problems with gnash

17 risposte [Ultimo contenuto]
lisp_alive
Offline
Iscritto: 02/23/2014

Hi,

I've bought a GNU/Linux computer with Trisquel pre-installed, but I am
unable to get gnash to play any videos in Abrowser (it just buffers).

I wondered what the preferred option is? Would it be to disable gnash
and use a HMTL5 add-on?

Thanks

Aidy

mYself
Offline
Iscritto: 01/18/2012

Yep, exactly. I've done an extensive test for Gnash and Lightspark, to see how they'll score against HTML5 in real life, with the following results:

- Gnash (a GameSWF fork) is useful if you want to play non-free flash based games, like the Hobo Brawl series. It's currently not useful for anything else.
- Lightspark doesn't worked on any website I tested despite going through many of the popular ones, so it's currently not useful for the end user.
- HTML5 worked surprisingly well, and many videos started to work. No lags, crashes, or other problems were recognized. Therefore it's the recommended choice.

I also recommend the UnPlug Firefox extension, which can help in cases where you will be unable to watch video streams online. Sometime it finds and extracts the video link from the page HTML source, therefore allowing you to download video files for offline playback.

ivaylo
Offline
Iscritto: 07/26/2010

В 12:51 -0800 на 23.02.2014 (нд), lisp_alive[@nospam] написа:

> I've bought a GNU/Linux computer with Trisquel pre-installed, but I am
> unable to get gnash to play any videos in Abrowser (it just buffers).

The problem is fundamental. The proprietary flash technology is not
publicly documented, so Gnash developers are reverse engineering the
technology. This slow and hard process and they are obviously far
behind.

> I wondered what the preferred option is? Would it be to disable gnash
> and use a HMTL5 add-on?

HTML5 is part of any modern browser. The problem is that few websites
support it, although it seems that the amount is slowly rising. You can
disable Gnash from Tools/Add ons in Abrowser. For video you can try
Linterna Mágica. [1] (I'm the author. Linterna Mágica is still live
and kicking. Development is slow, but LM is still kicking. It costs me a
lot of effort lately, to keep it running, because work drains my mind
and energy, but something has to pay the bills.)

You can also check the alternatives. [2]

[1] http://linternamagica.org/
[2] https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/play-videos-without-using-flash

mYself
Offline
Iscritto: 01/18/2012

He probably meant the YouTube All HTML5 extension, although YouTube works without this.

Can you provide some usecase when Linterna Magica does load videos, that HTML5 or the Totem plugin cannot handle? Even the test videos on your website work flawlessly without it.

ivaylo
Offline
Iscritto: 07/26/2010

В 23:22 +0100 на 23.02.2014 (нд), name at domain написа:

> Can you provide some usecase when Linterna Magica load videos, that HTML5 or
> the Totem plugin cannot handle?

Linterna Mágica does not have its own video renderer. It depends on
video plugins. In a standard GNOME installations the default should be
Totem. I personally have issues with HTML5. Sometimes it is slow on
caching and loading. There are glitches too. YouTube is an example.
Lately YouTube's HTML5 player uses 60-80 % CPU of my machine (Thinkpad
X60, 3GB RAM, 1.8GHz CPU). With LM and Totem I get 10-30% less. With
Linterna Mágica I personally get better results. The caching and the
playback is smoother for me. That are the basic benefits for me.

The rest (again for me) is satisfaction, eyecandy and easy clip
downloads if needed. In addition I don't have any flash plugin enabled,
so in a YouTube playlist Linterna Mágica will playback the entire list
for me (shuffle or not) taking care of clips that still require flash
and will skip unavailable clips. The YouTube player cannot playback some
clips that require flash and the user does not have flash plugin.

Recently there are issues with HD links (above 360/480) for some/all
videos. YouTube is switching(ed?) to DASH [1] and since Abrowser
(Forefox) still doesn't support it there are no such links. AFAIK only
the YouTube flash player has such support and maybe the
Chromium(copyright issues)/Chrome (proprietary). It was reported to me.
I had no time to play with it.

> Even the test videos on your website does
> work flawlessly without it.

