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Flash for Linux -- It's Not for UsersFlash for Linux -- It's Not for UsersPosted Feb 16, 2007 11:33 UTC (Fri) by endecotp (guest, #36428)In reply to: Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users by debacle Parent article: Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Designers (internetnews.com)
I agree about 95%. The 5% is that flash has, mysteriously, now become the de-facto web video standard. Does anyone know why that is? If you were a web site designer having to select a video format, what would lead you towards Flash and away from the alternatives? We need to understand why it is preferred so that we can make the freer alternatives more appealing to the potential users.
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Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 11:56 UTC (Fri) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link] Think it's partly because of youtube and google video using it,and that you're done on the client when you install a flash plugin, which is less problematic than local videoplayers, with their codec hell, used in embedded streams, with their horrible javascript mess protecting/helping it on most sites.
They could ofcourse also agree on a simple self invented standard there, say xvid or theora and some simplified standardized embedding wrapper glue everyone can use, and make a small multiplatform oss plugin for it, but then the problem is to get people to install it, people who already have adopted flash now, will not want to take an extra step.
Maybe that new stuff the BBC comes up with will give online video a boost.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 12:27 UTC (Fri) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] Isn't that rather sidestepping the question - why did google and youtube choose it? Perhaps the answer is the rest of the para (which I admit to not fully understanding): i.e. 'less problematic than local videoplayers'.
How is the GNU flash project coming along? Not being able to follow youtube or google video links _is_ annoying. But x86-only solutions are completely useless to me.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 12:42 UTC (Fri) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] In fact, I have no problem with Flash video (.flv), which is displayed by mplayer nicely. Not in the browser window, but if one sends me a youtube link, I use youtube-dl anyway.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 14:23 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Isn't that rather sidestepping the question - why did google and youtube choose it? Google Video used modified version of VLC initially. They switched to Flash later. And the reason is obvious: Flash is already installed on millions of desktops, any other plugin must be installed manually. End of story. Flash won. The fate of any other player will be the same. Of course it can be good idea to offer something other as "premium" content (better quality, for example), but here the patents are big problem...
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 17:57 UTC (Fri) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] > Flash is already installed on millions of desktops, any other plugin> must be installed manually.
I feared that this was the case but wasn't sure.
Perhaps if Mozilla could be persuaded to ship with MPEG support built in, that would help a bit. Are there any major technical, legal or other obstacles to that?
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 20, 2007 1:07 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link] Well, MPEG is heavily patented in a number of regions. So Mozilla.org would either have to risk being sued or pay a per-unit royalty for each browser they distribute. Not really feasible.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 17, 2007 5:53 UTC (Sat) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] The platforms took too long to deploy friendly, well working, universally installed browser plugins for video formats.
You can blame this largely on turf wars over formats, patents, imprecise specifications and so on. Macromedia/Adobe, who was getting their little bundle of binaries installed pretty much everywhere somehow (by default? not sure, but certainly it shows up on most web-enabled computers), added a video format and provided a way to create "reliable" user interfaces for it. When I say "reliable" I mean that the interface can be expected to be the same on the computers on which it works at all, which some people value (I do not).
In short, Microsoft, Apple, Real and others all failed due to stupidity and roadblocks, and Macromedia/Adobe succeeded by setting the bar a bit lower.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 20:51 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link] I never had any problem just clicking the 'download' button in Google Video and playing the resulting avi in xine/mplayer.
Is that avi a flash video? Somehow I doubt it.
I know youtube uses flash, in youtube I have to use Video Downloader and the resulting file is a flv file (which mplayer plays perfectly by the way, probably illegally where software patents are an issue). But flv is a horrible movie format, both in quality and functionality.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 17, 2007 6:00 UTC (Sat) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Google video's primary interface at this time is FLV (VP6??) served via flash methods played by the flash video player with flash interface.
They have, as you say, always provided AVI enclosed files (the files identify themselves as encoded by XVID) which are superior in bandwidth, quality, and cpu overhead. However, this is a minority feature. Some videos have it turned off (???) and it's labelled "download", and most people just watch the video in flash "without downloading". (Yes, I know obviously streaming and downloading are the same thing but users and media companies seem intent on pretending otherwise.)
I'm not sure how Google stores the files internally, and whether it converts once or on the fly.
I would, btw, not describe mplayer's flv playback as "perfect". It's certainly adequate though.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 14:09 UTC (Fri) by ipes (guest, #43384) [Link] If you want your browser to play this 5% and ignore the rest, it's even easier than using a web proxy. Just tell your browser to use an MPlayer based plugin for the flash mime type. For Konqueror that plugin would be KPlayer (or KMPlayer), for Firefox there's mplayerplug-in.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 18:12 UTC (Fri) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] > Just tell your browser to use an MPlayer based plugin for the> flash mime type
Thanks for that suggestion. I do have the mplayer plugin but have never experimented with the mime type association stuff. I have, however, tried using the Firefox "VideoDownloader" extension to grab the videos and to play them with mplayer. I've been about 50% successful with this, with mplayer failing mysteriously the rest of the time. This "VideoDownloader" thing also has the surprising feature of "phoning home" to tell its creator what you are downloading, which seems odd for something distributed from addons.mozilla.org.
More fundamentally, however, I believe this requires that you install binary windows codecs. I know that these a fairly widely available, but I'm unsure of the legality of them, and they are utterly useless for non-x86.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 16, 2007 22:00 UTC (Fri) by ipes (guest, #43384) [Link] "The highlights of this release are native VC-1/WMV3, On2 VP5 and VP62 (used in some Flash video files) decoding, which works even on non-Intel platforms..."
That from MPlayer 1.0rc1 release announcement last October.
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 17, 2007 6:03 UTC (Sat) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] I have tried VideoDownloader, and recommend against using it. It is not very reliable, and has a somewhat clunky interface. I've had it crash firefox, I've had it break during upgrades.
I'm quite happy with youtube-dl, a python script which just downloads the flv files to the current directory. It takes any sort of semi-appropriate youtube url as an argument. http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/
Flash for Linux -- It's Not for Users Posted Feb 20, 2007 8:07 UTC (Tue) by Seegras (guest, #20463) [Link] Even easier, my yousuck-script is just one line (splitted for your reading pleasure):
wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4)" \
web video standard Posted Feb 16, 2007 14:19 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Because 90-95% of the web users have Flash or can get it easily. That can't be said forany other web video formats. Remember the days of "click here for the WMV if you have Windows, and click here for the QuickTime (with patented/proprietary codec) if you have a Mac" ?
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