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+--- Thread: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? (/showthread.php?tid=91998)
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - Article Accelerator - 01-29-2010
M A V I C wrote:
The way AA is doing it, he's getting a different file, thus the comparison is not accurate.
That's true but not particularly important as far as I'm concerned. Unlike the embedded Flash video, the H.264 version looks at least as good and plays perfectly. Interestingly, H.264 is known to be quite processor intensive. It therefore boggles the mind to imagine how bad the Flash plug-in and/or Flash video encoding and/or Flash video container is...
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - Winston - 01-29-2010
deckeda wrote:
What you describe sounds as if you have Perian installed. Yes? Quicktime Player can't open .flv files otherwise, AFAIK.
Yes, I have Perian installed. The About Perian page in System Preferences lists Flash Video as one of the things Perian supports.
- W
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - Winston - 01-29-2010
Article Accelerator wrote:
Also, forgive my ignorance, but I don't understand how to put a link in the bookmarks bar and associate a JavaScript with it (although that's obviously what the Joey Hagedorn thing is).
Open the Bookmarks page in Safari and create a new bookmark in the Bookmarks Bar section. Enter a name for the bookmark in the first column and paste that javascript code into the third column.
Thanks. Now if I can just get QuickTime to work properly in Safari and not give me the greyed out Q with the question mark.
- W
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - Winston - 01-29-2010
Ho! Found a workaround. If I don't whitelist YouTube I get the ClickToFlash placeholder in place of a YouTube video window.
I can then use the ClickToFlash options from the CTF "gear" menu in the top left of the video window. If I click on "Play Fullscreen in QuickTime Player" it opens in QuickTime Player and plays well. This works whether I have CTF set for Flash or h.264 video.
I can watch YouTube again!
But it really shouldn't be necessary to jump through all these hoops. If QuickTime Player can play a YouTube video well, in full screen, on an old TiBook, it should work just as well in Safari in a smaller window.
Further evidence to the contrary, I blame Flash.
- Winston
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - M A V I C - 01-30-2010
Article Accelerator wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]
The way AA is doing it, he's getting a different file, thus the comparison is not accurate.
That's true but not particularly important as far as I'm concerned. Unlike the embedded Flash video, the H.264 version looks at least as good and plays perfectly. Interestingly, H.264 is known to be quite processor intensive. It therefore boggles the mind to imagine how bad the Flash plug-in and/or Flash video encoding and/or Flash video container is...
You're comparing apples to oranges yet you're not concerned? Flash is just a wrapper. H.264 is a format. Flash can be a wrapper for multiple formats, including H.264. For the YouTube example given, they're not using H.264. It boils down to how the content provider encodes their format for Flash, not if they choose to use Flash or not.
H.264 can also cause the exact same issues you're describing about Flash. Just as you can cite H.264 versions that don't cause issues, I can cite Flash versions that don't cause issues.
Winston wrote:
Ho! Found a workaround. If I don't whitelist YouTube I get the ClickToFlash placeholder in place of a YouTube video window.
I can then use the ClickToFlash options from the CTF "gear" menu in the top left of the video window. If I click on "Play Fullscreen in QuickTime Player" it opens in QuickTime Player and plays well. This works whether I have CTF set for Flash or h.264 video.
I can watch YouTube again!
But it really shouldn't be necessary to jump through all these hoops. If QuickTime Player can play a YouTube video well, in full screen, on an old TiBook, it should work just as well in Safari in a smaller window.
Further evidence to the contrary, I blame Flash.
- Winston
You've got too much installed for me to figure out what's going on. I find it said you blame Flash yet you've got a bunch of third-party stuff installed that has been causing conflicts. Those could easily be causing problems with playback.
As far as being able to watch "YouTube" fine with QT but not with Flash, I don't know how else to put it. YouTube provides multiple content formats. FLV can be a wrapper around multiple formats.
