Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11) and Opera

Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11) and Opera

Something is up with it (as opposed to WMP10, which worked fine) and some sites. It does work properly on other sites, though not many I've come across so far. Anyone else seen issues? Sometimes the problems also exists in FF2, though not always (in overall testing beyond the examples I give below). I think they're both going to need some tweaking for WMP11.

Some random examples:

Two rows of controls
http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/2536

Squashed video:
http://www.yikers.com

Severely cropped video with no controls:
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml

i'm having the same problem
it also uses alot of memory =[

Confirmed - happens in Opera - not in IE7

I Confirmed WMP11 problem plugins in opera

WMP 11 plugins seem fix size in opera object height="225"

http://www.operathai.net/links/WMP11-test.html

Same thing here.

Same here.

Originally posted by Dunderklumpen:

not in IE7

That's expected, since IE7 does not use the plug-in. Anyone test this in Firefox yet?

Doesn't happen to me. All vids play fine and with controls.

Opera 9.10 build 8629
Windows Media Player 11 (beta)

Originally posted by rpsgc:

Windows Media Player 11 (beta)

There's your problem -- try the final. I never tried the beta myself, but enough people now have seen the difference between WMP10 and WMP11 final in regards to the type of problems I mention in the OP (and I could list many more) that something's definitely up.

i got the final and i have the same problems. I think it may well be the plugin thats the problem.

ATM theres too much opera has issues/cannot do so i hate to say it but im gonan have to go back to firefox

I did have problems with the beta on comedycentral.com daily show clips. Had to revert to WMP 10 for the moment.

@rseiler
Confirmed for both 8.54 and 9.1 weekly.

Here with wmp11 sometimes I see double controls and/ or kind of shrinked "screenplay".

An other example (first seen double controls then it changes to shrinked screenplay & no controls available):
comedycentral.com : trendspotting

Originally posted by neeraj_deshmukh:

Originally posted by Dunderklumpen:

not in IE7

That's expected, since IE7 does not use the plug-in. Anyone test this in Firefox yet?

I get that much and Opera does have a problem here - which was my point.

On the first link at least, Firefox has exactly the same problem as Opera; in that the controls jump up as the video begins playing.

This leaves a limbo area below those controls, and this is the point where the handling differs. In Opera the area is never painted, it just shows what was there before the page became visible. In the case of first loading the page you see a ghost set of controls, as that is what was put there by the plugin until those controls jumped up. If you switch to another page/window (one that overlaps the limbo area) and then switch back you will see left in that area whatevere the previous window/page painted at that screen location.

The limbo area still exists on firefox, but for whatever reason it is repainted so it remains as the background colour of the page.

The other links also all exhibit the same problems in both Opera and Firefox. I'd say the plugin is borked.

Yes, I have all same problems - squashed video, double controls, etc - both in Opera (latest 8643) and Firefox 2.0 with WMP11 Final. I see that plugin used is dated 29.11.05. Maybe it's time for MS to release a new one?

vikont, with FF I don't get the double row controls, at least with the first example cited above, so Opera and FF don't track exactly alike in this area, indicating that more than the plugin is at play here.

rseiler, you are correct. In FF, the video is squashed, but there are no double controls. However, the video appears to be squashed with the same ratio, so I still tend to think it's a plugin.

Good page to see all this is http://www.thatvideosite.com/

Also, I noticed that on different sites embedded video played by WMP11 plugin reacts differently to double-clicks. Normally, it toggles between small size/full screen, but on some sites first double click converts to full screen, but second double-click is pause/play instead. Very inconsistent. With WMP10, I've never seen that.

Check my earlier post, I explain about the double controls.

I guess that somebody should file a bug report with Opera, uh? It might not be Opera's fault, but at least they'll know. I don't have time, but if someone has the time, post the bug number back in this thread. (not the full e-mail address)

Done.

bug-237860

It's a shame too, my unresolved submitted bugs list was empty before that.

Yeh, BtEO said it.

What's happening here is that if you have WMP11, after the WMP11 object/skin loads, the object resizes revealing the transparent part that's behind the wmp object. What you see is not 2 real sets of controls, but 1 set and a display bug. This is not Opera's and Firefox's fault, but hopefully there's a workaround. (But, yes, Firefox paints over the afterimage so it doesn't look as bad, but it still shows the problem.)

Basically the netscape wmp 6.4 plugin that Opera and Firefox use doesn't know about the changes made to WMP11 and how it resizes differently. In other words, MS broke compatibility with their own plugin.

You can avoid the display bug by making sure the embed is a certain size so that it doesn't resize on you and reveal the transparent part behind it. ( I'll see about making an example to show how to avoid it. )

BTW, you can also manually create this problem with any version of WMP in Firefox and Opera. It's a limit of the WMP 6.4 plugin that we're stuck with.

We'll see what the masters can do about it.

Anyone file or have a bugzilla report for FF on this?

Anyone contact MS?

Originally posted by burnout426:

Anyone contact MS?

Of course I'm preety sure they'll regard your comments... as statistics...

Originally posted by xErath:

Originally posted by burnout426:

Anyone contact MS?

