On 4/8/06, Juanjavier MartÃnez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >Because i am not really a fan of MS i always try to avoid wmv streams and > >choose > >for real-streams when they are available. > > > > Nice. How do you do it? Realplayer streams are also a propietary format, so > chances > are that VLC or even Mediaplayer won't cope with it. Or am I wrong? In fact I > didn't > try that up until now, so I may be completely wrong... > > >Maybe the streams which you > >can not see are from a more modern wmv version and it is maybe not > >supported by the w32-binary codec for wmv. > > > I agree with that. > > > I am not sure. If there is > >a howto about this matter, i also can not tell. > > > >R. > > > > > > > Let us begin the task of search...;-) > > Richard: a huge thank you, you have been *real* useful. > > Kind regards... > > Juan Javier MartÃnez.
Mplayer (with w32codecs) can handle RealVideo and RealAudio. Or you can use HelixPlayer or the Linux version of RealPlayer (they even have .debs and the linux version is much better than the windows version). The biggest problem I encounter in playing streams is not codec incompatiblity, but the fact that streams (especially embedded video) are presented in many different ways. I am not sure of all the details, but it seems that many embedded videos are embedded in a way only properly understood by Internet Explorer. Non-embedded (link opens a seperate player) videos and audio are usually better, but even they sometimes are served with incorrect mime types, which IE and Windows work around by guessing the content based on the file extention. When I have trouble with embedded media, I right click on the page (in Firefox, Mozilla or SeaMonkey) and select "view page info". Then I click the "media" tab in the window that comes up. Then I sort through the .jpgs and .gifs until I find a .wmv, .avi, .asx, .asf, .rm, .rv, .ram, .mpg or .mpeg file. Then I copy its url and use the command line to start mplayer with that url. As you can see, it is very complicated, but that is the only way I have found to play some files. :-( Hopefully you won't have to use this method.
