Non-YouTube videos don't work in F15

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 09:04:15PM -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Bob McClure Jr writes:
> 
> >A few weeks ago I upgraded from Fedora 13 to Fedora 15.  This was an
> >on-line upgrade (using preupgrade) not a fresh install.  Not
> >surprisingly, several things are broken.  This is an AMD Athlon 64
> >machine with 2GB of RAM.
> >
> >Initially, I couldn't get any videos to work, but a web search led me
> >to a solution for YouTube videos so they are fine, but non-YouTube
> >videos come up with white or black screen and no controls, nada.  This
> >is while running Firefox.
> >
> >What do I need to look for?
> 
> That depends exactly what you did. I presume you are referring to
> the x86-64 beta flash plugin. For the i386 plugin, its yum repo has
> worked for ages, obediently updating the plugin every time a new
> flash plugin got pushed out. So, you must be referring to the 64 bit
> plugin.

Yes, that's what got YouTube working.  In my experimentation, I tore
out every libflashplayer.so and installed the 64-bit libflashplayer.so
in /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/.  No joy.  So I backed up to square one
and did a "yum reinstall flash-plugin" to restore my damage.  Now, I'm
back to where I was after the upgrade -- no YouTube.  When I bring up
YT, I get a blank screen where the player should be, and if I click on
one of the preview images, I get a dialog box, "Launch Application"
containing "This link needs to be opened with an application.  Send
to: [Movie Player] -- Choose an Application."  At the bottom is a
checkbox for "Remember my choice for rtsp links."

If I go to Edit->Preferences->Applications, and scroll down to
"Shockwave Flash file", the selector box offers "Use Shockwave Flash
(in Firefox)" or "Use Gnash SWF Viewer (default)".  Neither of those
make any difference.

I am mystified.

> The beta release worked fine for me for a few months now – both
> youtube and other videos. Your problem may not necessarily be the
> flash plugin itself, but your audio and/or video. The flash plugin
> doesn't like something else grabbing the audio, on my box. Or it
> grabs the audio itself, and keeps it for a while. If new mail lands
> in my gmail box, and the timing is right, both the flash plugin and
> the gmail manager plugin will want the audio, and lock up Firefox,
> tight. Have to kill it. That's about the only glitch I have to deal
> with, but otherwise it's WORKSFORME.
> 
> I don't believe there's a yum repo for x86-64 beta flash plugin, so
> I roll my own rpm. Funny timing – I just checked and there's a new
> beta x86-64 plugin released today on
> http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html

I tried installing that with no improvement.

> I just grabbed it, and fed it to my spec file to crank out an rpm,
> installed it, and a cursory check seems to indicate that it's
> working. Youtube clips are fine, news clips worked.
> 
> So, without knowing exactly what you did, there's not much to go on.

Let me know what other clues you need.  Thanks for your help.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
bob at bobcatos.com             http://www.bobcatos.com
"Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under
heaven given to men by which we must be saved."  Acts 4:12 (NIV)