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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-13T17:08:03+00:00

I am trying to use Flowplayer to allow HTML5 video where available and use

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I am trying to use Flowplayer to allow HTML5 video where available and use the flash fallback when it is not supported.

This works fine in Firefox and Chrome, however in IE9 it cannot find the video and below IE9 it just doesn’t support the video.

Am I doing something wrong or is flowplayer not supported by IE?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Solution Summary

    I was running into a similar issue and I think I have solved it, so perhaps this will fix it for you as well. My problem ended up being the MIME type for my .mp4 video file was being served as video/mpeg. When the video is served as video/mp4, it will load correctly on IE9. I did not test an .ogg file, but I have a feeling that the problem is similar.

    Analysis:

    I was a little puzzled because I was seeing the video work (in all browsers) on the main flowplayer demos page and also on this HTML5 Video Player Comparison page. However, I was feeling a little vindicated because their own developers were having trouble getting a consistent load, has been filed as part of a bug report, and their “fix” demo was not working for me either (but their main demo was!).

    Deduction:

    After completely mirroring their setup and following the setup documentation, my player was still not working in IE9, but was working in Firefox, Chrome, and IE8 (with flash fallback).

    I decided to try loading their video, from their server, and it worked instantly. I inspected the network pane in IE9 and discovered the MIME type discrepancy. My servers were serving .mp4 files as “video/mpeg” when the flowplayer servers were serving the .mp4 file as “video/mp4”. I know that the .mp4 file type is simply a container, and a video file depends on the underlying encoding scheme, but I had a feeling that IE9 is just picky on trying to decode video based on MIME type—it won’t even attempt to play it if it isn’t something it recognizes as playable. I had the network administrators change the MIME type and the same video which was failing earlier now works perfectly.

    For reference, this is how I had my HTML set up:

    in the head

    <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script> 
<script src="http://releases.flowplayer.org/5.1.1/flowplayer.min.js"></script>

    in the body

    <div class="flowplayer is-splash">
    <video preload="none">    
        <source src="http://stream.flowplayer.org/black/470x250.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
    </video>
</div>
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