Hello all,
First, the subject of the question, namely, how to get MPlayer to read inside a web link for the real URL of a streaming media file.

e.g. http://www.apple.com/trailers/newlin...trailer_s.html should show the trailer to the movie, but all that happens, even from the clickable link, or by passing the URL as an argument from the CLI, is precisely nil as far as playback is concerned. CLI readout follows:

MPlayer 1.0pre5-3.3.4 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer Team

CPU: Advanced Micro Devices Athlon MP/XP Thoroughbred 2001 MHz (Family: 6, Stepping: 1)
Detected cache-line size is 64 bytes
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection - WARNING - this is not optimal!
To get best performance, recompile MPlayer with --disable-runtime-cpudetection.
Reading config file /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf: No such file or directory
Reading config file /home/vic/.mplayer/config
Reading /home/vic/.mplayer/codecs.conf: 73 audio & 180 video codecs
Font /home/vic/.mplayer/font/font.desc loaded successfully! (206 chars)
Using usleep() timing
Input config file /home/vic/.mplayer/input.conf parsed: 53 binds

Playing http://www.apple.com/trailers/newlin...railer_s.html.
Resolving www.apple.com for AF_INET...
Connecting to server www.apple.com[17.254.0.91]:80 ...
Cache size set to 8192 KBytes
Connected to server: www.apple.com
Cache fill: 0.11% (9199 bytes)

Exiting... (End of file)

This happens for all trailers of apples site, not just this one.

However, if I inspect the html for the web page, and find the true URL, in this case:
http://movies.apple.com/movies/newli...lular_240.mov, and use that as the argument from the CLI, then it plays, just about.
So, partially working then.
However, there is a second problem, and that is that the video and audio drops out after approx 20 seconds, followed by the message Your system is too SLOW to play this! As the playback of DVDs is fine, and streaming media based on REAL is fine, I suspect this may be just the fact that my ADSL simply doesn't cut it with quicktime clips, but I would like to know if that is the case, or do I have a secondary problem.

So, in conclusion, I can live with problem No.2 if I have to, but problem No. 1 could do with being answered please.

TIA

Well, I have checked thar url, and I can play the movie, so first 2 questions that come into my mind are:

1.- Which browser are you using?
2.- Did you install the mplayer plugin for being able to see streaming media?

The fact that you can see the movie if you paste the URL, may mean you don't have the plugin installed or bad-installed.
Ckeck it out.

Hope it helps

Hi Hammett, I am using Firefox, with the browser plug-in enabled as per aboutlugins. The strange thing is that it won't work from the CLI either, as per my first post. I wondered if you had managed to get this to work from the CLI or not.
Also, the problem only seems to affect quicktime movies, as I have since tried Real streaming and Micro$oft (cough, choke) streaming with no problems, so it seems as though for some reason MPlayer just doesn't read within web pages the references to .MOV extensions. One other thing I have also discovered, is that quicktime streaming works from Konqueror, though with the attendant dropping frames/stuttering audio problem. Obviously these two things are probably connected, but I am not ywt proficient enough with Linux to find the cure without help.

Thanks

Do you have all of your codecs in a folder in /usr/lib/win32? This is how mine works in mandrake 9.1, I was able to play your quick time trailer at that web page.

CLI = Command Line Input??? Sorry for asking, but English is not my mothertongue language....And, as FF103 said, check mplayer's website and download the codecs if you haven't done it already.
Apart from that, I cannot think in any other solution. I'm using Firefox as well, and I had no problems. Which version of Firefox are you using? I'm using 0.9.3, maybe you want to upgradre if you have a lower version.