Safari 5 breaks embedded Quicktime player

Apple, are you listening to this thread? I need immediate resolution of the problem. I just edited something OTHER than the embedded MP3 player code on one of my pages, saved it, and the player now does not work in Safari 5.0 (6533.16). It worked just prior to editing that page. Same server, same embed code...what is different? The Date Modified of the HTML file? This is incredibly frustrating. It is a hit-and-miss affair. Here is the page which suddenly has a broken MP3:

http://www.hungryforheaven.com/HFH1st_mvmt_w-voxv1.html

As others have noted, you get an upside-down question mark inside the QuickTime Q.

Edit: Wow, I have just confirmed a behavior that someone else noted. If you open the problem page first in Firefox, then open in Safari 5.0, the embedded MP3 will play in Safari! Something is really goofy here. Firefox should not figure at all into Safari 5's handling of embedded MP3s. So, what is the fix? I am really scratching my head. Do I put a note on my HTML page? "If viewing this page in Mac Safari, please open first in Firefox."

Message was edited by: Richard Schletty

Message was edited by: Richard Schletty

The way to make the problem go away is make a change in Firefox: Preferences: Applications. Change the action for MP3 Audio File (audio/mp3) to "Use QuickTime Player 7" instead of "Use QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.3 (in Firefox)."

Now any problem page with embedded MP3 code works properly in Safari 5.0 without having to open the page first in Firefox.

This, of course, is not a satisfactory solution, as most using Firefox don't bother to change default Applications settings. It is incredible that Safari 5.0 is being affected by a Firefox preference.

Apple, please fix ASAP.

EDIT: Never mind. The above fix actually fixes nothing. The problem reoccurs regardless of Firefox's Applications prefs. I still have to open the problem page in Firefox before it will work in Safari 5.0.

Very frustrating.

Message was edited by: Richard Schletty

Hi Richard,

Thanks for confirming that the MP3s successfully play in Safari if you first open them in Firefox.

Sorry your proposed fix didn't work out.

Any idea what we need to do to get Apple to investigate the problem?

just a thought - does adding a 'type=...' to the object/embed code make any difference ?
does it work if just the embed code is there?

As I mentioned before and still hold to this, Safari 5 will not <embed> mp3 files on some servers.

I am guessing here but I think it has to do with the software that the server is running.

If you put this code into a blank .html document and put the .mp3 on your desktop in a mp3 folder, Safari 5 will open it properly and embed the quicktime player controller.
Here is your code to try on the desktop.
<embed src="../mp3/Amazing Grace_andTime.mp3" width="349" height="16" autoplay="false" controller="true" bgcolor="CED5AB"></embed>

So, Safari 5 works properly with the mp3 on the desktop or whatever path you have for it in your code above.
Safar 5 also works properly on all my servers and shows the quicktime controller properly.
However, I was working on a friends web page on a different server and the embed feature does not work.

Whether or not this is the sole problem of Safari 5 or if Safari 5 doesn't like some server software is a question we need to find out in my opinion.

I encourage anyone to try the method listed above by putting the mp3 on your desktop and opening up the .html on the desktop with that embed source listed above but with your info.
It works just fine.

I already know that the code works locally on my workstation. And I also know that using the IDENTICAL code with the SAME DOCTYPE works on SOME of my site pages but NOT on others. I mentioned that in a previous post. I have done careful comparisons of code using BBEdit between working and non-working pages - there are no differences that would explain the fail. I described how a working MP3 embed suddenly stopped working when I did a simple text edit (far outside the MP3 embed code) and saved the HTML document to my Windows Server 2003 box. Is it a date stamping issue?

Yes, I would be all too ready to blame Windows Server 2003 for this idiocy, but obviously Safari 5.0 is a player in the breakdown and Firefox is definitely in the loop, as described above (i.e. open the page in Firefox first, then Safari 5.0 will play your MP3). I have no problem at all with Mac Safari 4, any version of Mac Firefox or with Internet Explorer on the Windows side. If it's a server issue, tell me what settings to fiddle with in IIS (Internet Information Service) Manager. Please!

For a while, I was beginning to think that Safari 5.0 was testing to see whether an MP3 is being hosted on the same server or being drawn from another site. I tried both root-relative and document-relative coding of the MP3 path with mixed results. I think I read something somewhere about an effort by programmers to stop MP3 piracy. Perhaps MP3s need to go through some sort of authentication or verification process? Is that too much of a stretch?

Unfortunately, I do not have another installation of Safari 5.0 with which to test this serious bug.

Maybe Comcast (my ISP) is to blame? Is it a DNS cache issue? I'll try changing domain name servers.

Good points and ideas.

