videos page and play the commercial and then the video that I had requested. But then using the thumbnail nav wouldn’t queue anything up.
On two or three occasions the video stream would just stop.
I know this is the stuff that drives me nuts. It works here. It doesn’t work here on seemingly the same setup. You have my sympathies. I’ve been there many times myself.
and the baseball lot staggered off blindly in the direction of Silverlight..
@Lee, I guess that would be a homerun for Silverlight and a pop-fly for baseball. :-)
Here’s the error message I get -
Line: 21
Char: 1
Error: Permission Denied
Code: 0
URL: http://static/site/scripts/video/firebug.html
The page is perpetually Loading after the error icon appears. I am running IE7 on XP home. IE6 on XP at work does just fine. At first I thought it was because I have Comcast, but that might be a bit paranoid…
I want my freaking football!
I’m having the same problem with the video section at nfl.com
I don’t get an error message but the site perpetually loads.
Running on Windows xp with firefox 2.0.0.6/ IE explorer
@George, I don’t know what the deal is. I even have this issue at CNN.com. I have to use IE - blech! - to watch video there. At least they finally got their Flash on at CNN. :-)
I can’t get the NFL.com videos to load at all on my xp explorer or my firefox browser….nothing.
@Vinny, that’s just weird. For the most part the video on NFL.com works pretty good for me now. Is there any chance that you have Javascript disabled or maybe you need to reinstall your Flash player. Those are the only obvious things I can think of.
Today I went and tried to click on Jeff Fisher’s wired comments on the sidelines and it just gives me the endless loading visual. I can play the feature video on the front page but that page never loads for me.
I’m with comcast and use their McAfee Security Center. I reinstalled my flash player today and still get the endless load. I’m going to take some time to look at all my settings…but for some reason NFL.com is the only site I’m having issues with as far as I can remember. I’m a NFL junkie so I’ve been wanting more video but it doesn’t do me much good if they never load :(
This page has never loaded for me since the revamp
http://www.nfl.com/videos
@Vinny, Dude, I feel your pain. The video content on NFL.com is great. Not just little blurbs anymore but long segments of highlights and analysis.
Everything works fine for me now after some initial issues. I’m using FireFox 2.0+ and XP. I hope you find a solution. Good luck.
I run XP and have every single browser made…won’t run on any of them and I’ve updated everything. I’m the admin for the official site message boards over at 49ers.com and houstontexans.com and others tell me they can’t see the video page as well.
http://forums.49ers.com/messageboard/announcement.php?f=20
http://boards.houstontexans.com/announcement.php?f=7
@Vinny, I’ve emailed Mike - see first comment on this page - from NFL.com and alerted him of your comments here. Hopefully he’ll jump in and help out.
I also cannot get any of the videos to run at nfl.com. I cannot get the ads or even get a waiting to load symbol.
I am using XP Pro, Firefox 2.0.0.9 (but also tried with IE7), have javascript, java etc enabled and the latest version of Flash Player. I have not had any problems with other sites.
I do live in China, so sometimes I have a problem with sites being blocked, but this is not a problem with nfl.com as I can access all the other material fine. I even tried going through a proxy to see if it helped, but it didn’t.
I would be enormously grateful if you could help. If not, at least I hope the feedback is useful. I cannot see games or highlights here in China, so watching the clips on the website woudl be a lifeline.
That’s weird! I have been trying to get the NFL video to work for weeks and nothing. But I tried again after posting the last message and it works perfectly now. I have not idea why. Maybe there is something magical about this blog!
@Boggle, that’s great. All I can say is that some of the NFL.com devs have read this post so maybe they check it from time to time. Otherwise it’s a coincidence or like you said, “it’s a kind of magic.” :-)
I can guess how you feel. I lived in Italy during one NFL season and it was maddening - not John - that I couldn’t see anything. It was the year that the Rams beat the Titans in the Superbowl. I had to wait about a year before I got to see that last play.
I have Windows XP, the latest version of firefox (2.0.0.9) and the latest realplayer…However, when I go to the NFL video archive (or any sort of NFL video on NFL.com), it says Loading with the loading sign and no videos ever come up…..Why does it not work???
@Paul, first, the videos use the Flash player now. Not RealPlayer.
As for the reason they don’t work I can’t say. Do you have Javascript enabled?
Sorry, I meant flash player and for some reason it doesn’t work…I tried reinstalling flash player and javascript is enabled….I’m also with Comcast and use their McAfee security center (like Vinny above)…maybe that has some relation with my problem?
@Paul, hopefully someone from NFL.com is paying attention and will try and figure this out.
Have you tried turning off the McAfee security center and seeing if the videos play?
My guess is that the problem is between the HTML/Javascript page and the Flash player somehow.