You mean that they work without Linterna Mágica or what? The raw clips
are there to test and prove that there is a video plugin. Thy should
work without LM. The rest is mockup of flash objects as some websites
implement them. The idea there is to test that Linterna Mágica works at
all and to see what you should expect on other websites.

Was this helpful?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP

mYself
Offline
Iscritto: 01/18/2012

Yes it was, thanks :^)

The reason why I asked this was simply that I was unable to find a reason to use this extension, and I personally hate bloat on my computer. I'm using only carefully selected, and tested software to ensure they're best in category and they does what they claim to. I tested Linterna Magica amongst other plugins, and I can categorize it as a bloat (no offense here).

Personally for YouTube, I'm using SMTube which technically does what your plugin, except that it does it without the need for a web browser. Therefore it's a LOT faster solution, and since Abrowser(Firefox) is causing several times a CPU load surpassing 100% on a multi-core model, despite having a high-end system, not mentioning the hassle of playing videos in a web browser (opening a new window, searching for a video, wait until it loads, etc.), that the video is cached from the begining when I switch to fullscreen (YouTube automatically switches from 360p to 720p for better visual quality), and most importantly, that I need to move the mouse cursor every ten minutes, 'cause the screen is going to dim. I recommend to try it if you haven't already (you will be surprised how great a YouTube experience could be).

So basically your extension is just an eyecandy for a marginal userbase, or for those who are into these things (unfortunatelly, I'm not). This is what I wanted to know; thanks again.

ivaylo
Offline
Iscritto: 07/26/2010

В 00:59 +0100 на 24.02.2014 (пн), myself600@nospam написа:

> and I personally hate bloat on my computer.

> I'm using only carefully selected, and tested software to ensure they're best in
> category and they does what they claim to.

Understandable. I can relate to that.

> I tested Linterna Magica amongst
> other plugins, and I can categorize it as a bloat (no offense here).

No offense taken. There are issues with web sites that have a lot of
JavaScript that Linterna Mágica is trying to parse to find videos.

The latest version (1.20) has a fix for that - Linterna Mágica have to
be started manually (the parser) on most websites to prevent bloating.
Few major video sharing websites start automatically, and the list can
be extended. I'll be glad go have some more feedback, if you are willing
to try it again. Feedback from anyone is welcomed. Especially negative.
This will lead to improvements. Write to me in person, at Linterna
Mágica's mailing list, or join Linterna Mágica's Jabber and IRC chat
rooms.

> Personally for YouTube, I'm using SMTube which technically does what your
> plugin, except that it does it without the need for a web browser.

There were such scripts even before Linterna Mágica. I'm just too lazy
and tired of copying links across browsers, windows, and scripts. Still
they are a good solution.

> (YouTube automatically switches from 360p to 720p for better visual quality),
There is no technical way to do this at the moment with a browser video
plugin as far as I know.

> and most importantly, that I need to move the mouse cursor every ten minutes,
> 'cause the screen is going to dim.
You could change your dimming preferences in you desktop environment.
Also most players have settings for that.

> So basically your extension is just an eyecandy for a marginal userbase, or
> for those whose into these things (unfortunatelly, I'm not).

I could not agree with that. It has much more than eyecandy and it works
in far more places than YouTube. Places I don't know exists. Yes,
everyone has their preferences how to use their computer. That is
understandable.

Yes the technical solution is not the best, it is limited and causes
some inconvenience. I just don't have the spare time to investigate,
test and migrate to a better and improved solution - browser extensions.
Linterna Mágica is not an extension in the context of Abrowser. It is
just a userscript and it has its limitations just because of that.

onpon4
Offline
Iscritto: 05/30/2012

ivaylo wrote:
> HTML5 is part of any modern browser. The problem is that few websites
support it

Define "few". I've found that most mainstream sites support HTML5 as a fallback, including YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, and several others. The only mainstream site that doesn't support HTML5 is blip.tv; for that, I recommend the ViewTube user (Greasemonkey) script.

mYself
Offline
Iscritto: 01/18/2012

Totally agree. Gnash can be incorporated into this "few", since it does support (probably only) YouTube, Lightspark even less (if some). Since the first experiments, HTML5 has grown into a viable alternative to Flash, and I see no more reason to focus on these projects anymore (it can be the reason why they're no longer under active development, although I know about one usecase for Lighspark, and that's to support Google Street View, which unfortunately is still not supported by HTML5).

eean
Offline
Iscritto: 07/06/2011

Maybe you'll find "Instant Google Street View" of some interest then :

http://www.instantstreetview.com/

Quiet fast, and no Flash needed.

