Re: [gNewSense-users] Solution for watching video clips in web pages without flash - Linterna Mágica

[Ivaylo Valkov]

"Vladimir B. Tsarkov" <address@hidden> writes:

> But when I try to view a video on youtube, I get the "Wating for video 
> plugin..."
> message in the linterna magica window.

This means that you do not have a browsers video plugin installed or it
is not detected by the browser. You can see detected plugins by visiting
address "about:plugins".

The packages are:  
   * totem-mozilla
   * mozilla-plugin-vlc
   * xine-plugin

The VLC plugin might crash GNU IceCat, because this happens with other
free software versions of Firefox. It might depend on the version of
VLC. The Totem plugin will probably (for versions <= 2.30) lack some API
methods, so you will see both plugin and Linterna Mágica controls. In
that case set "controls" to "plugin" in Linterna Mágica. How to do that
is explained in the configuration section in the documentation. [1] The
Xine plugin detects most of the video streams I've tested as
non-seekable, so you will not be able to seek. There is also no volume
control.  Depending on the configuration (and sometimes version) some of
these plugins will tend to download the entire video before starting
playback. 

GNU IceCat is missing as a package on Trisquel (4.0 Taranis), so I used
the launchpad ppa archives as recommended by the GNU IceCat web page and
made some tests. Linterna Mágica itself is working. Here are the results
for the plugins on Trisquel with IceCat:

  * xine - loads but and buffers but no video starts although the time
      line slider moves
 *  totem works 
 *  VLC seems to work (version 1.1.0)


> At the same time the browser says that I need to install the gnash
> plugin.

Probably it detects the the flash objects that Linterna Mágica is
replacing. You can use  Linterna Mágica without Gnash. I think there is
a configuration for IceCat to stop suggesting missing plugin installation.

Thank you for the feedback.

[1] http://e-valkov.org/linterna-magica/#config