Video refuses to play.

[HermanDegenhart]

As most of you might be unaware of the problem, not if you are Dutch. The video's of the site http://www.elsevier.nl/video/ refuse to play on my Dell/Kubuntu Notebook. Kaffeine is a very good player, but obviously cannot cope with these video's. Does anybody has an idea of how to get Kaffeine, or another player for that matter, to play these video's? Thanks.

[dibl]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Hmmmm.

I have (all 64-bit) Kubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3 Beta 5, flashplugin-nonfree, gnash, mozilla-plugin-gnash, mozilla-plugin-vlc, and the vlc player. I just clicked your link, clicked the "play" icon on the video, and it just played. Very happy! I don't know if this will help you -- I hope so.

[HermanDegenhart]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Thanks for the effort, but it didn't solve the problem. I have installed all software you mentioned, but it didn't did the trick. The place where the video should appear looks like a piece of grey felt. It could be that this software doesn't work with the Konqueror webbrowser, but why not? Anyway, I shal remove the Mozilla plug-ins. Thanks again.

[HermanDegenhart]

Re: Video refuses to play.

In addition to my former reply, the video on the site http://thetempleinstitute.universalt...t-1-24iyar.wmv
does not play either. That is, one hears a voice, but see no pictures. The screen remains black.
My browser is the standard one for Kubuntu, Konqueror. In Ubuntu this video plays in Totem very well. Should I try to install Totem in Kubuntu as well? Is that really necessary, or is it rather a question of GStreamer versus Xine? I remember that in order to get everything playable in Ubuntu, one has to do a lot of work first. But Kubuntu differs from Ubuntu, so what to do in Kubuntu?

[3vi1]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Works for me. I'm using the mozilla-mplayer in firefox 3.

[HermanDegenhart]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Could Konqueror be the problem, as everybody seems to use Firefox. But if, why?
Or should I install a few more players? But why then is Kaffeïne not enough?
In Ubuntu I had installed the Gxine player as a kind of xine machine to facilitate other players. I don't know how this works, but somebody told me.

[daihard]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Hmmmm.

I have (all 64-bit) Kubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3 Beta 5, flashplugin-nonfree, gnash, mozilla-plugin-gnash, mozilla-plugin-vlc, and the vlc player. I just clicked your link, clicked the "play" icon on the video, and it just played. Very happy! I don't know if this will help you -- I hope so.

The OP is not the only one having issues with the video on that site (http://www.elsevier.nl/video). I also have Kubuntu 8.04 (albeit 32-bit), FF 3 RC1, flashplugin-nonfree, mozilla-plugin-vlc and the vlc player. The video screen greys out, and Firefox itself quits.

[UPDATE] I replaced vlc with mplayer by removing vlc-related packages and intalling mozilla-mplayer. Firefox still crashes, with the following error.

The program 'firefox' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)'.
 (Details: serial 57831 error_code 3 request_code 10 minor_code 0)
 (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
  that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
  To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
  option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
  backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
Locking assertion failure. Backtrace:
#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0xb7f2c767]
#1 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_lock+0x2e) [0xb7f2c81e]
#2 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 [0xb6a8b518]
#3 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6(XFreeCursor+0x25) [0xb6a678f5]
#4 /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN11QCursorDataD1Ev+0x3f) [0xb4cd8389]
#5 /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN7QCursorD1Ev+0x5a) [0xb4cd858e]
#6 /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3 [0xb4cd85d5]
#7 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(exit+0xd4) [0xb7ccb084]
#8 /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 [0xb6671637]
#9 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6(_XError+0xfe) [0xb6a8473e]
#10 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 [0xb6a8be5c]
#11 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6(_XReply+0x15a) [0xb6a8c21a]
#12 /usr/lib/libXext.so.6(DPMSCapable+0x99) [0xb64d32c9]
#13 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/mplayerplug-in-wmp.so(_Z12DPMSReenableP16nsPluginInstance+0x6e) [0xaf5271fe]
#14 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/mplayerplug-in-wmp.so(_ZN16nsPluginInstance8shutdownEv+0x78c) [0xaf52402c]
#15 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/mplayerplug-in-wmp.so(_ZN16nsPluginInstance4shutEv+0x58) [0xaf524248]
#16 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/mplayerplug-in-wmp.so(NPP_Destroy+0x33) [0xaf5269e3]
#17 /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so [0xb76eb081]
#18 /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so [0xb7297081]
#19 /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so [0xb7297494]

[dibl]

Re: Video refuses to play.

