Hello everyone,

I'm relatively new to Linux, experimenting with a few distributions including Mandriva 2006 and SUSE 10 OSS.

I'm looking for a bit of advice regarding Firefox plugins on both distributions. Specifically, I'd like to get the video articles presented on news.bbc.co.uk and cnn.com working. At present, what I get with the BBC is a 'missing pluging' message where the video should be - clicking on it results in a few seconds' wait followed by a message saying that Firefox could not install the plugin - and with CNN I just get a warning saying that the site is optimised for Windows Media Player 9 and that (unsurprisingly) it can't find the player.

I've had a look at the MPlayer plugin (mplayerplugin.sourceforge.net), but the instructions relate to Mozilla, and I don't know whether it will work with Firefox (sorry, new to Linux and a bit hesitant about blindly trying stuff unless I think it stands a reasonable chance of working). I also read somewhere, but I can't remember where, that if you're using the MPlayer plugin to view streaming media, it needs to be launched with a wrapper of some kind. Even if I could remember where I read this and could find the information again, I wouldn't know how to implement it. Has anyone got this type of thing working?

Also, I'm a frequent buyer of CDs from Amazon - how can I get Amazon's audio clips to play? At present, I get a message asking me what I want to do with a file called hurl.exe. I tried installing RealPlayer 10 on the Mandriva box, but it wouldn't play them, saying that the codec was out of date and no longer supported.

One last question on the subject of plugins - I found the Java plugin on mozdev.org, but again the instructions say that it will only work with Mozilla. Is this true? Where can I find a Java plugin that will work with Firefox, and how do I get it working?

Can anyone help? My systems are as follows:
(a) Mandriva 2006, originally Free edition, subsequently upgraded to Official, and Firefox 1.0.6. In terms of media players, I have Kaffeine 0.7 and MPlayer 1.0-1pre7 installed. All of these came from Mandriva rpms, either from the original install, subsequent updates, contrib packages or similar.

(b) SUSE 10 OSS with the latest release of Firefox (1.5.0.1), mozplugger and MPlayer 1.0.1pre7 installed.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks

James.

First: Firefox is a Mozilla product, so the plugins for Mozilla will work with firefox.
The mplayer-plugin, you mentioned, will play Audio-/Video files pretty well. I guess you already found the hp yourself, but just to be safe, here is the URL:
http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/

Java: Download and install it from here:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp
After installation you will have a file named 'libjavaplugin_oji.so' somewhere in the installation (sub)directory (search for it). Then you simply copy this file to your '~/.mozilla/plugins' or '/path/to/firefox/plugins'. Latter is for every user and the other just for the current one.

Another member pointed out this link (thanks shepper)
http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html
It's a linux friendly cnn video site.

Did you try the BBC links when you had RealPlayer installed? They should have worked.

That codec(?) (hurl) has caused problems for me and some other users too. If the clip has a windows media option try that. That's the only way they play for me.

This site: http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/

has a lot of good information and resources to get all the media stuff working on SuSE 10

Many thanks to everyone who responded so quickly and helpfully to my request.

After going through the Jem Report (thanks Yoda47), and adding a couple of extra packages from the repositories, I have got more or less everything up and running on the SUSE box:

- BBC: works great with RealPlayer 10.
- CNN: works fine with MPlayer now, didn't even need to go to the Linux-friendly page (thanks muddywaters and shepper).
- Java plugin: installed as per the Jem Report, works great.

The only remaining problem is with the audio clips on Amazon. After doing some reading, I've found out that the reason they won't play is because Amazon use the RealAudio 2.0 codec, which apparently is not supported any more (But if it's not supported, why can I play these clips using RealOne player on the Windows box? I'm confused...)

I have asked them nicely, but realistically I don't think Amazon are going to change their entire content just for me, so does anyone know if it's possible to get hold of this old codec anywhere? I've had a look for it on the web but come up with nothing so far.

Thanks again to everyone who's looked into this for me

Rgds

James.

Does anything in this thread help? http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...light=hurl.exe
It never has worked for me. My understanding is hurl.exe is some form of redirection and the .exe extension can cause problems. No idea why amazon insists on using it.

Starting a new post in case your on email notification.Wasted way to much time on this lol.

This is how I got amazon real links to work in Slackware.
Copy dnet.so.6.0 and ddnet.so.6.0 from your win32codecs (the ones from mplayer)to your Realplayer codecs. In my case
/usr/local/Realplayer/codecs/
then create this link in the realplayer codecs directory
ln -s dnet.so.6.0 dnet.so
If this borks on you I take no responsibility You have been warned.
Lord knows how this affects the eula.

Just found the link again
http://italcorner.com/realdnet.html

Muddywaters, you're a genius! I did have to do one extra thing after following your plan, namely delete mplayerplug-in-rm.so from my Firefox plugins directory - before doing that, Firefox was trying to open the Amazon clips using the MPlayer plugin.

After deleting mplayerplug-in-rm.so, the Amazon clips now open perfectly in RealPlayer, and everything that was working before (news feeds, other streaming media) is still working now.

So that's it - all done! Thank you so much for your help.

What's an EULA?

Cheers Muddywaters and everyone else for helping me out with this, I'd never have figured all this out by myself.

Regards

James.

Yeah, like a parrot

Another user couldn't start RealPlayer after applying this little trick. If the same thing happens to you AND you're sure you applied it properly please post back as a warning to others.

edit/ the 'you' is generic, not directly addressing JamesHall