Of course I'm preety sure they'll regard your comments... as statistics...

Or, they'll probably say, "We have a netscape version of the plugin? Where did you find that?".

For http://www.starterupsteve.com/video/Conan-Triumph-Star-Wars.html for example, click to the video to activate it. Then right-click the video and goto properties so you can see the size of the video. It's 320 by 240.

Since the video has a height of 240, that's the height you want for the embed if you don't want to show controls. If you want to show controls, add 45 to that. ( add more if showstatusbar="1" is set.)

So, view source, change the width of the embed to 320 and the height to 285. Then apply changes.

Basically, when it comes to video, it'll resize the wmp object on you, so you have to set the width and height in your markup to predict what it will be after it resizes itself.

To stop the width from from fitting to the object width, you need AllowChangeDisplaySize="1" and DisplaySize="0" on the embed element. You can also use javascript:document.embeds[0].SetDisplaySize(0) to fix the width. As for the height of the wmp skin, it always resizes to the video height if you have wmp11 installed, which is why we have this problem.


Basically, if you do it like this, it should work fine.

Windows Media Newgroup issue

This bookmarklet will fix the problem on quite a few pages.

javascript:%28function%28%29%7Bvar%20em%3Ddocument%2Eembeds%3Bfor%28var%20i%3D0%3Bi%3Cem%2Elength%3B%2B%2Bi%29%7Bif%28em%5Bi%5D%2ESetDisplaySize%26%26em%5Bi%5D%2ESetAllowChangeDisplaySize%26%26em%5Bi%5D%2EGetImageSourceHeight%29%7B%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20em%5Bi%5D%2EsetAttribute%28%27AllowChangeDisplaySize%27%2C%271%27%29%3Bem%5Bi%5D%2EsetAttribute%28%27DisplaySize%27%2C%270%27%29%3Bem%5Bi%5D%2EsetAttribute%28%27ShowStatusBar%27%2C%271%27%29%3Bem%5Bi%5D%2EsetAttribute%28%27height%27%2Cem%5Bi%5D%2EGetImageSourceHeight%28%29%2B69%29%3Bem%5Bi%5D%2EouterHTML%3Dem%5Bi%5D%2EouterHTML%7D%7D%7D%29%28%29

source

Note: before you execute the bookmarklet on a page, you need to wait till the video starts playing so the height can be determined properly.

Edit:

Here's a better one that adjusts the width of the embed to the size of the video and enables some params ( like fullscreen and the context menu etc.) just in case they're disabled. (shorter version)

Edit:

Here's the same better one, but without the width change

Edit:

One more: adjust the width of the embed to 300

That should be enough to get the idea.

Originally posted by burnout426:

Windows Media Newgroup issue

It's good to see some attention being given to it. There was also an earlier thread, in which someone actually from MS (as opposed to an MVP) said "It's not hard to get pages working correctly generally. The right people are aware of this issue."
Link

Also, Hallvord Steen of Opera mentioned something that might be wrapped up in the same issue, I'm not sure:

Windows MediaPlayer scripting
Now this is truly a skeleton in the compatibility closet. WMP's latest scripting support only works with the ActiveX control. Since Opera doesn't support ActiveX we're stuck with an outdated version of WMP's scripting engine, and quite a lot of fancy video player user interfaces on the web are not written to fall back to use the older version if ActiveX isn't available. Did you say "standard"? Bah, there is no such thing in the world of plugin vendors - vendor lock-in is the name of the game here. WMP, Real, QuickTime, Flash - the scripting interfaces are all different, and once a developer has learnt one and a company has invested in building a website on one the cost of switching is naturally high. Options?
Support ActiveX?
Fake ActiveX?
Add some other kind of compatibility layer?
Continue the endless quest of web openers?

Link

Any permament fixes yet?

Originally posted by Squirt:

Any permament fixes yet?

Nope, not yet.

I assume a fix will come in the form of a windows update WMP 11 patch, a new version of the netscape wmp plugin or a new version of WMP 11.

WMP11 is what broke compatibility with the plugin. It's a regression in WMP 11 and affects Firefox also. Problem was, some at MS thought that all browsers use ActiveX and they didn't know they had to maintain compatibility with the netscape wmp plugin. They also didn't know they needed to maintain the plugin itself, which would explain why it hasn't been significantly udpated in around 6 years or more.

I wonder when they're going to have Netscape WMP 6.4 plugin awareness day, but seriously, they need to update that little bugger.

Just installed WMP11 a while ago and noticed that same thing with double controls. Hope that there will be somekind of fix for that (soon).

If you look at the newsgroup thread I mentioned here, on the second page, you can see that Neil said he'd try to look into things more this weekend.

What other sites have this problem?

I think we need a huge list.

BBC news

The video player on this page is having some problems, although not too severe. A little bit is cut off the bottom (just in the area about the reception of the stream) and a bit off the right, although all of the controls are still accessible and usable.

Originally posted by Jezza:

BBC news

Actually, they're using markup that pretty much avoids the problems. The controls are partially cut off, but that's just because they use too small of a width. The status bar is like a px too short, but that's just because they they need to tweak the height a bit.

