Windows Media Player 11 / seek bar does not work with MPEG files

Hi!

When I play MPEG files I can not fast forward with the seek bar. The player
just starts again from the beginning. Also all these video files show no
length in the library. Playing the files without fast forwarding is not a
problem. The seek bar worked fine with these files in version 10...

Is this a known bug?

Best regards,
Klaus

 

It's not really a bug, it's "by design" (apparently). MPEG files don't
seem to have the index which WMP gets from native WMV files to allow
it to fast forward. You'll see the FF/RW buttons are disabled when a
file is created like that.


Cheers - Neil

 

Hmm, thanks for trying to shed some light on this but as mentioned before the
files were all working perfectly before with version 10 and the seek bar is
even working with AVI files but not MPEG files. I can not believe that
Microsoft "by design" stopped to enable the seek bar for MPEG files with
version 11. They would shoot themselves in the foot with this as it would
certainly be a reason for me to change to a different media player...

Therefore I still hope and believe that it is a bug and I furthermore hope
that Microsoft is working on solving this problem. Would be great though to
get some confirmation from Microsoft regarding this.

Thanks,
Klaus

 

I'm having a problem playing long tracks, whether they are mp3 or wav
files on my hard disk, or cds or dvds.

WMP will play the first 30 minutes or so without any problem. but
after that the sound starts to break up and then play stops.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing this, and how I can
fix it?

Thanks.

David.

 

But what you're proposing is that somehow magically, MS "fixes" all
MPEG files anywhere on the internet, to add an index which doesn't
exist on the file.

It's rather like expecting Porsche to remotely add wings-and-jet
engine" functionality to their already distributed cars without
requiring the owner to take their car out of their garage to a
dealership and have the wings and afterburner retro-fitted.

Cheers - Neil

 

Okay.... I had the same troubel... And the funny thing is that some let say
avi files with a Xvid codec work fine with the seek and some did not... But
i found out that if i take the files that do not work from the libary it dont
work, but if i take then directly from the harddisk and drag&drop then into
WMP11 the files now work with seek... Dont know why but it works for mee..

 

I can only stress again that the SAME FILES (and I did not move them) worked
perfectly fine with Windows Media Player 10 and the seek bar in that version.
Only in version 11 they do not work anymore.

So why can MS make it work in one version but not in the other?

Cheers,
Klaus

 

Hey Mikkel!

That works! Great, thank you very much for the tip. Odd though.

Klaus

 

This worked for me too. So, is there any chance of Microsoft fixing the issue?

 

Problem reports/fix requests need to go to product support-
http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html#psssupport

It will not be possible to drive any fixes through the newsgroup. Product
support is where fix requests need to go.

 

Removing the files from the library (dont delete) then re-add them with the
add volume leveling option did the trick for me. Looks like old library
entries from 10 aren't totaly compatible with 11.

 

I'll certainly try going to that product support page, but first let me
ask--will the fix described above work if I'm playing a
professionally-recorded DVD? I mean, something I get from Netflix? Because
I'm just plopping the DVD into the "coffee holder" <tm old support joke> and
WMP11 pops up, but now, as has been noted, the "seek" function no longer
works as it did in WMP10.

I just don't understand Microsoft.

 

I'm afraid there is no way to communicate bug reports to the Windows Media
Player product team. Contacting product support will probably get you a fix
if one exists - though not always; those guys are, after all, just humans
and they don't know everything. Contacting product support does not, in any
way, shape, or form, guarantee that your problem will be reported to the
Windows Media Player product team at all. Only if there are a significant
number reports of the same issue would there be any likelihood of the
problem being reported to the Windows Media Player product team.

While the Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003,
Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Visual Studio, and MSDN
teams all have mechanisms for customers to provide product feedback and bug
reports without having to spend money or time on a call to product support,
it has been reported here that Windows Media Player is just not as simple of
a product as all of those others and therefore none of the customer feedback
mechanisms that those teams use are appropriate for Windows Media Player.
Many of those products have bug reporting and tracking systems online using
Microsoft Connect where you can even check the status of bugs reported by
yourself or others. Besides, can you imagine Windows Media Player being
called less simple than any of those products, let alone than all of those
products?

