Hi!

I have a strange problem. I'm trying to embed a windows mediaplayer component to play an AVI file that is uploaded to the page's PageFiles. It works nicely to embed the quicktime player and an FLV player, but the mediaplayer takes horribly long to start the clip. When pointing it at a 30 Mb AVI, it takes about three minutes before the video actually starts. In firefox, the code I use is 

<embed height="315" width="480" autostart="1" bgcolor="#ffffff" pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/MediaPlayer/" type="application/x-ms-wmp" src="http://mylocalsite/PageFiles/1326/popular.avi" style="display: block;"/>

Now, if I use the exact same code and point the src attribute at a local file, or at an URL served directly by IIS, the same file starts more or less instantly.

Even weirder, if I put http://mylocalsite/PageFiles/1326/popular.avi in the browser's address bar, I immediately get the question if I want to open the file in mediaplayer, and when I say yes the clip starts instantly and works fine. 

However, if I in mediaplayer use "Open URL" and then type http://mylocalsite/PageFiles/1326/popular.avi, the clip again takes several minutes to start.

It would appear that there is some sort of difference between when I myself ask for the file using the browser (such as when typing it in the address bar), and when the mediaplayer requests the file (when embedded or standalone and asked to open the URL for me).

Perhaps it's some sort of security setting. But if that is it, I really don't understand why it actually eventually works and just takes a terribly long time.. if it were a security issue, it ought to work well or not at all.

When embedding in IE with <object> the issue is still exactly the same.

I'd be extremely grateful for any help offered.

kind regards

-Andreas Engström
Stendahls.net