JW Player fails with error with wma files: Task Queue failed at step 5

Question

I have a JW Player which plays MP3 files but with WMA files it gives the error:

Task Queue failed at step 5: Playlist could not be loaded: Playlist file did not contain a valid playlist

I thought of two reasons:

1. There is no support for WMA but please confirm me this.
2. Somewhere I need to setup the type of file I am using in this player.

If WMA not supported in JW Player how can I play WMA and MP3 files in my website?

Is ffmpeg needed to convert WMA to MP3 while uploading?

Answer 1

JW Player does not support WMA

According to the Media Format Reference JW Player 8+ officially supports:

• 2 video file types: MP4 and WebM.
• 3 audio file types: AAC, MP3 and Vorbis.
• 2 streaming protocols: HLS and DASH.
• RSS feeds, using enclosures or the Media or JWPlayer extension.
• JSON feeds

Also see the Supported Audio Files section in the link above.

Re-encode WMA to a supported audio format

You can use ffmpeg to encode to one of the supported formats:

AAC

ffmpeg -i input.wma -movflags +faststart output.m4a

For more encoding options see FFmpeg Wiki: AAC.

MP3

ffmpeg -i input.wma output.mp3

For more encoding options see FFmpeg Wiki: MP3.

Vorbis

ffmpeg -i input.wma -c:a libvorbis output.oga

For more encoding options see FFmpeg Wiki: Vorbis.