Anyone able to stream this video without flash?

19 replies [Last post]
quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

Hello everyone,

there are very few video websites which I'm not able to watch with trisquel (I think two, exactly).
One of those sites is golem.de
Could you please try to watch for example
http://video.golem.de/games/10750/metro-last-light-test-fazit.html
Perhaps you have some kind of Abrowser Plugin or special trick which makes it possible.
I think it's worth a try.

roboq6
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Joined: 05/03/2013

"if (checkDevice()){
var nvb = new HTML5Video("http://video.golem.de/nvplayer/NonverBlaster_02-testing.swf","NVBPlayer10750video","620","349","9","#000000");
} else {
var nvb = new SWFObject("http://video.golem.de/nvplayer/NonverBlaster_02-testing.swf","NVBPlayer10750video","620","349","9","#000000");
}"

Very interesting. Maybe the site may play HTML5 Video

Cyberhawk

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Joined: 07/27/2010

Well, first there is Gnash and (if Gnash won't work) Linterna Magica. Those are the standard way of doing things.

But there is a slightly more obscure way of watching videos than with Gnash (or other Flash-replacing plugins) and Linterna Magica. It's called Unplug.
It's a plugin that can be installed from within Abrowser, or when searching inside the Abrowser Add-On repository.

When on a site that doesn't show video, click on the Unplug symbol (sometimes it's hidden within the add-ons bar, press "ctrl + /" to enable it. On keyboards with German layout it effectively means pressing "strg + shift + 7".
Once the Unplug window pops up, you should see a list of available videos from this particular page. Rightclick the video you want to watch, choose open in a new tab. WebM videos usually play best within Abrowser. If Abrowser tries downloading this video instead of playing it, choose "copy link location" instead, open VLC and go to File -> open location. Paste the link, press play, enjoy. A lot of sites that seem to not be working otherwise can be tricked in this manner.

Sometimes Unplug lists the actual .swf files (those are the interface to the player and load the video url into it). I'm not aware of a way to play the videos in this case.

quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

Thank you so far.
Unfortunately, golem.de doesn't work with linterna magica or with unplug (I tried gnash of course myself).
BUT the second page I mentioned which didn't work runs with linterna magica.
So finally, your advices helped me a lot.

Golem.de works with lightspark, but almost nothing else works with lightspark; when I install it, the second page doesn't work anymore with linterna magica.

Cyberhawk

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Joined: 07/27/2010

Glad that I could help you.
Linterna Magica not working with lightspark is probably due to LM being written for replacing what Gnash renders on a given page. If you disable Gnash without installing anything else, LM stops working too.

If there is no way to play the video on it's original location, you can always try searching youtube for the video, or searching the entire web for it. There is always a slight chance the video was uploaded in multiple places.

Sometimes websites don't upload videos directly to their servers but rather to blip.tv, then link to those videos inside their proprietary Flashplayer inreface. Good thing is, the Unplug trick is working on blip.tv.

I'm crossing fingers that all sites will switch to embedding video through html5 asap... Right now it's quite a big mess.

quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

That's strange. I removed the gnash plugin but linterna magica is still working.

Yes, it's mess. Every solution is suitable only for some cases, but on the other hand, many things work very well.

GustavoCM

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Joined: 11/20/2012

How about newer Lightspark versions from https://launchpad.net/~sparkers ?

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sparkers/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

(or, instead of "upgrade", "install lightspark" if it is not installed yet)

Also, have you tried other Firefox extensions to download Flash-wrapped videos? I don't know which are free or not.

aloniv

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Joined: 01/11/2011

The video can be downloaded using this URL (and then viewed with e.g. SMPlayer):
http://video.golem.de/files/1/1/10750/metrolastlight-sd.mp4

P.S. in order to find this URL I used Lightspark (version 0.7.2 which I compiled myself on Parabola GNU/Linux) and Wireshark and searched in Wireshark "frame contains .mp4". The output was the part "GET /files/1/1/10750/metrolastlight-sd.mp4" and host "video.golem.de" which I combined to create the URL.

roboq6
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Joined: 05/03/2013

Bravo. But how about HTML5? Why the site have word "HTML5Video" in source code of page?

aloniv

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Joined: 01/11/2011

This video can also be streamed in HTML5 if the browser supports H.264.

quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

And Abrowser can't do this? Is it neccessary to install proprietary software in order to run a html5 h.264 video?

aloniv

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Joined: 01/11/2011

The video can be played back inside Abrowser using a media plugin such as Totem, but it cannot be played as an HTML5 video (if it is infact provided as such). WebKit browsers such as Midori do supports H.264 in HTML5 video.

quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with midori.

lembas
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Joined: 05/13/2010

This thread is indirectly related to the first question http://trisquel.info/en/forum/how-enable-mp3-support-html5-abrowser

The theme is Mozilla and patented codecs.

quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

Thanks to all your great advices, I have found the (for me) best solution at the moment:

1. Lightspark installed
2. Linterna Magica installed (unfortunately, with linterna magica, there appears this bug from time to time: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/en-fin-dadresse-url# so I have to turn it on and off)
3. VideoTube installed (like linterna magica, also a greasemonkey script)

golem.de runs with lightspark (very buggy but it seems to work sufficiently good), the other site (4players.de) runs with linterna magica and the non-html5 youtube videos also work with linterna magica.

To sum it up, linterna magica filled the gap!
I have to test this for a while, perhaps some bugs appear.

t3g
t3g
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Joined: 05/15/2011

Abrowser and Firefox do not at this time, but the Chromium browser with the "chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra" package will:

https://launchpad.net/~cmiller/+archive/chromium-browser-stable-daily

aloniv

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Joined: 01/11/2011

Other WebKit browsers also support H.264 (Midori, Epiphany etc).

aloniv

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Joined: 01/11/2011

Some of the videos on the golem.de website use the .flv extension, e.g. this one about the Neo Freerunner:
http://video4.golem.de/files/1/1/1559/neofreerunner_mw_on2.flv
To find the URL using Wireshark just search for "frame contains .flv" instead of "frame contains .mp4".

mYself
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Joined: 01/18/2012

Do this:

0. Shockwave Flash plugins (Gnash/Lightspark/Flash) must be disabled from Abrowser's Add-ons Manager
1. Go to the webpage with the video you want to play (e.g. http://video.golem.de/games/10750/metro-last-light-test-fazit.html)
2. In the place where video should appear, there is a title of the video and just above that a tiny little fracture of an actual image. Right-click on it, and select View Background Image
3. Modify the URL of the image by replacing teaser with files, then rename the filename from QUALITY-HEIGHT-TITLE-AUTHOR-ANYTHING.jpg to TITLE-[sd|hd].mp4 and press Enter.

This way, you will be able to watch videos right from your web browser. Note, that this hack doesn't always work because the image name can be different from the video filename.

mYself
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Joined: 01/18/2012

This is really stupid, because the image and video filename differs from each other, so it's really just about coincidence and luck, if a video starts playing. In theory, the flash player parses a video playlist in XML format, that contains the direct link to the video file, but I does not found any way to retrieve the link for that file. Maybe someone here is more competent for this kind of work and can retrieve that link for you.