[Gloucs] Debian and youtube

[Andrew Oakley]

Geoff Bagley wrote:
> Andrew Oakley wrote:
> > Youtube requires Adobe Flash 9 or 10.
> > http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/
> That is what I feared.
> Is there no way to use YouTube on Debian without compromising my 
> principles ?  I do not use proprietary, closed source software.

Tom Walker wrote:
> apt-get install swfdec-mozilla

Summary: swfdec-mozilla does the job for Youtube, at lower quality and
with more resources, but fails on other sites such as BBC iPlayer.
mozilla-plugin-gnash just fails horribly.

For those interested, I fired up an Ubuntu Hardy virtual machine under
Virtualbox and tried various different flash plugins.

Specs, same for each test:
Distro: Ubuntu 8.04.3 Hardy
Desktop: LXDE v0.3.2.1+svn20080509-0.2~ubuntu0.2
Window manager: Openbox v3.4.6.1-0ubuntu2
Browser: Firefox 3.0 v.30.12+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
Virtualisation host: Sun VirtualBox 3.0.2
CPUs: 1 (virtualised from Intel Pentium E2160, dual 1.8GHz)
Memory: 256MB

The test URLs I tried were:
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFeow_vWeiA
BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlive/bbc_news24/

Plugin: adobe-flashplugin v10.0.22.87-2
Youtube: Pass. Works fine.
BBC News: Pass. Works fine.

Plugin: mozilla-plugin-gnash v0.8.2-0ubuntu3
Youtube: Fail. Solid white box where video should be. Browser remained
responsive.
BBC News: Fail. Briefly showed clockwise animated dots, then hung. No
video. Browser hung. Desktop hung. Alt-F1 to console took >5 secs,
showed garbage on screen then took an age to login. Everything went very
slow. Hit reset button and machine rebooted OK.

Plugin: swfdec-mozilla v0.6.0-2ubuntu1
Youtube: Pass. Slightly more blocky and jumpy than adobe-flashplugin.
Consumed more resources, system was noticably less responsive. Watchable
though.
BBC News: Fail. First attempt, clockwise dot animation span but nothing
else happened. No video. Second attempt, player controls appeared at the
bottom of the video area, and dot animation span for a long time.
Eventually half a frame of corrupted video arrived. Browser and desktop
remained responsive. Closed and reopened browser no problem.

Note that the virtual machine did not have sound, so I cannot judge
sound quality.

And yes, the Youtube little girl is my daughter, and yes, it does take a
long time to get all her imaginary friends into the car (and their
seatbelts on).

Andrew Oakley
Head of Software Development
Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
95 Promenade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 1HZ
T 01242 211460  F 01242 211122  W www.hesa.ac.uk

 


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