[Sussex] I've got Flash now I want to watch movie clips

[Trevor Marshall]

Frances Fleming wrote:

> Flushed with my success at installing Flash, I now want to really push
> my browsing and catch the BBC movie clips :-) I haven't got sound, but
> at least I could watch the pictures.
> 
> An example page is http://news.bbc.co.uk/
> It has several 'Video' links in the right hand panel.
> I've read the FAQ at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3681938.stm

The 'Video' links on the BBC news page need one of Windows Media Player 
or RealPlayer.  I /think/ that you can get mplayer to handle Windows - 
but I don't know how to.  So that leaves RealPlayer, about which some 
people have strong views.  Geoff may wish to comment here.

> I've never watched web movie clips before, even when I used to surf
> using Windows.
> 
> But now I'm running Debian Sarge. Can anyone point me in the right
> direction or suggest my options please?

If you want to install RealPlayer on Debian then you need to jump 
through an extra couple of hoops - there isn't a debian package 
available, so you'll need to make one using 'alien'.  You can download 
the rpm from the RealMedia website, then use 'alien' to convert the rpm 
to a deb, and install the deb.  Not quite as simple as apt-get, but not 
too much hard work.

In a bit more detail, you can download the RealPlayer rpm from this 
page: 
<http://www.real.com/linux?pcode=rn&src=freeplayer_partner&opage=freeplayer_partner>
and click on the "Download RPM Package" link.
Save the rpm file "somewhere".
Now use alien to convert the .rpm file to a .deb (apt-get install alien 
if necessary) like this:
alien --to-deb RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm
and you should end up with a .deb file like this:
realplayer_10.0.0.297-20040731_i386.deb
which you can install (as root) using dpkg, like this
dpkg --install realplayer_10.0.0.297-20040731_i386.deb

> 
> I suppose my machine will be capable? The one I prefer for browsing is
> the P2 400 with 256MB RAM.

Should be enough, it's what I'm using at the moment.  Sometimes seems to 
struggle a bit with DVDs, but OK with streaming RealPlayer video.

If you want to investigate mplayer then there are debs available, from 
the developer, just add these two lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

#mplayer
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main

Hope that helps,
--
Trevor Marshall