Flash player has stopped working

[deweydb]

I have been using this player on various websites for a long time now, but suddenly the flash version of it (served when there is no html5 audio available) cannot skip tracks, or load any tracks after the first track is loaded.

I have tested this on the demo site: in Firefox on both OSX and Windows.

Does this perhaps have to do with the latest version of flash player? I have Version 11.7.700.225 of flash player.

I have now tested this in Firefox 17, 18, 19, 20 & 21.
As well as Flash 10.3, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 11.6, 11.7

I have also tested in Chrome, by disabling the HTML5 support manually inside of sc-player.js, and the issue happens there as well.

I have enabled debug mode in soundcloud.player.api.js and i can see that it is infact loading the next track data, but it just never seems to switch to the next song (i guess the flash player object is not switching songs, even though it is downloading them)

Any advise on how to remedy this would be greatly appreciated!

[deweydb]

Ok, i have come up with a temporary solution to this issue, but i would really appreciate if this was adressed by soundcloud!

In sc-player.js around line 209 you should see:

    load: function(track) {
      var url = track.uri;
      if(player){
       player.api_load(url);
      }else{
        // create a container for the flash engine (IE needs this to operate properly)
        $('<div class="sc-player-engine-container"></div>').appendTo(document.body).html(flashHtml(url));
      }

This is the call that injects the new track into the flash player using the api_load call. Problem is that is totally not working right now. so instead of using that api, we just destroy the existing audio engine and replace it with a new one like so:

    load: function(track) {
      var url = track.uri;
      if(player){
       // player.api_load(url);
       $('.sc-player-engine-container').html(flashHtml(url));
      }else{
        // create a container for the flash engine (IE needs this to operate properly)
        $('<div class="sc-player-engine-container"></div>').appendTo(document.body).html(flashHtml(url));
      }

Now it will play tracks after the first track finishes, or when the user switches tracks. This is not optimal because we have to keep loading an extra resource from soundcloud, but soundcloud has left us i a stick situation, and i see no other viable solution at the moment.

[michaelfournier]

it seems to work again since few hours ! Even with flash audio stream engine... pfiou ! Don't need your hack so far, but thanks anyway. I hope i can trust soundcloud-api for good...

[victorslate]

Problem returned.. Does anybody solved this problem?

[deweydb]

Hahahahaha, really? no way! they pushed the same bug TWICE?!
Victor, you can fix it with my fix above.

[victorslate]

Your method is working, thanks! but speed is much slowly than original method..

[deweydb]

Victor, there is no other fix. You will have to contact soundcloud support and ask them to fix it on their end.

[michaelfournier]

i contacted them 2 days ago for that, they said they'll come back as soon as they got news from the api team...
Anyway deweydb hack works just fine, but i would not recommend use sc custom player in a production way for the moment.

[iriscoopers]

Having the same issue! Any news from the SoundCloud api team Michael Fournier?

[michaelfournier]

Unfortunately no news from api team since June 27. Personally, i no longer use SC custom player for the moment, i moved to soundmanager2 to get a custom audio player. It works well.

[iriscoopers]

Hi Michael, thank you for replying.

Yes, i'm looking into using soundmanager2 now too. I'm now looking at this https://github.com/kilokeith/soundcloud-soundmanager-player
but not sure if i'll use it.. have to see how hard it is to create a player myself using soundmanager2. I'm not very experienced with js yet.

[deweydb]

From Soundcloud support:

How are you today? I just realized that we never got back to you about this, for which I would like to apologize in the first place.

I've seen on the github topic that you've referred to in your message that you are using Soundmanager2 at the moment rather then the custom player. Admittedly, for the moment, this is the best workaround, as our developers currently do not have the manpower to fully support the custom player.

We are working on many things at a time right now to further improve all components on the site, and I had written into our devs before on this topic. As a matter of fact, the player that they recommend right now is this one: https://github.com/kilokeith/soundcloud-soundmanager-player, which also uses SoundManager2.

Again, my sincere apologies for the huge delay in responding to you. Please, do let us know if you have any further questions about this. I'd be glad to assist you as best as I can.

Leaves me to wish you a great weekend and all the best!

Kind regards,
Mathis

[primevoices]

Hi all,
At this stage, we discovered Mavericks/Windows 7 and Firefox did not work, what is your preferred solution.

Sergio

[deweydb]

Hi Sergio, i just tested and my solution still works in Firefox + OSX Mavericks. I am not able to test in windows 7 as well right now, but i highly doubt that it is broken in windows 7 because i tested it before when i originally found the solution.

[primevoices]

Thanks, yes the solution works! thanks!