Watching CNN video [FC5]???

[Kenny Gow]

Claude Jones wrote:
> On Sat September 9 2006 8:20 am, Claude Jones wrote:
>> I've theorized about different packaging of
>> mplayer/mplayerplug-in being the culprit, and have tried both
>> the Livna, the ones from the mplayerplug-in website, and one's
>> from Blag.
> 
> Ironically, I footnote the point made above, by an experience I 
> had  just after sending that post. I tried a CNN video at that 
> moment, and it completely stalled after opening the player 
> window; all the flash stuff appeared, the messages about 
> accessing the file appeared, it appeared to connect and the play 
> window turned black as if it was going to play - then, 
> nothing... When I tried to close the window, Firefox completely 
> closed down. I checked my updates moments later after repeating 
> this behavior a second time. I had mplayer locked (I use Smart 
> which allows you to lock packages from being updated), but there 
> was a Livna package available. I unlocked mplayer and installed 
> the latest Livna package. After a reboot for other reasons, the 
> same CNN file played almost immediately. 

The best way I know of to diagnose mplayerplug-in problems is to 
capture the URL of the video you are trying to play and try to play it 
from the command line with mplayer. The mplayerplug-in just calls 
mplayer with some specific options which you can see if you list all 
processes (ps aux) while the video is trying to play.

Once you have the URL, trying to play it from the command line with 
mplayer will show you any problems it finds. It may help to run 
mplayer in verbose mode (-v). One of the most common problems is the 
cache size setting.

Also, if you right-click on the mplayerplug-in window itself, you 
might check the settings under "Configure".

Here's a CNN video you can try from today's Shuttle launch:

mplayer -cache 512 
mms://wmscnn.stream.aol.com.edgestreams.net/cnn/tech/2006/09/09/vo.shuttle.launch.nasa.ws.wmv

--Kenny