I'm experiencing a puzzling problem with the Flash MP3 player, and hoping that someone may have some ideas on it.
When a quiz comes up, I can monitor the download progress of each file via the Flash player's progress bar. At any point during or after the download, I can click on the play button and only hear about half a second of audio. If I move the mouse cursor away from the flash component and then back again, I can hear another half a second. So if I keep moving the mouse over the button, the playback will be fairly smooth, but if at any time I stop moving the cursor, playback will stop as well.
A couple of notes: This seems to be site-dependent; some of my sites experience this problem, others never do. I don't think it's a matter of those sites having slower connections, as the download progress bars show that even fully-downloaded audio has the same problem. And it does not seem to depend on the versions of Flash or web browsers; the sites that have this problem do so with IE and Firefox, and with Flash 7 and 8.
Has anyone else seen something similar before? Or any theories on what could be happening?
Hmm, this sound very strange! You seem to have checked all possible
options. The only clue is that the problem is site-dependent. 
Can you think of any similarities between the sites which display the
problem compared with the sites that don't? If you've not done so
already, perhaps you could try downloading a replacement mp3 player?
Can you think of any similarities between the sites which display the
problem compared with the sites that don't? If you've not done so
already, perhaps you could try downloading a replacement mp3 player?
I was finally able to get access to the machines and try out some things. Here's what I found out.
The main thing was to use the Flash Setting Manager and turn the Global Storage Settings up to at least 1 MB. Doing that enabled smooth audio in IE with both the 1.3 and 1.5 MP3 players. I was unable to get smooth audio in Mozilla with the 1.3 player, but switching to the 1.5 version took care of that issue.
Unfortunately for me, my teachers greatly prefer the look of the older MP3 player, so for now we are not supporting Mozilla/Firefox. Maybe I'll have to compile my own version of the 1.5 player with the progress bar removed.
The main thing was to use the Flash Setting Manager and turn the Global Storage Settings up to at least 1 MB. Doing that enabled smooth audio in IE with both the 1.3 and 1.5 MP3 players. I was unable to get smooth audio in Mozilla with the 1.3 player, but switching to the 1.5 version took care of that issue.
Unfortunately for me, my teachers greatly prefer the look of the older MP3 player, so for now we are not supporting Mozilla/Firefox. Maybe I'll have to compile my own version of the 1.5 player with the progress bar removed.