JWPlayer black screen on initial playback

Question

I have JWPlayer on a clients' site.

The client complains that sometimes on initial load, the jwplayer will autostart playback as intended but with a black screen. Sound is alright, and the progress indicator in the transport is moving.

No matter what I do, I can't recreate the error on my machine.

I'm using version 5 of JWPlayer.

Here is the code i use to embed:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/Frontend/Javascript/swfobject.js"></script>
<div id="mediaspace"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="/Frontend/Flash/player5.swf" style="" id="flashvideo" name="flashvideo" width="720" height="432" quality="high" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="opaque" flashvars="&amp;file=/film/nameofmovie.f4v&amp;type=video&amp;bufferlength=4&amp;autostart=true&amp;stretching=fill"></embed></div>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var so = new SWFObject('/Frontend/Flash/player5.swf','mpl','720','432','9');
      so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');
      so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');
      so.addParam('wmode','opaque');
      so.addVariable('file','/film/nameofmovie.f4v');
      so.addVariable('bufferlength','4');
      so.addVariable('autostart','true');
      so.addVariable('stretching','fill');
      so.write('mediaspace');
    </script>
    <br /> 
    <br /> 

Does anyone have a solution or a similar experience with JWPlayer?

Answer 1

Depending on your particular issue, this may have been fixed in the most recent release, JW Player for Flash 5.2.

If upgrading the player doesn't fix your issue, it could be an encoding issue with the video's encoding or metadata. F4v is equivalent to mp4. I'd recommend trying to fix the metadata first using the directions available here: http://renaun.com/blog/2007/08/22/234/. If that doesn't work, try re-encoding the video using FFmpeg.

Best,

Zach