Problem with CNN video clips

[Gustavus]

My home page is CNN News which shows how much I use the site. A significant number of the news stories have a video clip associated with them. On those stories, the page opens with a picture -- first frame? -- but the video never loads or runs. If I click on the live video button on that same page the CNN streaming video and audio play perfectly. The streaming video is not the story on the page of course. I can view video clips on all sorts of other links, such as the Washington Post -- just CNN fails. I have super broadband. My wife and I have other computers, all of which download and show the CNN clips. All of my machines have Radeon video cards, Turtlebeach Santa Cruz sound cards and are running Windows XP with SP3. The machines are not identical, but very similiar. All run ESET System Security and AdMuncher -- both kept up to date. I have even gone to the extreme of doing a Windows reinstall on this one machine with no change. So far as I can tell in my browsing, the only video clips I can't run are those associated with CNN News. Do any of you know what might be special about those clips? The really mystifying thing is that all of our other machines run the clips just fine. There will be a delay while the banner shows loading, and then it is off and running. This machine shows a photo, but never shows anything loading.

Thanks.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Seams like your missing either a media player codec or you need to update and/pr enable java on that system.

 

[corkyg]

Yeah - most sites of that ilk use some version of Adobe Flash Media Player. If you don't have it installed, get it.

 

[RebateMonger]

CNN.com's videos quit working for me a while back, too. All of the other news sites' videos play just fine. I haven't bothered investigating the cause. As with the OP, the "Live Video" button plays CNN video steams just fine. Other than that, my PC has nothing in common with the OP's. I'm running Vista and Avast, IE7, Realtek sound, and NVidia video. My JAVA is the latest version, V6 Update 13. and Adobe Flash is V10.

 

[Gustavus]

Thanks for the replies. I had an older version of Adobe Flash Player so I installed Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.22.87 -- the latest version. Didn't make any difference. Symptoms are still exactly as I describe and as Rebate Monger described. I have done some more deliberate browsing and probing today, and it definitely seems to be a problem unique to CNN.com

And like Rebate Monger I have the latest Java; v6 update 13

 

[corkyg]

BTW - what is your browser?

 

[Gustavus]

Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13

That is the same browser and version number for the other machines on which the CNN video clips do open and run.

 

[guyver01]

the same thing happened to me a while back...

you have to allow data sources across domains..


Tools --> Internet Options --> Security --> Internet --> Miscellaneous: Access Data Sources Across Domains should be ENABLE

 

[RebateMonger]

I finally did a search, and found this discussion.

I followed the last suggestion on that page and I'm once again watching CNN.com videos.

"Go to Internet Exploer
Tools
Internet Options
Go the the Security Tab
Select Custom Level
Scroll down until you see User Data Persistence
Disable it and then restart IE."

=================================

My failing CNN.COM video page contained an "Error on Page" message on the lower left of IE7.

Line 16
Char: 4
Error: The data is invalid.
Code: 0
URL http://www.cnn.com/element/js/...pts/IEPersistence.html

Note that last line, with mention of "IEPersistence". That matches the "fix", which is to disable "User data persistence".

 

[Gustavus]

RebateMonger
Glad that fixed the problem for you, but unfortunately it had no effect on my machine. I read the link you gave and I do not have an error message appearing -- just what I assume is the first frame of the video and then no further change; no loading bar etc.

The crazy thing is that other machines all show the CNN clips. On the assumption that something may be set differently in the Custom security pull down -- I am going to fire up another machine that does play the videos here in the lab and comapare the entries one by one in that menu to see if I can find something set differently between them.

I did check the other machine and the box for user data persistaence was enabled in it -- so that isn't the difference.

Again, thanks for the reply.