Thank you Polygeek, I temporarily shut down McAfee and the videos worked perfectly…Thanks again for your help and I hope someone on nfl.com realizes this problem.
@Paul, that’s very strange but I’m glad you found a solution. The video content at NFL.com rocks doesn’t it?
Make sure you aren’t running Firefox add-on AdBlock Plus. I’ve noticed it’s blocking the video for me because it starts with an ad. I’ve posted over at the AdBlock Plus forums for help. In the meantime, just disable ABP (by middle-clicking on the icon in your toolbar/status bar) before you load the page with the video you want to watch.
Good luck!
Im running windows xp, the latest firefox, IE6, and zero antivirus (i just watch what I d/l, ha), and I havent been able to get video going for weeks
Ive checked all javascript settings, disabled adblock plus and any greasemonky scripts, searched through the source code to try to see if I can at least grab the .flv or whatever they are streaming to me, and no luck whatsoever
Anyone find any more workarounds?
I’m running firefox v2.0.0.10 and/or IE7 on Windows XP.
I can play embedded video on the front page of NFL.com, but I get the perpetual spinning loading circle on their video gallery page. Also, gamecenter live updating doesn’t work - everything just stays blank until the game is finished. Yet, live scoring for NFL fantasy works just fine.
Java is enabled, I’ve reinstalled flashplayer about 5 times now, I’m allowing cookies from every —-.nfl.com site I’ve been able to see that exists so far, I don’t have the adblock plus addon…and to make matters worse, I emailed NFL.com tech support about this and they completely ignored me. No response in three months or so.
What’s the deal? I just want some videos.
@Mockenrue, dude, you totally have my sympathies. I wish there was something I could do to help. From the description you gave it sounds like a problem with the AJAX portion of the content not loading. And without that you can’t play any Flash videos.
If anything is learned from this I think it’s that communication between Flash and AJAX is problematic. They should have made the navigation in Flash and they would have had fewer problems. Maybe they’ll fix it up next year.
Ok, I tinkered around with my flash program, my firewall/virus protection settings, my browser settings, my file type associations in media players, etc etc. I finally got the videos page to work, though I’m not sure which individual thing made the difference.
Game center pages still don’t work though. Not in firefox, anyway. I was able to load one in IE7, but after about 10 minutes it stopped working again too.
Still though, baby steps in the right direction.
@Mockenrue, it could have been the firewall. Others, I think using McAfee, have had success with watching the videos after they turned it off.
I got nfl.com videos to work now! If you have comcast w/ the McAfee security here’s how to fix it. Click “Internet and network” click “configure” on the right side. Under web browsing protection click “advanced”. Simply uncheck the “block advertisements” box and hit apply.
One stinking little box checked has cased me 3 months of angst!!! Ahhh!
Hope this helps comcast users for nfl.com videos.
seems as though the post I wrote about the NFL.com switching to Flash video has become the de facto support page for people having trouble watching their videos. There are 30 …
@nflhead, thanks for those details. I made a new post with your solution. Hopefully it will help others.
Ok, I believe I figured out what exactly it was. For users of the Norton Personal Firewall (not McAfee…), if the stuff isn’t showing up, you likely have the ad blocking feature on the firewall turned on.
Open up your Norton security center and configure your ad block settings. In that window uncheck “Turn Ad Block on.” Now you’ll need to probably clear your firefox cache and reboot your computer, or firefox will just attempt to load the pages with the content already blocked.
The downside is, obviously, that annoying ads will come through. But, the entire NFL.com site *should* work after this. The videos page does, and I noticed today that some of the rollover flash content was working as well. I’ve yet to test the game centers in Firefox, but I’ll know about that come Sunday.
Hope this helps some people.
As a side note, it looks like all the solutions involve disabling ad blocking tools of some sort or another. Isn’t there a better way to encode all the site’s java and flash content so that it won’t raise that red flag for so many different programs? Just a thought…
@Mockenrue, thanks for all the details. I’m going to copy your comment over to the other post that I have about this - based on your findings.
I think all these problems could have been solved if the video and video navigation were all one Flash app. It’s the communication between the two that is getting blocked.
I’ve been having the same problem with the videos at NFL.com this fall. Have tried to download and install latest versions of Flash player, checked firewall settings, gone over ad blocking, etc.
Finally I downloaded Avant browser from Microsoft and have been enjoying NFL videos ever since.
@Steve, I’ve never heard of the Avant browser before. I think it is for Windows, not from Microsoft. Here’s the homepage for anyone who might want to give it a try:
http://www.avantbrowser.com/index.html
I’d use it just to watch NFL.com videos.
Yeah i have just used the avant browser to watch the nfl videos. Had problems before so if you have continous problems definetly opt for avant browser.
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