Revision of Play Videos Without Using Flash from Tue, 01/04/2011 - 08:08

What's Wrong with Adobe Flash?

Adobe Flash is used to deliver much of the video, advertisement, and browser-based game content on the internet. Unfortunately, the .swf format and Adobe's official player are proprietary. But for those who value their freedoms, there are alternatives.

There are three free software Flash players:

• Swfdec, which has good compatibility but stopped being developed sometime in early 2009.
• Gnash, the GNU SWF player, which is being actively developed and relies on the gstreamer and ffmpeg backends to perform. It has good compatibility up to SWF 8 and 9.
• Lightspark, a recent project that offers accelerated rendering using OpenGL shaders and good support for current Actionscript 3. It is currently not included in the Trisquel repos but can be easily obtained from a Launchpad PPA.

YouTube

YouTube has some videos in HTML5. This feature is currently in beta testing and uses the free and open WebM format. Go here to join the trial.

For Flash playback, the latest versions of both Gnash and Swfdec will play YouTube videos with good performance.

Another way to play flash YouTube videos utilizes the Greasemonkey add-on:

1. Download the free software Greasemonkey add-on for the browser.
2. Install the YouTube without Flash Auto script.
3. Now you can view any YouTube video as a converted MP4 video.

Dailymotion

Since 2009 Dailymotion has offered many of its videos in HTML5. Go here to activate this feature.

Unfortunately, many videos on Dailymotion are not available in HTML5; swfdec and Gnash can not play the Flash videos on Dailymotion.

Linterna Mágica

Linterna Mágica is a Greasemonkey userscript that aims to support many websites and browsers. It replaces Flash objects, so you can watch video with a browser video plugin.

There are some patterns common between video sharing and posting sites that Linterna Mágica is using, so it supports a lot of sites. In most cases it will work without modification. Some websites even have high definition support.

Supported browsers are:

• Firefox
• Midori
• Epiphany

Supported video plugins are:

• Totem plugin
• VLC plugin
• Xine plugin

This is a short list of supported websites:

• youtube.com
• video.google.com
• dailymotion.com
• metacafe.com
• vimeo.com
• blip.tv

How You Can Help

• Use free alternatives to Flash whenever possible.
• Contribute (financially or with code) to the development of free alternatives.
• Let your friends know that most of the videos and games on the web rely on a single company's proprietary standard to function, and why this is bad for an open internet.
• If you develop online games, don't use Adobe Flash, and please share your source code.