[NBLUG/talk] Totem issues

Kyle Rankin kyle at nblug.org
Tue Feb 21 11:42:51 PST 2006


On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 11:30:35AM -0800, William Tracy wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I got a friend (who has no previous Linux experience) to install
> Ubuntu on an old laptop. Now he wants to look at some movies that are
> embedded in web pages.
> 
> The page he showed me specifically is http://www.robotcombat.com/ .
> Click on the "Team Nightmare" button on the left; the next page
> contains an embedded movie that Totem tries to load, but then cannot
> find the codec for. Unfortunately, Totem isn't helpful about what that
> codec *is*. A peek at the HTML source suggests that it's a Quicktime
> movie (.mov extension).
> 
> He then clicks on the "Video" link on the left menu, and Firefox
> closes without even an error message.
> 
> So, right now, I'm wondering if anyone knows how to at least coax any
> more useful information out of Totem or Firefox (right now I'm
> thinking I should have tried launching Firefox from the console to see
> if I would get any more output there). I'd also be interested in
> hearing about other movie players I should try installing that might
> work better.
> 
> Ideas? Any more specific information I need to get next time I visit? :-)
> 
> William
> (Who hates movies embedded in web pages...)
> 

Basically the issue is that Ubuntu defaults to using Totem, which defaults
to using gstreamer. A better solution is to get rid of the totem plugin and
use the mozilla-mplayer plugin instead. 

Here's the ubuntu wiki link on how to install all the restricted codecs
you'll need:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats#head-fda9cc5147253891fe3047263b82d787ab025bba

and here's the ubuntu wiki link on how to install mozilla-mplayer's plugin:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats#head-e25afe1552d3a818f60e64143931b2d8e0522267

After you install mozilla-mplayer, go into your /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
directory (or it might be /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins) and move all of
the plugins that mention totem elsewhere. Then restart firefox and it will
start using the mplayer plugin.

-- 
Kyle Rankin
NBLUG President
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org
IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug 
kyle at nblug.org



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