It works like a charm with any web browser in Trisquel (not text based of course). :-)

oysterboy

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Offline
Iscritto: 02/01/2011

That's a great site, thanks for the link! My lawn looked much better two years ago - lol :).

eean
Offline
Iscritto: 07/06/2011

My pleasure ! :-)

Indeed, Street View can be a great time machine… for the best and worst ! lol

ivaylo
Offline
Iscritto: 07/26/2010

В 00:34 +0100 на 24.02.2014 (пн), name at domain написа:
> ivaylo wrote:

> Define "few". I've found that most mainstream sites support HTML5 as a
> fallback, including YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, and several others.

Those are mainstream websites, but they are not the Internet. A lot of
small to middle websites, are still forcing flash. Even YouTube forces
flash for part of its clips. For some flash is default and if missing,
YouTube switches to HTML5, after displaying a warning about missing
plugin.

Vimeo (I cant confirm if this is still true) refused to load HTML5 on
Gecko based browsers, because they lack H264.

> The only
> mainstream site that doesn't support HTML5 is blip.tv; for that, I recommend
> the ViewTube user (Greasemonkey) script.

When HTML5 came up, or became mainstream blip.tv had an HTML5 player for
a while.

onpon4
Offline
Iscritto: 05/30/2012

ivaylo said:
> Vimeo (I cant confirm if this is still true) refused to load HTML5 on
> Gecko based browsers, because they lack H264.

I don't know about other Gecko-based browsers, but Firefox and its derivatives have supported h.264 via libraries available on the system for a while. I'm able to load Vimeo videos just fine with their HTML5 player, though I still prefer to use ViewTube.

ivaylo said:
> When HTML5 came up, or became mainstream blip.tv had an HTML5 player for
> a while.

I think it's still supported, but only if the video uploader enables it, which requires foregoing advertising, so in practice it isn't (I'm not aware of anyone who uploads to blip.tv without enabling advertisements). More precisely, if you request the video in a way that doesn't look to them like the Flash-based video player, they send you a short video saying the video can only viewed on the "Blip player" instead of the video you want. The good news is video players like Totem and VLC look like the Flash-based player to them (at least currently), so they will send you the video if you use one of those (most conveniently, with ViewTube and the Quicktime-compatible Totem plugin).

a_slacker_here
Offline
Iscritto: 06/29/2013

Oaw!, you are the autor! That is awesome!

I use linterna Mágica on Midori Browser and even if it has some raw edges, I love how it works.

I even can understand some of the source code and I'm not a programmer.

I also like how you can modify options manipulating your well documented source code.

It is a very pleasure to know that you are on these forums.

Perhaps I've been a little impulsive on this comment but I like the fact that I'm meeting authors from some programs I usually use.

ivaylo
Offline
Iscritto: 07/26/2010

В 22:54 +0100 на 23.02.2014 (нд), franparpe[nospam] написа:

> I use linterna Mágica on Midori Browser and even if it has some raw edges

File a bug report or a feature request with detailed description and a
way to duplicate the issues. Every bug and inconvenience matters to me.
After all the sole purpose of software (as every other tool) is to make
people's life easier.

> It is a very pleasure to know that you are on these forums.

I've been here for years. You can track me trough the web interface of
the forum/mailing list. :)

> Perhaps I've been a little impulsive on this comment but I like the fact that
> I'm meeting authors from some programs I usually use.

Thank you for all the kind words. I appreciate it.

antiesnob
Offline
Iscritto: 08/22/2013

Another option is to download the video and watch it with Totem.

davidnotcoulthard (non verificato)
davidnotcoulthard

ViewTube: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011 (note: contrary to what its name may suggest, it works on a lot of sites, though not every site out there, but only the ones it tells itself to be present in.