Player stops from time to time

This happens sometimes to my users who have slow dial-up connections, where the flash player doesn't download and buffer the data fast enough to keep up with the audio. If your mp3's have a bitrate higher than 32k, your dialup users should probably use the download link instead of the streaming player.

There is a "slim" version of the XSPF flash player with a pause/resume button that might work better than the one included with the audio module. (http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net) With a slow connection, you can pause the player for a minute or two to give the buffering a headstart, and then resume playing without a hitch -- assuming the bitrate of the mp3 is at or below the bitrate of the dialup connection. Dialup connection speeds vary depending on many conditions -- usually somewhere between 24k and 48k.

I use an alternative flash player that has both a pause button and an audio index slider that lets you start from any point in the audio -- www.wimpyplayer.com -- it's not free software, and I had to hack the module to work with it, but it does work.

Anyway, if you have a dialup connection, then this is probably not a bug in the audio module, and I would change it to a feature request for a better flash player and/or the ability to include an alternative, low-bandwidth mp3 for dialup users.

What I have to do is modify the module to use Windows Media player instead of the default swf player. I hope the author of this module finds a better player.

well, if you don't like it you're welcome to submit patches or find a better free player. complaining about it doesn't help anyone.

vph, sorry, i guess i hadn't had my coffee. maybe you could post a patch with the changes you made to use windows media player. i'm sure some other people would find that useful.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the player. See my post at the end of this thread: http://drupal.org/node/61624

see also: http://drupal.org/node/85330

i've added code to 4.7 that should close this for good.

I downloaded the audio module audio-4.7.x-1.x.tar.gz dated 15/11/2006 but my streams are still stopping. Is there anything else I can do to fix this? -- Thanks

the packages are built ever 8 hours. that looks like an old one since i just checked in the code today. give it a few hours and check again.

Thanks... that fixed it. As someone who uses Drupal but does not have the skill to contirbute, thank you for your work. I use the audio module for school podcasts and we're now using it to deliver textbook passages for low readers via podcasting to iPods and over the web.

;-) Paul

It's back... Now all podcasts on my Drupal 4.7.5 are stopping at random times. This is the same behavior I saw before. I tried downloading the most current (January 18, 2007 - 04:01) audio module but it still stops mid-stream.

I have several Drupal sites and they are all running 4.7.5. Last November I updated the drupal module to audio.module,v 1.51.2.38 2006/11/17 23:52:33 and the problem stopped. Now it's back.

One of my Drupal servers is on a different server on another network and it seems to work fine.

This site plays the file without stopping: http://k12os.org/?q=node/27

This site plays the file and stops: http://edtech.nwresd.org/?q=node/42

They are both running 4.7.5 and audio.module,v 1.51.2.38 2006/11/17 23:52:33.

Is there something else I should be looking at?

Thanks for any help offered...

Correction, the player that seems to be working with 4.7.5 is actually an older version,
Id: audio.module,v 1.58 2006/06/27 08:14:03

Now I'm even more confused. At least it's Friday! ;-)

I swapped in the old module from the working server on the other network and it too, stops during playback. That tells me the problem is most likely somewhere else. I post any other clues I find.

;-) Paul

I tried the audio player for 5.0 on my homepc running 5.0 and the player stops on these too. I did download the slim flash player and renamed it mp3.swf and it seem to play OK. I think it must be the player. I notice on http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/ that the button version of the player is still at 0.1 while the slim and extended are at 0.2.3.

I did notice that the button player did play a mono mp3 file I had on my 5.0 server without stopping. There must be some issues with different encoding properties.

So now I'm off to find a nice smaller player.

this is still a problem in 6.x