Firefox question (re. auto-playing downloads)

Disclaimer: I am not a Firefox user.

It sounds like you might need to tweak a setting in the player, instead of in Firefox. Which player are you using, and have you tried looking at its autoplay settings?

> Options
> Applications
> find the MIME type of the file in the list
> In the “actions” column, it should say something like “Use WMP 11”.
> Click on it, and select “Save File” instead.

Good thought, but I’m not talking about inline viewing of video (for which QuickTime player is the set, and desired, option for all video types)—I’m just talking about what happens when I’ve already done “save file” and the video is downloaded (not played inline in the browser).

For all media types other than video (like any type of audio or images), a downloaded file is just saved and appears in my download folder. For video, a downloaded file is saved and appears in my dl folder BUT ALSO starts playing in my system’s default video playing app as soon as its download is completed. Neither the app nor FF seem to have a setting I can find to stop this…

Yes, that’s what you initially described, and what both @the100thmonkey and I were responding to. You say that QuickTime player is the default player for all file types, but then you say that “my system’s default video player” is what is autoplaying videos – by that, do you also mean QuickTime?

Thanks—my system’s default video player is VLC.

I’m probably not communicating and/or not understanding something here. As far as I can tell, that list of MIME types controls what the browser should do when it encounters a file type inline—in a web page. For example, in that list, for an avi file and all other types of video files, the “action” specified is “Use QuickTime plug-in 7.7.3 (in Firefox)”.

I’m talking about when I manually download a file. For example, an avi file that I manually start a download of—so that I’m viewing its progress in Firefox’s list of downloads—when that download is finished, that file will start playing in the app VLC (with VLC starting up if it wasn’t already running). There doesn’t appear to be a setting in VLC or in Firefox about this behavior.

To further clarify, the “action” specified for an mp3 is also “Use QuickTime plug-in 7.7.3 (in Firefox)” but when I manually dl an mp3, nothing happens when that dl completes. That mp3 just sits in my downloads folder. My system default player for mp3 is also VLC.

Hmm. Well, VLC has advanced settings (click the show All radio button at the bottom of the main menu), so perhaps something is buried in there. And if it’s a Firefox setting, it’s bound to be in the advanced settings (enter about:config in your browser). There’s a lot to sift through, though.

My Firefox version is 32.0.3. Is it or a later update available to you? If it is, perhaps updating to the latest version will fix the download issue.

My QT plug-in versions are all 7.7.5.

Woah, thanks—about:config is exciting to know about! I’ve tried searching it for the obvious terms and can’t find anything so far, but will sift more.

(Also, we can forget about VLC being the issue; I just tested by changing my default player to Quicktime Player and exact same thing happens as does when VLC is the default player—when a video dl finishes, Quicktime starts up and plays it.)

I’m reluctant to upgrade FF for this (always seems to involve time-consuming plugin/config issues) unless there’s no other solution, but thank you for the poke…

Good to have done that experiment – at least it confirms what you thought. And yeah, isn’t about:config great? I just wish we knew what you should look for. I hope you have some luck; I tried googling for other people reporting the same issue, but couldn’t find anything. Let us know if you figure it out.

Thank you! I will…

Quick question: You’re on Mac, right?

Yes, Mac 10.9.4.

Did you somehow wet this to use VLC or whatever?

Check what this says to do.. http://i.imgur.com/DMsrbR0.png

@johnpowell – that’s what I first suggested he do, but apparently that doesn’t work.

Still an open question—I’ve upgraded to the latest FF version and still can’t figure out a fix for this :(