X11: Xine United

Here's a puzzle for you. When I first tried to get embedded media working in Firefox, I installed the MediaPlayerConnectivity extension and had it open files in xine. I gave up on this plan because xine wouldn't play QuickTime (.mov) files, like the movie trailers at Apple's web site, forcing me to use MPlayer. So I used MPlayer for all embedded media until I predictably got tired of it, and then I switched to VLC for a while. When it became apparent that VLC wouldn't give me DVD playback without some serious reconfiguration, I returned to my original strategy in desperation. Except this time it was a flawless victory.



I wasn't sure whether to be overjoyed or furious. I mean, after all the time I spent trying to get embedded media to play correctly… Let's review the sequence of events.

1. Installed MediaPlayerConnectivity and xine.
   
2. Installed MPlayer (and XMMS).
3. Removed MPlayer, xine and MediaPlayerConnectivity.
   
4. Installed VLC.
5. Removed VLC.
6. Reinstalled MediaPlayerConnectivity and xine.
7. Holy shit, it works!

What happened between events 1 and 6 to cause event 7? For a while, I couldn't account for it. Then I remembered that Synaptic gives you two ways to remove packages, removal and complete removal. The latter removes all files associated with the package. With the former, "configuration files and user created data" remain untouched.

Maybe files lingering from one of the other packages made it possible for xine to play embedded media it couldn't play before. I doubt they came from VLC; it had more problems than xine did. MediaPlayerConnectivity doesn't include any codecs, and XMMS had been on my system before I ever tried xine. That leaves MPlayer.

I decided to investigate the xine documentation. It contains a section that recommends downloading Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) from the MPlayer site in order to play QuickTime files. On the other hand, it recommends a similar solution to playing Windows Media Video (WMV). I still can't play WMV in xine—or any other media player, for that matter. Eat my shorts, Microsoft. You and your proprietary video format can suck my USB dongle. In any case, I'm not willing to discount the MPlayer theory yet. I'll look into this tomorrow if I have time.

By the way, xine has beautiful DVD playback. All I had to do was get the libdvdcss2 package. I've seen suggestions that the use of this decryption library is illegal in the U.S. So it's illegal to play a DVD I bought with my own money in a computer likewise purchased? That's ridiculous. Nonetheless I feel obliged to warn you. Now here's how to install the package.

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

It's that easy. Go enjoy your favorite movie. You are big winner.

Overextended

I've spent the last few hours searching for an elegant way to play embedded media in Firefox. I hoped to gain the capability to play multimedia within the browser but without using MPlayer, which was unreliable for me in the past. Sadly I met with only limited success.

MediaPlayerConnectivity

Initially I tried using an extension called MediaPlayerConnectivity. The interface was refreshingly clean, but I disliked the fact that it doesn't play embedded media in the browser window. Instead it opens another application. So I had to install xine for video playback. This combination worked well for most video formats but couldn't handle Quicktime movies and m3u playlists smoothly. I knew the MPlayer plug-in would give me Quicktime playback. I gave in and installed it. Incidentally the MPlayer package depends on XMMS, so I had to reinstall XMMS and try my hardest not to gouge out my eyes. At this point I was getting frustrated. I had intended to install one item and found myself forced to install several others I didn't want. I thought,

Fine, I'll just go back to using MPlayer for all embedded media. It worked well most of the time.

Easier said than done. I uninstalled MediaPlayerConnectivity using the Tools -> Extensions menu. I had been running Firefox from the Terminal to catch any error messages that might appear. When I restarted Firefox, the Terminal spewed out over a dozen lines of the following.

*** nsInstallLogReader::_parseLine - failed to deregister chrome

I'm guessing this means Firefox was unable to remove the extension's registry entry. Below that it printed another error twice. I've truncated it slightly.

*** getItemProperty failing for lack of an item. This means getResourceForItem failed to locate a resource for aItemID (item ID = http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/…/mediaplayerconnectivity-0.3.9-fx+ns.xpi, property = internalName)

Nonetheless I resolved not to reinstall the extension. I began testing MPlayer to see what surprises it had in store for me.

MPlayer and VLC

It soon became clear that MPlayer was just as fickle as ever. I grew particularly annoyed with its tendency to stop playback in the middle of a streaming MP3. First it forced me to reinstall XMMS, and now this? Je refuse! I closed Firefox and removed MPlayer and XMMS. Then I decided to try VLC.

I installed the player and the Firefox plug-in and have been testing it with various different video formats. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work much more reliably than MPlayer. More extensive tests will be necessary to determine my next course of action. Once I get the embedded media problem solved, I can move to other tasks.

• Optimize NVIDIA performance.
• Install necessary packages for DVD playback.

Of course, it's entirely possible I'll grow weary of fussing with the embedded media and save it for a time when I'm less irritable. Otherwise I'm liable to start removing the heads and spinal columns of innocent bystanders.



I'm serious as a heart attack.