I couldn't get your "fixed" link above to work for me either.

It is very strange that if we open up FireFox on a particular website and then open that same website up in Safari 5, that the embed works where it didn't before.

Further testing reveals that the problem also occurs with Safari 4. I now want to point my finger firmly at Firefox 3.6.6 for "hijacking" QuickTime prefs. No explanation, though, as to why the Q? symbol appears only with some embedded MP3s and not others, with no discernible differences in embedding code used.

As you click on movements 1 through 13 at the following web page, you will see that some MP3s load and play in the pop-up windows and some don't:

http://www.hungryforheaven.com/

same problem with me.
but if i converted the mp3 into a .mov file using quicktime, i was able to embed it into my website and it worked with safari 5.0, firefox 3.6.6, etc.

I'm seeing this same strange behavior. Notes on my environment and what works/doesn't work:

Server - My media files are served from an Xserve running OS X Server 10.5.8, the standard included Apache2. I have my own PHP compiled and a few other things but nothing that should interfere with a MIME type or anything.

Client - Several different machines running Mac OS X 10.6.3/4 and Safari 5.

Link - I can't get embeds to work, but I also can no longer get Safari 5 to play the MP3 files when I go directly to the file URL. That is, I paste the URL to the file (ending in MP3) directly in the bar. The player loads, but it doesn't play.

Other things that don't work - I can't get the file to play in Chrome either, but I rarely test in Chrome so I'm not sure if this broke recently or not. I can't get the file to play if I drag it into the Safari window from my desktop ... that is, it doesn't play locally, even if I remove the server completely from the equation.

What does work - I can paste the URL for the file itself into Quicktime Player X or my copy of Quicktime Player 7 Pro and it plays fine. I can download the MP3 over my fileshare to my local computer and it plays in Quicktime Player. Firefox 3.6 will play the files from the server and locally. iTunes will play the file locally and from the server URL.

Safari does play - My video files (.mp4 files, various bitrates, mostly H.264/AAC, when I link to the file directly or through embed/object code. A couple of <video> tags that we are testing for iPad support also play fine in Safari. I have also played .mov files directly in browser. An .m4a file, created by iTuens from a CD, plays when dragged to the Safari 5 window.

I believe, given these things, that there is an actual issue in Safari with support for these files. The mp3 was created by Telestream Episode Engine, and seems to be a good file. My server seems to be delivering data OK (I can see the requests and the 200 response, along with the data transfer). Certainly other browsers and browser-like software (QTP, iTunes, etc.) can handle the incoming data and play the file.

I've also experienced a problem very similar to this.

For 6 years I've maintained preview web pages for clients to approve quicktime movies. These mov files no longer work in Safari even though the embed code is the same, I can only see the question mark. FF, Chrome and Camino are unaffected.

If I enter the exact URL of the mov file then Safari will play it fine, and if I then return to the web page it will play properly.

If I move the .mov to my personal www server then it will also play correctly, so I must assume that Safari has an issue with the server that we use. What that issue is I have no idea, I have no physical access to either server.

I hope somebody at Apple can replicate and fix this issue.

I too started a string about this problem. We tried & documented several things in that string, but none helped. We checked the mp3 tags, compared info with mp3's that work, and much more. You might compare this string with that one and see if there is anything that will lead to a solution:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2491395&tstart=0

You might compare this string with that one and see if there is anything that will lead to a solution:
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Apple changing Safari 5 or posting a code fix is the only solution. The fact that it has made mp3 files unavailable is either arrogance or stupidity, or both.

Hy everybody,I have the same problems! My MP3 files do not plaback in Safari. I constructed the hompage in iweb. Since Safari5 it doesn't work. The Quicktimeplayer shows the questionmark! Firefox works and Safari works when starting Firefox first. Apple Hotline gave me the tip to delete Cashes and delete all internet PlugIns in the Librarys and delete Safari X and reinstall by downloading QuickTime! But this is not possible, so I have to install the whole Snow Leopard with all updates new! Please Apple, fix this problem!!!
This bug is on every Mac with Snow Leopard inclusive the Hotline-Macs. Ipads, ipods and windowsPC are running perfect. The same OSX 10.4!

Kalle Koerner, www.slice-production.de
P.S. look at www.slice-production.de in the Audiosection...zu den Alben
http://www.slice-production.de/audio/AUDIO/SLICEMUSIK.html

Message was edited by: Kalle Koerner/Slice-Production

Kalle, I get the same with Safari on your website, but Camino/Firefox works fine.

I see you use iWeb and that the mp3 code requires Quicktime. (type="video/quicktime)

Also consider a Mac/PC friendly format so Windows users do not have to download/install Quicktime.