It has also been mentioned that you might use the normal product feedback
mechanisms within Windows Vista or Windows XP for reporting Media Player
issues, but we all know those would not work. Zach's response to you proves
my point there. After months of reading about the lack of interest that the
Windows Media Player product team has in their customers, Zach finally
pulled that out a week or two ago but, as his response to you here
indicates, he doesn't really believe that one himself.

No, if you want to report a bug to the product support team, get out your
credit card and be prepared to pay Microsoft 59.00 US or more for the
privilege. And if your copy of Windows came pre-installed on a new PC, then
you can't report a bug even to the product support team for any amount of
money at all. I have heard that 90% or more of all Windows licenses are
purchased with new PCs. That means that, even for money, only 10% of the
customers of the Windows Media Player product team are eligible to
participate by purchasing an apology from the Product Support team.

Dale

 

Possibly - depends on exactly what third party decoder is stomping
around/behaving badly.

Microsoft lets third parties plug in here, which is both good because they
can extend functionality and bad because they can not work right at times.

Professional versus homebrew DVD should have little to no difference - any
differences should be based upon bad encoding by the creator of the DVD, as
opposed to local playback.

WMP's Help:About:Technical Support Information will tell you what
DVD/MPEG/MPEG2 decoders you're using. That's a good start for knowing where
to turn next.

 

Zach, gee, I dunno--why on Earth would the folks who produce, say, the "West
Wing" DVDs have changed their freaking encoding from one day to the next?
Because, once again, THE SEEK FUNCTION WORKED JUST FINE in WMP10.

You're like a broken record (remember those?) and I really suspect that you
don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Thanks, Dale, I think you both know what you're talking about and are
explaining it in pretty much the terms I would use, except you were a helluva
lot more polite about it.

 

And as such, clearly identifying the elements of what's broken is most
interesting. Since WMP cannot play DVD without third party software being
in the mix -- what decoder are you using? It could be as simple as "WMP10
vs WMP11", but that's a pretty big assumption to make without knowing what
decoders are being used. Since that data is available pretty easily under
WMP's Help:About:Technical Support Information, regardless of your feelings
about WMP11, it'd be interesting to know what you're using here.

I absolutely do not, in that you're using an unknown set of software to play
back the title. This is not an area I would claim as my expertise, but I'm
interested in a good-faith effort to more closely identify the issue. Since
this works for me on my system, but not you on yours - what's the difference
here? Knowing that difference is of value to both of us, regardless of
feelings.

-Zach

 

Hello everyone...
Been reading this string and don't know if my problem is related or will
shed any light on this issue. Am running WMP 9 and noticed that the seek bar
advances with MPEGs on the hard drive. I am accessing the files from Windows
explorer and not the WMP libraries. I noticed that as soon as I burn these
video files to a CD using Roxio, the seek bar will not advance when playing.
It moves a tiny bit and goes back to the beginning and stays there and
clicking on it anywhere does nothing. Although inconvenient, I must click on
the fast forward button to the right of the seek bar to "activate" it so I
can click anywhere to select a location in the video. It then works as it
does on files played on the hard drive. Additionally, if I copy those same
MPEGs from the CD back to the hard drive and play them, the seek bar once
again automatically advances and can be clicked anywhere to locate various
places on the video. Could it be they are read only on the CD? Doesn't make
sense because when files are copied from the CD to the hard drive the read
only attributes remain. Can anyone shed any light on this or if this is even
related to the slightly different problems previously mentioned?

I can only stress again that the SAME FILES (and I did not move them) worked

 

I'm not really sure what you're doing here nor what MPEG decoder is being
pulled in, but I'm not familiar with this problem and have never seen it.
Does it happen on a mate's computer?

According to WMP's Help:About:Technical Support Information , what MPEG/DVD
decoders are installed?

 

Hi Klaus,

I still have the same problem like yours, my WMP seek bar is not working, I
tried the same what mikke told but still i am not able to use the seek bar.
1) deleted the files from library
2) drag&drop the DAT file to the WMP10.0 but still seek bar is not working.

Do I need to do anything else here?

-Ram

 

Does it show a seek bar / is it seekable in mplayer2.exe ? The question is
about whether the library has bad data for that file or if the file itself
is corrupt.