I revisited both links today. Elsevier no longer plays here. A little investigation reveals that it requires a browser plugin named "x-mplayer2" which turns out to be a Microsoft player (I'm just shocked ....). There is a plugin download for Firefox, but it is an .exe file, only for Windows. There are Mac versions as well, but there's no version for Linux.

The Templeinstitute link is actually a .wmv file, that you can download. If you download the file, it will play in vlc and I assume it would also play in mplayer. It's interesting stuff, BTW.

The only mystery to me is how Elsevier actually played yesterday.

[daihard]

Re: Video refuses to play.

I revisited both links today. Elsevier no longer plays here. A little investigation reveals that it requires a browser plugin named "x-mplayer2" which turns out to be a Microsoft player (I'm just shocked ....). There is a plugin download for Firefox, but it is an .exe file, only for Windows. There are Mac versions as well, but there's no version for Linux.

The Templeinstitute link is actually a .wmv file, that you can download. If you download the file, it will play in vlc and I assume it would also play in mplayer. It's interesting stuff, BTW.

The only mystery to me is how Elsevier actually played yesterday.

Oh no... Windows and Mac only... >

We see just too much of that crap every day, don't we?

[HermanDegenhart]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Thanks guys, I understand that the problem is unsolvable due to a lack of proper plugins.

[randcoop]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Actually, I use the gecko-mplayer plugin and it works quite well on the elesever site. No problem. Just click play and it starts.

I've had much better success with this plugin than the standard mozilla-mplayer. It's intended for use with the new Firefox 3: it doesn't seem to work at all in Konqueror.

The other link asks me what program I want to use to view it; I enter Kaffeine and it runs perfectly.

So neither of these is a codecs issue.

[dibl]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Actually, I use the gecko-mplayer plugin and it works quite well on the elesever site. No problem. Just click play and it starts.

Nope.

If you refer to gecko-mediaplayer, ver. 0.6.0 in the *buntu repos, I just installed it, along with mplayer and mozilla-mplayer. No joy at the Elsevier site. Could be a 64-bit thing, perhaps ....

[randcoop]

Re: Video refuses to play.

Yes, sorry, I meant the gecko-mediaplayer.

I suspect your problem is that Firefox is not invoking that plugin when you go to the site. Instead, it invokes your mplayer plugin by default.

One of the hardest things to get Firefox to do, I think, is to use one plugin over another. In my experience, it seems to want to use the mozilla-mplayer plugin. When I had both that plugin and the VLC plugin installed, for example, it would never use the VLC plugin.

To test my theory, you'd have to disable your mozilla-mplayer plugin somehow.

I don't know, of course, whether the gecko-mediaplayer works for the 64 bit version of Kubuntu. But it does work on this site for the 32 bit version. But I don't have any other media playing plugin installed to conflict with it.

[dibl]

Re: Video refuses to play.

@randcoop, this is intriguing! I did some experimentation this morning, but no breakthrough:

- un-installed vlc, mplayer, firefox, flashplugin-nonfree, gnash, all mozilla plugins, and gecko-mediaplayer, and rebooted my system.
- ran Adept updater, and then installed only firefox 3 and gecko-mediaplayer 0.6.0, and tried the Elsevier site -- nada

Opened the Firefox tools>add-ons>plugins, to see what it thinks it has, and found:

- Default Plugin
- Demo Print Plugin for *nix
- DivX (invoking Gecko)
- gecko
- QuickTime 6.0/7 (invoking Gecko)
- RealPlayer 9 (invoking Gecko)
- Shockwave Flash 9.0 r124
- Windows Media Player (invoking Gecko)

So, this looks like the setup that you're describing, but it doesn't play Elsevier.

A quick compatibility check:

- CNN videos play
- ABC news videos play
- BBC World News Live (Realplayer stream) -- nope
- BBC World News videos play
- BBC World News Radio (live audio stream) -- plays in standalone player
- Youtube videos play
- Foxnews videos play

So that's pretty good, except for the Realplayer issue.

So what's the problem with Elsevier? Now it might be a 64-bit issue, or else something is still interfering.

Any theories?

[dibl]

Re: Video refuses to play.

@Q -- had to go to my day job -- no Linux here. I'll check it tonight.