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Where do the "sound and video" links point to?

Asked by tiktin

I've got two entries in the "sound and video" drop down menu in Ubuntu 10.04 - Movie Player and Movie Player-gstreamer. However, Movie Player-gstreamer comes up empty ("cannot find") while the Movie Player has gstreamer included. Obviously something went wrong when I downloaded and installed gstreamer and it is confusing the system in regular user, but not in root. As regular user, wmv streams either do not play at all, or play only after long delay or stall. I would like to change the default to gecko mediaplayer but have no idea how to do this. There are three different applets for applications in firefox 11: preferences, manage plugins, and add-on-plugins. The default now seems to be totem with the windows media plugin or totem-gstreamer. The only options appear to be "Movie Player" and "other", but I have no idea how to change other to gecko. If this sound confused its because I am totally confused. If I knew where these "sound and video" links point to in the file system I might be able to fix it. P.S. the plugins are all over the place. There are plugin folders in the folders firefox, firefox 3.0. , mozilla, mozilla-firefox, there is even a plugin folder in the toplevel file system. I find that putting all the plugins in all the folders (which is a lot of work) helps, but does not entirely solve the probem.

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tiktin
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tiktin (tiktin-fiberpipe) said : 		#1

Sorry, I forgot to mention that in user the application is listed as a url link to gnome, but when you bring up the drop down menu in edit preferences it says windows media player 10, but there is no way to change it. It always reverts to the url. In root, however, it is listed as windows media player 10 (I presume it is referring to the plug-in for totem). My guess as to what is going on is that instead of using the installed application in user it is trying to connect to the website to get the plugin, while in root it is using the installed application. That might account for the long delay (a minute or more) before the video stream starts to play in user, when it plays at all. In root it comes up right away and works fine.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#2

Can you give the output of:

lsb_release -a; uname -a; groups

Thanks

Revision history for this message
tiktin (tiktin-fiberpipe) said : 		#3

On Thu, 2012-05-03 at 08:30 +0000, actionparsnip wrote:
> Your question #195785 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/195785
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> actionparsnip requested more information:
> Can you give the output of:
>
> lsb_release -a; uname -a; groups
>
> Thanks
>

Thanks very much for your reply. Output is:

root@TIKTIN3:~# lsb_release -a; uname -a; groups
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid
Linux TIKTIN3 2.6.32-41-generic #88-Ubuntu SMP Thu Mar 29 13:08:43 UTC
2012 i686 GNU/Linux
root adm lp cdrom audio video plugdev users fuse lpadmin netdev admin
sambashare tiktin
root@TIKTIN3:~#

I have it working for the moment, but for how long is anybody's guess.
It is very erratic. Before, in tiktin-firefox-tools-manage
plugins-windows media, it was saying:
<a
href="http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/>mplayerplug-in</a>3.55<br><br>Video Player Plugin for Quick Time, Real Player and Windows Media Streams using <a href="http://mplayerhq.hu">MPlayer</a><br> Java Script Enabled and Using GTK Widgets<br>

Now it just says gecko media player. I achieved this by enabling and
disabling some of the dozen or so entries in
tiktin-firefox-tools-add-ons. There are so many possible combinations
and permutations, it is very hard. My latest setting is "Windows Media
Player Plug-in 10 (compatible Totem)" disabled, and all the entries
which mention gecko and mplayer enabled, and VLC also enabled.
In tiktin-firefox-edit-preferences I now have "use windows media plugin
(in Firefox)".

Thanks again for your reply. If you have any further insight into this
matter, please let me know.

Revision history for this message
tiktin (tiktin-fiberpipe) said : 		#4

I finally figured out that when I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 it did not install the initial user properly. There was simply no way to fix the settings for the initial user. As I mentioned above, it was very erratic, would work for a while and then fail again. Since it worked well in the root account, which I added after the upgrade, it finally dawned on me that the way to fix it is simply to add another non-root user in users and groups. I did this and sure enough, the new user worked fine. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to beat your head against a wall when there is an open door next to it.