The fixes that I have for the problem wouldn't help for this one. That would be something specific.

For the other sites, here's a WMP11 UserJS fix that everyone can play with for now till I make it better. Edit: You can check this directory to check for updates of the script.

There is an update for WMP 11 posted today. No details, I wonder whether this is a fix for the problems outlined in this thread. <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1d224714-e238-4e45-8668-5166114010ca&DisplayLang=en">WMP 11 Update</a>

Erratic internet once again in this country, cannot check further or download the player.
Opera site is fine, hence this post. Anybody tried the "updated player" ?

Just installed the updated Windows Media Player (now version 11.0.5721.5145) but it made no difference. Embedded player controls still show as doubled (although only one set of controls is active) and video is pushed up & distorted.

Z

Originally posted by WeAreZilla:

Just installed the updated Windows Media Player (now version 11.0.5721.5145) but it made no difference. Embedded player controls still show as doubled (although only one set of controls is active) and video is pushed up & distorted.

Damn ! Thanks for the trial. Funny thing is, it's the same version as my existing player. I wish Microsoft would list the changes !

Originally posted by ocky:

Funny thing is, it's the same version as my existing player

Same here.

Originally posted by ocky:

Funny thing is, it's the same version as my existing player.

Because it is the same version!

Some sites fall into this trap of notifying about new WMP releases while nothing changes. One of the sites - 9down - has already notified at least 2 times about new version which was the same "old" build.

As long as the build number is not changing - it is the same version.

I've download this supposedly new version and compared it to the one I had laying on my disk. From binary comparison, it looks like only VeriSign certificate of installer was updated. Everything else is the same.

Thanks for the heads up d.i.z.

Microsoft teases updates like this from time to time, and I think they've even done it before with WMP in the recent past. The installer and configuration files were updated with new dates and versions (where the 5146 comes from), but not the program itself.

Any updates or fixes?

Originally posted by ColePatrol:

Any updates or fixes?

Not yet, but feel free to post here and ask how the progress is going.

Originally posted by burnout426:

Not yet, but feel free to post here and ask how the progress is going.

Wow, Neil Smith is an ass. Any idiot that uses Opera to browse to a site with an embeded wmv movie can see the obvious regression. He wants people to jump through hoops by posting proper xhtml code that Microsoft itself cares nothing about. Thanks for posting that. I hope it is updated soon.

I asked for a progress report (bottom of page)

Doesn't look good.

My solution: Disable WMP11 for Opera/ Firefox and switch back to WMP 6.4-Plugin instead.

It's not so stylish and needs to download codecs sometimes, but it shows embedded videos with their correct size / aspect ratio.

- open regedit
- navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\ShimInclusionList
- and delete the keys "OPERA.EXE" & "FIREFOX.EXE"

You may export those keys before deleting them, so you can ad them again by double-clicking on those exported .reg-files.

burnout, willing to make an Netscape compatible wrapper to the ActiveArse version of the wmp plugin ??
Count on me. It's a way to learn the NPP thingie.

Originally posted by xErath:

burnout, willing to make an Netscape compatible wrapper to the ActiveArse version of the wmp plugin ??

It has crossed my mind (a from-scratch npruntime plugin that hosts the wmp controls), but need more info to begin.

Originally posted by tom32107:

My solution: Disable WMP11 for Opera/ Firefox and switch back to WMP 6.4-Plugin instead.

It's not so stylish and needs to download codecs sometimes, but it shows embedded videos with their correct size / aspect ratio.

- open regedit
- navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\ShimInclusionList
- and delete the keys "OPERA.EXE" & "FIREFOX.EXE"

You may export those keys before deleting them, so you can ad them again by double-clicking on those exported .reg-files.

That'll do nicely, thanks.

If anyone's looking for the WMP 6.4 plugin. I just extracted the three relevant files from that and dropped them into the Opera plugins directory (first backing up the newer versions there).

Originally posted by rseiler:

(first backing up the newer versions there).

What newer versions are you referring to that you backed up first?

The ones here are the newest ones available (because 6.4 is the newest wmp plugin available).

Originally posted by tom32107:

My solution: Disable WMP11 for Opera/ Firefox and switch back to WMP 6.4-Plugin instead.
It's not so stylish and needs to download codecs sometimes, but it shows embedded videos with their correct size / aspect ratio.- open regedit- navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\ShimInclusionList- and delete the keys "OPERA.EXE" & "FIREFOX.EXE"

You may export those keys before deleting them, so you can ad them again by double-clicking on those exported .reg-files.

Removing the key will make the plugin use the old skin (The newer skin still uses the 6.4 controls).

This is good in that it makes AutoSize have a default of false again and makes AutoSize changable again (This fixes the transparency bug where you get double control bars).

However, DisplaySize still has the wrong default of 4, which causes the video to stretch to width (It should be 0, but this can be fixed in markup.)

The main downside of using the old skin is that scripting click events doesn't work right.

Anyway, thanks for checking this. I will bug Neil about it just in case.

BTW, It looks as though the Mozilla folks may have gotten MS to check this problem out. Se here.