On (K)Ubuntu Hoary 5.04, if I clicked on a RealPlayer link, like here: http://www.cbc.ca/national/ (Watch the National), RealPlayer would pop up and play it. For .mov links like at apple.com/trailers/, the MPlayer plugin would take priority. Everything just worked.

In (K)Ubuntu Breezy, the mplayer-plugin in Firefox 1.5 takes priority on the cbc site and others for Real media files and then just chokes on the file and never plays it.

I have the PLF repo RealPlayer10 loaded. It works and if I grab the ram file from the cbc site or others, open RealPlayer and run it from there, without firefox1.5 as a middleman, it works. So, it appears to be Firefox related.

In KDE 3.5, I've changed the Preference Order under File Associations so Real file format pulls up Real player not MPlayer. But, this doesn't have an effect in Firefox.

I've uninstalled Real and installed it again. Plugins in the Mozilla libraries disappear and then reappear correctly. But the reinstall hasn't helped.

The two RealPlayer firefox helix plugins (.so and .xpt) are in the /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/ and usr/lib/mozilla/ folders.

So, as you can see, I've been Googling and exhausted the avenues I can find but I keep coming up empty.


Can anyone lend their expertise?

Rory

Have a look in your .kde folder of your home directory. Sometimes another audio/video app leaves a file hanging around that gets in the way. Happens to me every so often. Sorry, can't remember what the files are called.

If you're desparate to see whether this is the problem and have got root access you could do the following. It's how I found the rogue file

log into root
move your /home/whateverUSER/.kde /home/whateverUser/.kde.20051220
log into whateverUSER
follow screen prompts to reset kde and then any minimal reconfig that may be required
determine whether RealPlay works as required. It the same problem persists back to square 1. If it cures the problem logout of whateverUser and back into root
move /home/whateverUSER/.kde /home/whateverUser/.kde.20051220.minimal

and

move /home/whateverUSER/.kde.20051220 /home/whateverUser/.kde

then my comparing the two directories try and find the rogue file.

Alternatively if you have root access you could set up a new user and do it that way. A bit less "sudden death".

In <real_installed_dir>/mozilla/,
Try to copy .xpt file to <firefox_installed_dir>/components/.

and copy .so file to <firefox_installed_dir>/plugins/.


Then you can enjoy with realplayer after restarting firefox.


cheers

I have the nphelix.xpt and nphelix.so files both in /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins.

So, the nphelix.xpt should be in /components, instead? I tried that. Didn't make any difference.

In any case, RealPlayer .rm files are pulled up in Firefox without issue. It's the .ram files that I'm having a problem with. Everything else is okay

Here's my Firefox plugins box in preferences. See anything odd here?

http://www.childwelfare.ca/research/firefoxgrab.png


Thanks for the reply. Any further help you can provide, I appreciate.

Rory

I don't know if you already solved this problem, but this is how I did it:

Starting from no plugins..

1. Install RealPlay plugin and check it works
2. Install MPlayer plugin.
3. As root, search for and delete all instances of mplayerplug-in-rm.so and .xpt (this is the bit that plays .ram files and I find it at /usr/lib/firefox/plugins /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins)
4. Check the RealPlay plugin still works and if not, re-install it.

Hope that helps.

Nikkko, you made my week!!!!! That solved the problem!!! All I had to do was erase those two plugins in the three folders you noted. I restarted Firefox and now the .ram files work.

I did not have to re-install realplayer 10 or do anything else. Just erase those plugins, which was overriding the realplayer ones already there, it appears!

Thank you very much!!!!! Actually, what I should say is, THANK YOU ***VERY*** MUCH!!!!!!

Rory

Glad to help!

You could have just set "enable-helix=0" in the mplayerplug-in.conf file and that would have done the same thing as deleting the .so and .xpt files.

When I eventually found where those parameters could be set, I discovered that it didn't work for me. (Did you know that there's a right click context menu over an open mplayerplugin window which allows you to set those variables? I found that by accident). Which is why I ended up deleting the files.

Of course I know about the right click menu, I wrote mplayerplug-in. (there is even a screen shot of the menu on the home page) All of the configuration information is covered on the mplayerplug-in home page. There are certain cases where you need to manually delete your plugin.reg file in .mozila or .firefox and restart the browser to enable and disable certain mimetypes.. (limitation of the browser)