Naxos transitions to Flash

On August 1, Naxos Music Library will transitions from Windows Media Player to Adobe Flash.  This should ease use for Mac users.  Read more on their blog:

http://naxosmusiclibrary.blogspot.com/2009/07/brave-new-world-of-flash-only.html

Stream Naxos using Flash instead of Windows Media Player

Naxos Music Library has added support for streaming using Adobe’s Flash Player, which should be helpful for our Mac users.  The default is still for Windows Media Player, but the option to set Flash as your default should come soon.  Make the selection of players after you select tracks and click on “Play.”

Playlists are still limited to WMP, but Flash support for those should be coming soon.

Naxos and Macs: Another solution

We seem finally to have a more stable option for Mac users to access Naxos:  Microsoft’s Silverlight™:

Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Download Silverlight™ here, and all your access woes should disappear.  But do let us know if they don’t.

QuickTime bug and DRAM

If you’ve been having technical difficulties accessing DRAM recently, it could be because of a bug in v.7.4.1 of QuickTime. DRAM advises the following update:

A new QuickTime update was released last week (v.7.4.5) which fixes this issue. It can be downloaded here: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime745forwindows.html .

As always, let us know if you encounter difficulties not addressed by this fix.

DRAM and Macs

DRAM has had some reports about Mac users having difficulty with Quicktime and DRAM. If you are a Mac user and find yourself unable to stream music from DRAM, or if your browser crashes after closing the pop-up player window, you might need to download a different version of Quicktime. See DRAM’s announcement for details and fixes for this problem.

More on Naxos for Mac users

Earlier, we encouraged Mac users to download the flip4mac utility to reduce problems with using Naxos. Now, flip4mac seems to be causing its own difficulties, specifically simultaneous playback of tracks when more than one track is selected. Naxos recommends installing Windows Media Player 9 for Mac and disabling flip4mac. Here’s how to disable flip4mac:

As always, please let us know if you have problems with Naxos or any of our other products.

More troubleshooting for Macs: Naxos and beyond

As we previously reported, Windows Media Player is no longer updated for Macs. If you’re a Mac user and want to use Naxos Music Library, however, you’ll need a substitute for WMP. A utility called flip4mac will allow you to use Quicktime to play WMP files.

If you’ve had any difficulties with the trial version of flip4mac linked in the earlier post, try the version distributed by Microsoft.

Also, if you’re having difficulty accessing any electronic resource from your Mac, you can check to find out if the problem is with the product’s site, with the BGSU network, with your own network, or with your browser. The article, “Inside Network Utilities,” describes exactly how to do this in the section entitled, “Trace it to the source.” If you perform this test and find that the problem is somewhere in BGSU’s domain, please copy and paste the results into an e-mail and send it to mlsra@bgsu.edu along with details about what product you were trying to access, whether you were accessing it on or off campus, and when you were trying to access it.

Naxos Tip for Mac Users

Now that Windows is no longer updating Windows Media Player for the Mac, Mac users might experience some difficulty in streaming files in Naxos Music Library. To get around this, try downloading Flip4mac’s WMV Components for QuickTime at: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm. Technical specifications are included in the linked page.

If you have questions about this or any other product to which we subscribe, please send us an e-mail (mlsra@bgsu.edu) or give us a call (419-372-2307).