Quicktime Plugin/Firefox stops playing mp3 after a few seconds

Question

We've run into a problem with Quicktime Player in Firefox (Win XP) only playing the first few seconds of an mp3. It doesn't happen with all mp3s, but out of the five we've tested four showed this problem... only one of the five played through to the end.
When accessing the mp3 file, quicktime plugin loads with the big Q, takes a few seconds (i.e. seems to be downloading the full file), displays the controller, then starts playing. The progress bar moves quickly to the right and stops when it reaches the far right. For some of the mp3s it's only a second or two, for one it is about 8 seconds. The ones that only play for a second or two are regular music mp3s of about 3-5 minutes in length. The one that plays 8 seconds, is really 17 minutes, 42 seconds long.
All of these seem to play fine with the Quicktime plugin in IE. And all the files play fine in iTunes and Quicktime as local files as well as streaming.
The music files are mp3s generated by iTunes using the "Convert to MP3" function (original files are m4a files from the iTunes store).
The longer file (a podcast) was generated by a third party, so I'm not sure what tools were used to generate it, however I've tested two versions generated by iTunes that also did not play past 8 seconds:
- Original encoding with ID3 tags converted to a different version by iTunes
- New encoding generated by iTunes using the "Convert to MP3" function
(FWIW, renaming the files doesn't make a difference either.)
I have confirmed that this is happening for a colleague of mine on his computer as well.
Reloading the page/mp3 file (F5), force-reload (control-F5), disabling the cache (using Web-Developer Plugin, or Firebug), clearing the cache (through Firefox's Options->Advanced->Network->Offline Storage settings, or through "Clear Recent History") ... none of these seem to make a difference.
However, I did notice that for the files that weren't working, using Firebug's Net panel, it looks like the plugin starts *and finishes* playing the file before the file is completely downloaded (i.e. the player stops playing and the Net panel still shows the file downloading -- usually for a few seconds more before it is completely downloaded).
(And now the one mp3 file that was playing fine is no longer playing. It too just plays a second or two then stops...)
This is with Firefox 3.6.3 and Quicktime Plugin 7.6.6 on Windows XP Pro.
---Lawrence
Message was edited by: lcoffin

Answer 1

Podcast (original): http://council.cio.com/podcast/temp.mp3
Podcast (re-encoded by iTunes): http://council.cio.com/podcast/temp3.mp3
Music MP3s that aren't working for me:
http://council.cio.com/podcast/findyouregone.mp3
http://council.cio.com/podcast/findyourehere.mp3
http://council.cio.com/podcast/youvideoversion.mp3
Music MP3 that is working:
http://council.cio.com/podcast/twoareone.mp3
(Oh, and ignore my comment earlier that this mp3 stopped working. I got confused back there with all the various tests... This file does play fully. The player also waits until the file is fully downloaded before starting to play... As opposed to the others where the player starts and ends playing before they are downloaded completely.)