diff -ru a/gst/playback/gsturidecodebin.c b/gst/playback/gsturidecodebin.c
--- a/gst/playback/gsturidecodebin.c	2010-11-25 22:18:44.000000000 +0100
+++ b/gst/playback/gsturidecodebin.c	2011-10-20 01:27:27.226342985 +0200
@@ -942,7 +942,7 @@
 
 /* list of URIs that we consider to be streams and that need buffering.
  * We have no mechanism yet to figure this out with a query. */
-static const gchar *stream_uris[] = { "http://", "mms://", "mmsh://",
+static const gchar *stream_uris[] = { "file://", "http://", "mms://", "mmsh://",
   "mmsu://", "mmst://", "fd://", "myth://", "ssh://", "ftp://", "sftp://",
   NULL
 };