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POPlaying Windows Media Video Served By .ashx
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copied!<p>I have embedded a windows media player in a web page, using the usual <code><object></code> and <code><embed></code> tags. The video is served by an ashx (http handler). When I try to play the video, I usually (but not always) get an error message telling me that the file extension (ashx) does not match the file format.</p> <p>This happens in IE (9 & 10) and also in Firefox (latest) with the WMP plugin.</p> <p>I know that the tags (with classid, etc) are correct because the media player displays and allows me to click the 'play' button.</p> <p>The ashx returns the correct mime type (video/x-ms-wmv) and a valid file name (somevideo.wmv) in the response headers. I have tried content-disposition attachment and inline.</p> <p>I have tried urls using 'http://', 'https://', and '//' (which I prefer)</p> <p>If I put the url (including the .ashx) of the video file in the browser address bar directly, the video downloads and plays.</p> <p>If I modify the object tag to use a direct path to the video file (/somewhere/somevideo.wmv), it works - but I can't use this as a solution.</p> <p>The same ashx serves up video and audio in various other formats with out any fuss - it just seems that the embedded windows media player doesn't like it.</p> <p>This has been working for several years - I think this is some new behavior, though I can't identify what has changed, other than browser updates.</p> <p>EDIT: a more careful study in Fiddler showed something I missed before. If I access the video directly (by entering my ashx url in the browser address bar), the video plays in the standalone media player. The content type and disposition headers are correct.</p> <p>However, when using the embedded player, I usually (not always) get OPTIONS and PROPFIND requests from user agent "Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/6.1.7601". I do not have WebDAV enabled, and I do not respond to options and propfind requests. The embedded player does not request the actual video file.</p> <p>Correction - I do actually respond to the options request - here is the request and response info from fiddler :</p> <pre><code>OPTIONS http://mydomain.com/myhandler.ashx HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/6.1.7601 translate: f Connection: Keep-Alive Host: mydomain.com HTTP/1.1 200 OK Allow: OPTIONS, TRACE, GET, HEAD, POST Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 Public: OPTIONS, TRACE, GET, HEAD, POST X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 16:03:49 GMT Content-Length: 0 </code></pre> <p>This is followed by four identical requests, using PROPFIND instead of OPTIONS. the response is 404.</p>

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