[Gnash-dev] Internet Archive flash player, Ogg, and Gnash

[John Gilmore]

The Internet Archive is trying a new beta test flash player for all
their moving images and audio files.  It lets people stream these
media without having to download them first.

They would be really psyched if their player works well with Gnash.
This would make it work well on the OLPC, for one big thing.

Also, they'd like it if the player could figure out what codecs are
available in the player's environment, so it could pick a stream that
can be played back successfully.  They have a full blown automated
back end processing system that grinds through all their videos and
audio files and produces various versions in different codecs, with
different bit rates.  They'd be happy to add Ogg (Theora video or
Vorbis audio) versions of each work, if it makes their work available
to the free software community.  This would be a first -- and huge --
media site to make its entire archive available in free codecs, for
free software users and OLPC users.  Can our team help them achieve
that?

Much of their audio is available in free FLAC, by the way.  Currently,
the streaming flash player seems to force MP3, and doesn't offer the Ogg
files, even when they exist.  For example, see:

  http://www.archive.org/details/Olokausto-ErditzeraGoaz

Tracey Asquith <address@hidden> is doing the flash player update
project.  She'd appreciate any feedback on how the beta player can be
tweaked to work better with Gnash or with free codecs.

She uses a Mac, and I tried to find her an easily installable Mac
version of Gnash, but was unable to do so.  Don't we provide simple
Mac binaries of the current release of Gnash?  If so, our web site
should be updated to point to them...

You can invoke the player by going to any item in the "moving images"
collection and clicking "try new player" just under the existing
"Click to play video" image.  For my own test, I looked at:

  http://www.archive.org/details/Castlevania_1313  (old player)
  http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=Castlevania_1313&newflash=1

There's also an "embed this" link on each page, that provides a little
bit of HTML that can be copied into other web pages to embed a player
with this video or audio.

Currently, when I try this on my FC6 system without proprietary
codecs, and with a Gnash version of <unknown> (that's what the about
box says), it plays the audio from mpeg files, but not the video; and
provides no user interface controls.  It's an swf9.  (Tracey might be
able to rebuild it as a lower version of swf, if that would help -- I
don't know that much about Flash development tools -- your suggestions
would be welcome.)

Thanks, folks!

        John