Hi,
I’m using the JCE Media Field to assign MP3 files to Joomla articles. It works fine with small files, but with large MP3s (50–150 MB) the backend becomes very slow, because the field tries to load the whole file for preview each time.

Is there a way to make the field store only the file path without loading/previewing the media in the admin?
Or do you recommend another approach within JCE to handle large audio files more efficiently?

Thanks!

Thanks for the update and for adding preload="none"!
I’ve installed JCE Pro 2.9.94 RC, but in the backend I still see the same effect – when I load an article with a large MP3 (e.g. 150 MB), the file seems to load completely and the backend slows down.

Is there any additional setting I need to change to make sure the preview really uses preload="none"?

the preload="none" attribute is showing up, but unfortunately it seems to be ignored in all the browsers I’ve tested (chrome, ff and edge on windows )– the large MP3 files are still being loaded.

Would it be possible to add an option in the JCE Media Field settings to completely disable the preview/player for that specific field, so only the file path is stored and displayed? That would solve the performance issue with large audio files.

Thanks again for your support!

When I select and assign the MP3 in the backend, it does not load the player – that part is fine.

But after saving the article, when the edit form reloads, the field displays the audio player and the file is loaded.
The same happens when I open an existing article for editing – the player loads immediately and starts fetching the large MP3.

Thanks for your feedback and effort.
I’m only testing with 1 or 2 small files (around 5 MB).
But they are still being loaded – and even worse, they actually start playing automatically in the backend form. tested on mac and win

I tried changing some browser settings to prevent autoplay, but it doesn’t seem to stick.

I also noticed that in my case the preview is rendered as an <object> element, for example:

<div class="field-media-preview">
<object data="…/file.mp3" width="200" height="200" preload="none"></object>
</div>

Is this the expected behavior? Or should the preview be rendered as an <audio> element instead?

Hi Ryan,

thanks for adding the audio player – that’s a great improvement.

I’ve optimized the MP3 files (reduced size and cleaned up metadata), but I still notice a clear performance difference between articles with and without MP3.

In my frontend tests I used preload="none", which prevents the MP3 files from being loaded until the play button is clicked. This works very well for performance.

Would it be possible to add preload="none" (instead of metadata) to the JCE Media Field?

Thanks,
Bart

Hi Ryan,

I’ve just installed the new JCE version and the user experience is much better.
Thanks a lot for integrating this so quickly – it really makes a difference!

Best,
Bart