Configure FireFox to stream .wmv

Question

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

What is Firefox set to do on `Edit->Preferences->Applications->Windows Media Video`? — aergistal, Mar 14 '15 at 12:22
I got it to work but not the desired way. I used about:config and removed video/x-ms-wmv from plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types. Now it displays in the browser window using VLC rather than opening up windows media player as a separate application (which is desired). I can't expect users to update about:config. — Jim, Mar 14 '15 at 13:36
Is using .wmv a requirement? Can't you switch to something like H264/AAC in a mp4 container that can be played directly in the majority of browsers/devices? — aergistal, Mar 14 '15 at 18:32
We are switching to .mp4 for existing library has many terabytes or .wmv's. — Jim, Mar 14 '15 at 19:01

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 14 '15 at 23:37

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).

I was hoping that in the 8 years since that writing Mozilla would have a better solution. — Jim, Mar 15 '15 at 11:53

Configure FireFox to stream .wmv

1 Answers1