firefoxnginxvideo-streamingwindows-media-playerwmv

Configure FireFox to stream .wmv

Problem: FireFox waits untill download completes before opening windows media player.

Desired outcome: When download starts open Windows Media player and stream video.

Currently Chrome and IE are performing as desired. Only FireFox waits for download to complete. Not sure if this is a FF configuration issue or the headers being sent.

Server: NginxPlus

Headers: // Write Headers // stream the video via redirect

    header('Pragma: no-cache');
    header('Content-Type:video/x-ms-wmv');
    header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename=gt.wmv');
    header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
    header('Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate');
    header('Pragma: no-cache');
    header('Expires: 0');
    header('X-Accel-Redirect: ' . $orlPath);

TIA

Solution

  • Your headers are alright, this seems to be the default Firefox behavior.

    Normally Mozilla-based browsers deal with multimedia files (for example, .wmv and .mpg files) by first downloading them, and then launching the media player.

    Source: the 2007 mozillaZine - Streaming Media page.

    There's no alternative that doesn't involve installing some third-party plugin client-side. These work by forwarding the URL to the external-player or by enabling the embedding of the source file (eg: MediaElement.js + Silverlight).