video streaming or making CNN Videos work??
 

ok folks, trying to get my streaming videos to work still. Kaffeine starts up, then it says "audio is being used by another device" and then the video freeze's up. i tried the available codec32 but i still get errors. any comers? thanks--lenny

CNN problems
 

I know this isn't answering your problem. But I can't get CNN videos to work, either.

They are definitely geared to Windows users with MediaPlayer 9 installed. I have gotten video on other sites to work, but not CNN.

The fact that neither the .ccs nor the HTML4 they use on their pages passes W3C validation might have something to do with it.
:tisk:
Their javascripts are probably just as buggy.

Anybody get CNN vids to work in any version of Linux?
:confused:

yup----this has always been a real head scratcher.:scratch: i love my Linux but i have to give my brain air at times.....:cry:

Just to be sure we're talking about the same thing
http://www.cnn.com/US/
anything under the "Watch Video" heading on the right side streams np here.

I'm running Mepis 6.0 with all the updates. It posted a message about needing windows media player, but clicking on 'continue' brought up mplayer in a seperate window.

So why isn't it working for you? Not sure. My browser settings are close to default.Possibly relevant things on my system;

mplayer (the gui version)
mozilla-mplayer

What does typing "about: plugins" in firefox address bar tell you?
Mine has headings named;

mplayerplug-in 3.25 Filename:mplayerplug-in.so
Windows Media Player Plugin Filename:mplayerplug-in-wmp.so
RealPlayer 9 Filename:mpayerplug-in-rm.so
Google VLC multimedia plugin 1.0 Filename:mplayerplug-in-gmp.so

Hope there's a clue in there somewhere. Konqueror also streams CNN on my machine. I've had my own streaming problems. These things can be hard to nail down.

Why can't these websites use something that is not platform specific, like Adobe FLASH! Write an email to CNN and complain about this. Also let them know that their news story sucks, like that episode where they equated Barrack Obama to the Iranian president because of the way they dressed alike.

Multimedia on Linux
 

I run Suse 10.1 & 10.2 on two laptops, and Fedora Core 6 on a desktop. All 3 have all the plugins mentioned by muddywaters, and all play the video clips on CNN OK. Recently I started getting that anoyning message about needing to upgrade my Windows Media Player, but I just click continue and it works. Whenever I've had a problem it is because they have a duff URL, and usually that clip won't play in Internet Ecplorer on Windows XP either!

Have a search on LQ Forums for "multimedia" and you'll find some usefull stickies. The one for Suse 10.2 is good as it lists all the plugins available. Other wise look here http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/

PS If you don't use Suse, then you can ignore the bits about YaST and smart.

I had a similar problem with Fox news. If you download the right plugins, the audio plays but the video stays black.



When I tried Fox with Konqueror, the audio and video worked just fine. I think that CNN worked but I'm not sure about that.



Daily motion also works with Linux, if you like music. They have some things that Yahoo music doesn't have.

This solution solved the foxnews problem for me
http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=372

lenny
A cnn video site with less shenanigans might work.
http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html

How is abcnews working for you folks? It only works here in konqueror.

thanks Muddy, will give it a shot.and it wasen't so much CNN, but all the streaming videos sites (abc,fox,etc.) wouldn't work. will be back......:study:

Okay, thought it was specifically CNN.

Seeing as mplayer is standing in for windows media player, you will want the w32codecs package if you don't already have it.

The quick and dirty way is to download the "all" codecs package from mplayer and copy to /usr/lib/win32/. The nicer way is enabling the proper repository and downloading with synaptic. The mepis wiki has the info, though I can't guarantee the repository lists there are 100% up-to-date.

btw, using firefox 1.5.0.10 here. Newer versions of firefox may have issues I'm not aware of.

Fix Confirmed
 

I tested your solution for my old desktop which I updated to run Mepis 7.0 and my Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop, which runs fedora 8 and it worked out perfectly both times. I used it for Fox News video, which worked with sound only before.



Weirdly enough, it says that it disables videos when the opposite occurs in the Linux mint window.

i started useing pclinux2007--where it works. Mepis would not play it---for me anyway. how is Mepis 7? i love Mepis if it would see the stuff pclinux does.

Shop Around -- Its all free (except for the disc)
 

Why not try the live CD to see what happens first? Mepis is excellent when working with hardware. It even supports some PCI wireless cards and has lots of printer drivers built right in.

You can download it here. http://www.mepis.org/mirrors You need to burn the CD as an ISO9660 file. I think that Mepis 7 is more capable then the others. In any event, try the Mepis Live CD, one of the Fedora 7 or 8 live CDs, and SuSE 10.3 live CD. See if Mandriva is right for you if they have a live disc (not sure if they do).

One of these is bound to meet your needs. All these distros are strong with the command line as well as the GUI interface. All can be had with KDE desktop, which I personally prefer.

Hi, Lenny.
I've got Mepis 7.0, with the debian-multimedia video & audio packages installed afterwards. Both CNN and ABC videos work for me. But CNN is still a very buggy site. I got dozens of errors and warnings logged in Firefox about their bad .css and javascripts. The first time I tried to load the site, the whole desktop froze up on me. I rebooted, restarted Firefox and had it reload everything from where it crashed [I have it set to default "restore tabs from previous session."] This time I didn't touch anything, didn't try to drag or resize the window: just let it load. It was OK, and the videos played, but it made Firefox consume a huge amount of system resources.

BBC videos play well when launched in a separate Realplayer window, and the BBC site doesn't hog system resources like CNN. Realplayer is one of the default packages that come with Mepis 7.0

Bottom line: Mepis will play the stuff, but CNN is such a crappy website I don't recommend it.

I'm not a MEPIS user, but something must be wrong because CNN's videos are all in Flash 9. If you have Flash, then you should be able to view CNN's video pages, as well as Fox news. I don't know of any websites anymore that are specific towards an OS, except for BBC. Fox, CNN, ABC, NY Times - they are all Flash based.