Do you have to use flash player to play youtube videos?
 

I would really like to know if there is something more lightweight you can use to watch Youtube videos. I have an older system. Athlon 1ghz with a 32mb nvidia graphics card with Linux Mint LXDE operating system running the Midori web browser. Everything works fine until I play Youtube videos with the flash player plugin. It plays non-HD stuff okay but when you hit HD it just lags the hell out of it. There has got to be a way to make it run more efficient. Thanks!

Maybe the HTML5 version of Youtube will work. I'm not sure about the cpu load, but it doesn't use flash.
Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/testtube.

also, you can try to find an older version of the flash player.

good luck

gnash = free flash player... not sure if it is more lightweight or not though

The video application is written in flash, so yes, as long as you intend to play them online, you need to use it. You could try substituting gnash for the Macromedia flashplayer. It's a bit lighter, but it's also unfortunately less-developed and might not support everything out there.

As mentioned above, Youtube has recently started an HTML5 beta version of their site that doesn't require flash, but unfortunately they only use the h264 codec right now, which most browsers don't support, with Google Chrome being the only one I know of that runs on Linux.

However, since your problem is only with HD video, that tells me that the problem might not be flash itself, but that your system just doesn't have the power to process the high-definition codecs fast enough. I suggest downloading one or two of these HD videos directly using one of the many download tools available out there (example) and trying to play them directly on your machine in a stand-alone player. This should confirm if it's flash or the video itself that's to blame.

YouTube HTML5 works in Chromium and Midori for me.

The thing is that even if you tell YouTube to use HTML5, only *some* videos are played with HTML5, most still bring up the Flash player.

I tried Gnash before, and it did work with YouTube (although is was a tad glitchy). Pretty much nothing else worked, though.

Finally, you might like this site:

http://tinyogg.com/

YouTube HTML5 works in Chromium and Midori for me.

The thing is that even if you tell YouTube to use HTML5, only *some* videos are played with HTML5, most still bring up the Flash player.

I tried Gnash before, and it did work with YouTube (although is was a tad glitchy). Pretty much nothing else worked, though.

Finally, you might like this site:

http://tinyogg.com/

I can't get Gnash to work on all the browsers I have installed on my linux mint operating system. I used the package manager to install it. It just tells me to install the latest version of adobe flash.

I heard that Mint comes with non-free codecs, so does it come with Flash, too?

Or at least doesn't make installing Flash difficult?

:confused:

I have used clipnabber.com to download the files and save as mp4 and play them with kaffiene. Although lately have had to jump thru a few hoops to get the file.

@MTK

I tried the YouTube HTML5 Beta thing (installed Midori just to try it), but I actually notice that it's quite a bit slower than the YouTube Flash-based player, and maxes out the CPU time usage. Could it just be that this system is too slow? I tried it from this computer, and it is a bit on the weak side: a 2.8 GHz P4 (no SMP :() with 256 MiB of RAM.

I haven't really noticed it being slower, probably because I don't watch YouTube that often and because I have a fast computer.

The main problem is that I can't adjust the volume.

When I move the mouse over the volume button, the bar appears. When I move the mouse toward the slider, it disappears the instand the mouse leaves the button.

What's the problem if you install adobe flash?

If you haven't heard, there's some big news related to this thread. Google has just open-sourced it's new VP8 codec and promised that all YouTube videos will be converted to it, and Mozilla has already started integrating it into Firefox. In the near future you should be able to watch most of the videos without needing flash!

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/05/fir...tube-and-webm/

And the relevant LQ thread (at least, the only one I could find at this time):

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...inally-808920/

On the other hand, VP8 is probably just as processing-intensive as h264, so it may not actually help your playback problems.

How do you use debian sid with kde 3.5?
kde 3.5 is with debian lenny.

there are also gnash and swflash but adobe flash player it's the best, and the more complex

Very carefully. ;)

Basically I'm doing it by simply not letting apt update any kde packages to 4. Unfortunately I also know that eventually dependency needs will force my hand (it's already making me hold back a couple of fairly important non-kde packages). I've been wondering what to do when that time arrives, and it looks like it's getting pretty close. I've already been forced to go through the move on my other machine...which is the only reason I don't use it as my main system, since it's actually more powerful than this one.

But that's all I'll say about it here, since it's way off topic. Not to mention that I'll be in full-on rant mode very quickly if I don't stop myself now.