Not only that, but in the YouTube example the .FLV that plays is being modified as it plays. They're actually stretching the video which can be harder to play that if it was higher res to begin with. So if you have the FLV playing locally from just the Flash Player, it could very well have better playback than how it's embedded in YouTube.
In the example you gave, the FLV is 320x240 yet the player in the browser is scaling it to 480px wide.
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - Winston - 01-30-2010
M A V I C wrote:
You've got too much installed for me to figure out what's going on. I find it said you blame Flash yet you've got a bunch of third-party stuff installed that has been causing conflicts. Those could easily be causing problems with playback.
As far as being able to watch "YouTube" fine with QT but not with Flash, I don't know how else to put it. YouTube provides multiple content formats. FLV can be a wrapper around multiple formats.
Not only that, but in the YouTube example the .FLV that plays is being modified as it plays. They're actually stretching the video which can be harder to play that if it was higher res to begin with. So if you have the FLV playing locally from just the Flash Player, it could very well have better playback than how it's embedded in YouTube.
In the example you gave, the FLV is 320x240 yet the player in the browser is scaling it to 480px wide.
Damn right I've got too much installed. From a user's point of view this should be transparent, particularly on a Mac. Yet I find I have to install Perian, Flip4Mac WMV and ClickToFlash to watch videos on the web.
However, Perian and Flip4Mac only operate when QuickTime is called to play a video. I suppose they could contribute to some problem with Safari playing Flash, but that seems unlikely, as all they do is modify the QuickTime plugin. ClickToFlash blocks flash until you click on it, or whitelist a site, in which case it becomes inoperative. Making ClickToFlash inoperative on YouTube does not help.
From what you've said, it may be how YouTube is using Flash which is the problem. But I can't seem to find any Flash video on any site which plays properly. I can find other types of video (.mov., .wmv, etc.) which do play properly, and I can play YouTube's Flash videos properly outside of Safari.
All this points to a problem with Flash, either in how it works or how its implemented.
I could try an experiment where I uninstall Perian, Flip4Mac and ClickToFlash, but right now I can't see how that could possibly help, so it's not worth the trouble. And even if it did help, it would screw up the sites which use SilverLight, .wmv, .avi and other formats.
I can also say that blocking most Flash with ClickToFlash makes web browsing much more pleasant. Whatever it's doing, Flash uses a lot of resources and slows down my computer. It may be brilliant in many circumstances, but on balance for me, Flash does not work very well. This would strike me as the basic argument for why Apple has left it out of relatively processor-weak devices like the iPhone and iPad.
- W
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - M A V I C - 01-30-2010
Which version of the Flash plugin do you have installed?
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - Winston - 01-30-2010
M A V I C wrote:
Which version of the Flash plugin do you have installed?
From the Help menu in Safari I found "Installed Plug-ins" (never noticed that before - why isn't it in Preferences?). It lists:
Shockwave Flash
Shockwave Flash 10.0 r22 — from file “ClickToFlash.webplugin”.
MIME Type Description Extensions
application/x-shockwave-flash ClickToFlash 1.5.3 swf
and
Shockwave Flash
Shockwave Flash 10.0 r32 — from file “Flash Player.plugin”.
MIME Type Description Extensions
application/x-shockwave-flash Shockwave Flash swf
application/futuresplash FutureSplash Player spl
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - deckeda - 01-30-2010
I'm using the 10.1 beta, http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html For OS X it's a mild bugfix; for Windows it's a major release with hardware support that MS provides. There's also a ReadMe that discusses known bugs that remain.
Re: Any way to force Flash video to play using QuickTime? - M A V I C - 01-31-2010
deckeda wrote:
I'm using the 10.1 beta, http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html For OS X it's a mild bugfix; for Windows it's a major release with hardware support that MS provides. There's also a ReadMe that discusses known bugs that remain.
Yeah, version 9 and 10.1 (even beta) are a lot better than 10.0