Replacement for Adobe Flash plugin (Linux)

[fxfuji]

I've had it with Adobe Flash on Linux. While I give kudos to Adobe for releasing a 64-bit version of Flash on Linux before a 64-bit version on Windows or Mac, I have to say the implementation sucks. It's incredibly greedy for CPU and memory resources, and maintains a large footprint in the system even after all Flash videos have finished playing!

I noticed that VLC has a small footprint, plays Flash videos well, and accepts YouTube URLs as inputs for network streaming. So, would it be possible for it to replace Adobe Flash as a browser plug-in? (for Firefox mainly, though support for Epiphany, Konqueror, SeaMonkey, and/or Opera would be welcome.)

A 'clean' implementation would be a plug-in or extension that embeds VLC into the browser, with a whitelist/blacklist system for permitting/blocking Flash videos depending on the source, but at this point I'm so frustrated with Flash that I'd be happy with a one-click method that opens VLC as an external app and passes the URL from the browser to VLC to play.

You would have the gratitude of the multitude of Linux users who have given up on Adobe.

[nikola23]

FLV files aren't the same as SWF files.

FLV files are the video files that most flash videos are played with. However they're usually either embedded within an SWF file or downloaded by the SWF file.
SWF Files are the animations that you see on most sites and menus and crap like that. Also its the media player buttons and such used by the flash players.

VLC can play FLV files but not the SWF files so this wouldn't really be doable.

[fxfuji]

Thank you for explaining... if I understand you correctly, VLC would have to add the ability to play SWF files to be able replace flash players embedded in webpages. Ok.

However... VLC is able to play YouTube videos as a stand-alone player if I pass the URL of the webpage to it. Presumably it parses the html and finds the location of the FLV file and begins streaming it? I'd be satisfied with that, implemented perhaps as a Firefox extension. Passing a command to the shell like

Code: Select all

vlc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myvidfile

should achieve the desired result, right? If so, I might try my hand at extension writing...

And as for ads and other crap using Flash animation, I'd be happy not to see them (much less have them steal CPU cycles and RAM) anyway!

[nikola23]

I'm not possitive on this but I'm pretty sure that that code is specifically written for vlc as it doesnt work with most other sites.

[fxfuji]

If you mean that the vlc code specifically supports YouTube URLs only (and not those of all other sites), I think you may be right. I tried using CNN and Hulu URLs, and neither worked. Entering the URL of video file itself, of course, works...

It seems that creating an extension for Firefox to invoke VLC may not be necessary. There is already a VLC plugin for Firefox (actually Mozilla) and combining it with this GreaseMonkey script -- http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25318 -- lets you watch YouTube videos with the plugin. I'm not sure whether it'll work for Hulu or other websites though....

It would be great if 'all' websites were written with support for the VLC plugin in mind, but I recognize that it's probably not a realistic hope. The popularity (and muscle behind) Adobe Flash may be just too powerful for an open-source alternative to compete.

But maybe, just maybe, Google's Chrome OS projects will bring things to a head... since Adobe Flash can noticeably drag down my 2GHz dual core Turion running Ubuntu, I can well imagine it totally consuming the more modest resources of a 1.6GHz single-core Atom netbook running Google's version of Linux. That could force a better implementation from Adobe and/or the development of a better and open-source solution by Google for Chrome. Personally, I would love it if Google approached VLC (or vice-versa) to work together to come up with low-resource (CPU and memory) Adobe Flash replacement for Linux!

[VLC_help]

VLC has LUA scripts that can figure out the video URL from certain web sites. And most sites don't want to give video to outside of their page, because they lose ad revenues (otherwise they could give direct links to videos).

And Google isn't prolly going to do any Flash API compatible software. They are gonna use web standards like HTML5 instead.
http://www.youtube.com/html5

[fxfuji]

VLC has LUA scripts that can figure out the video URL from certain web sites. And most sites don't want to give video to outside of their page, because they lose ad revenues (otherwise they could give direct links to videos).

And Google isn't prolly going to do any Flash API compatible software. They are gonna use web standards like HTML5 instead.
http://www.youtube.com/html5

I think they may proceed on multiple fronts... I'm not sure that even Google would be able to supplant Flash usage with HTML5 or any web standard, and besides, it will take time to do so. Because Chrome OS is only a year away, they could have a motivation to work with VLC (and vice versa) to work as an alternative.

[DGMurdockIII]

gnash - http://getgnash.org/