PS
In reading back through this thread I noticed that you are running Vista nd the page you linked to was a Vista forum so maybe the change that worked for you and the poster there only works in Vista machines. Unfortunately it didn't work on my XP machine

 

[Gustavus]

guyver01

Thanks for the suggestion. All of the machines I have have

Tools --> Internet Options --> Security --> Internet --> Miscellaneous: Access Data Sources Across Domains

set to Disable. That includes the ones that can view CNN clips and this one that doesn't. Just on the chance it might make a difference, I clicked on Enable and applied it. Makes no difference on this machine.

As I said in my reply to RebateMonger it may be a setting in the Custom menu that is the culprit, but so far we haven't found it. I will keep trying.

 

[Gustavus]

I found one thing different between the machines that can play CNN video clips and this one that can't. If I go

Tools --> Internet Options --> Security --> Custom Levels

the box at the bottom which shows the secuirty level is set to medium on the machines that can play the video clips and to medium-high on this one. I have tried over and over to change this one to medium -- highlighting medium, clicking Apply and the OK to exit -- but it is back to medium-high as soon as Internet Explorer is opened again. I have searched on net for a couple of hours and have not found any way to override the default setting of medium-high. It shows it as medium until IE is closed and reopened at which point it is medium-high again.

This may not be the source of the problem, but is the only difference I have been able to find between the machines that can view CNN video clips and this one.

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Gustavus
I read the link you gave and I do not have an error message appearing -- just what I assume is the first frame of the video and then no further change; no loading bar etc.

I wasn't getting any popup error messages either. My symptoms appeared identical to yours.

But, in my case, i noticed a tiny "Error on Page" note in the IE Status bar at the very bottom-left of the screen. I double-clicked on that and got information about the error.

Do you have the IE Status Bar enabled?

Of course, it's entirely possible that my solution might not work for you. There's a zillion combinations of IE Security settings

 

[Ken90630]

Originally posted by: Gustavus

the box at the bottom which shows the secuirty level is set to medium on the machines that can play the video clips and to medium-high on this one. I have tried over and over to change this one to medium -- highlighting medium, clicking Apply and the OK to exit -- but it is back to medium-high as soon as Internet Explorer is opened again. I have searched on net for a couple of hours and have not found any way to override the default setting of medium-high. It shows it as medium until IE is closed and reopened at which point it is medium-high again.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Maybe you have to restart your computer for the new security setting to take effect? I don't remember for certain.

You might just try uninstalling and re-installing IE7. Shouldn't take long.

 

[Gustavus]

Ken90630

I run Windows XP with SP3 on the machine that cannot show CNN video clips. I have a bench machine with Windows 7 installed and it shows CNN video clips with no problem -- as do three other XP machines in the house and in the lab. Restarting the machine has no effect on the persisitence of the medium-high security setting. I do not know that this is the problem, it is the only thing I have found different between this machine and the others.

 

[Ken90630]

Well, the fact that you can change the security setting but it won't stay fixed seems odd (obviously ). That's why I suggested uninstalling and re-installing IE7.

AFAIK, those security settings 'regulate' how Active X controls are handled, and that could make a difference.

Out of curiosity, can you change your home page and will it stay changed? Or will it revert back to CNN.com?

 

[Gustavus]

Ken90630

Took a few minutes to test your suggestion. I can change my home page and the change survives a reboot. I checked again and video clips on the new page (The Washington Post) played just fine, but if I went to CNN, the video clips do not.

On net I have found quite a few posts by people who had recently lost the ability to view CNN clips -- with most of them also saying they could still view CNN streaming video or video clips from any other site.

Something unique to CNN apparently.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Ken90630]

Last thoughts:

Do all of your machines install Windows Updates the same way? I'm just wondering if maybe a recent Windows Update could be the culprit. It's been known to happen. That would explain why some people have the problem while others don't.

It would take all of 10-15 minutes to re-install IE7, and that's prolly what I'd do since you've tried a lot already.

You could also try calling or e-mailing CNN's Webmaster. The worst he/she could do is ignore you.

System Restore is another option if you know for a fact those clips used to work and have a good idea when they stopped working. But I'm sure you've prolly already thought of that.

That's all I got. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.