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How to play embedded flash videos in external players?

4
As discussed in a separate question, embedded flash videos are abnormally heavy on GPU resources. The answer given by izx here (and namely in one comment) shows that
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flash 662 vlc 349 video-player 110

Flash 11+ "attempts" (poorly, it looks like) to use the GPU (hardware) to "decode" the video instead of the CPU (software). Decoding is a fairly computationally intensive task, but most modern CPUs (except Atoms) will deal with 1080P HD without breaking a sweat..

asked 11 months ago viewed 7922 times active 19 days ago

money.stackexchange.com

So, it seems that a solution would be opening those videos in external players, even without downloading them, so as to put to work the CPU instead of the GPU.
flash vlc video-player

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edited Jul 29 '12 at 23:52

asked Jul 29 '12 at 12:50 cipricus 2 21 66 3,356

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Heavy CPU usage is not restricted to VIDEO but also applies to STREAMING AUDIO (e.g. RADIO stations) in Firefox or Chromium; streaming in VLC is sooo much more lightweight in comparison! nutty about natty Feb 17 at 11:15 @nuttyaboutnatty - the method i use for radios is adding their location in a player (i use [deadbeef]( for that). in this way i have created long radio playlists that i can save, reuse, share, etc - like this cipricus May 8 at 9:57

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As this question looks useful to me, I have created it in order to provide an answer. (The meta issue of doing this was discussed and answered (here and here). There are different methods for this. 1. SMPlayer.

2 4

and the Youtube Browser

Related
0 9

How can I get the full screen space in a video? Why do flash players consume up to 20 times more CPU than VLC player

http://askubuntu.com/questions/169622/how-to-play-embedded-flash-videos-in-external-players[7/21/2013 9:05:41 PM]

vlc - How to play embedded flash videos in external players? - Ask Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install smplayer smtube

to view exactly the same video file?

1

How to play RealMedia videos embedded within Firefox? How do I resume video play from the point it was stopped with VLC? Cannot play avi or mp4 file in both Movie Player and VLC Can't play any Flash videos how to play flash videos in a browser using mplayer or vlc Gstreamer error when I try to play videos, audio works fine

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It starts the separate application, SMPlayer Youtube Browser, to search for videos. One can create a link/desktop launcher to it,

or just run

smtube

2. Using VLC . It looks like VLC is able to start videos of this kind from more websites, while smplayer is limited to youtube.

One can add the link to the video in VLC

http://askubuntu.com/questions/169622/how-to-play-embedded-flash-videos-in-external-players[7/21/2013 9:05:41 PM]

vlc - How to play embedded flash videos in external players? - Ask Ubuntu

3. Using Totem:

Some plugins are available for Totem player, among which a youtube browser similar to that of SMPlayer. You can open youtube videos in Totem, at lower quality it seems than in the previous options, but they load faster and are perfect for listening music from youtube.

There is also an arte-tv plugin for Totem that is not working at the moment... but maybe it will in the future... and supplementary plugins, including a BBC iPlayer. (The later no better than the one for arte-tv I fear.) But there is a more elegant method :

http://askubuntu.com/questions/169622/how-to-play-embedded-flash-videos-in-external-players[7/21/2013 9:05:41 PM]

vlc - How to play embedded flash videos in external players? - Ask Ubuntu

using add-ons/extensions to open the external players directly from the internet browser's interface or context menu . Firefox Openwith addon , created initially to open links in different web browsers, can do just that, by adding in its Preferences vlc and smtube instead of/beside browsers .

In Chromium there is an extension to start youtubes in VLC - here. To use it, the youtube video has to be playing, the VLC web interface has to be enabled (VLC Tools-Preferences-Show Settings -All-Interface-Main-enable Web, restart VLC) and VLC has to be already open.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/169622/how-to-play-embedded-flash-videos-in-external-players[7/21/2013 9:05:41 PM]

vlc - How to play embedded flash videos in external players? - Ask Ubuntu

While VLC seems able to do this outside youtube, it has limitations when dealing with other websites. In Dailymotion works perfectly, but on Google videos it already may have problems, in others it's the OpenWith addon that would not work. I hadn't time to test them enough, I'll update this post in time, and invite comments and edits that would help find ways to open any embedded flash in VLC or other external player. (This answer was based on ideas coming from izx, Halknner and user55822 as they answered or commented on other question.) There is a VLC add-on to play YouTube videos and playlists - here Copy the URL of the youtube video or playlist (must contain "list=PL...") Start VLC, press Ctrl+N, paste the url then click on "Play" (or Alt+P then Enter), the video /playlist should start.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/169622/how-to-play-embedded-flash-videos-in-external-players[7/21/2013 9:05:41 PM]

vlc - How to play embedded flash videos in external players? - Ask Ubuntu

In 'Media', 'Save Playlist to File' and may open it later in VLC.

share improve this answer edited May 17 at 9:02 community wiki 16 revs cipricus

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There is actually a pretty cool way to view all flash videos outside of your browser. But at the moment I only know it works on chrome and chromium. Before the page with the flash player loads press ctrl+shift+J This will open a tab at the bottom of the screen, it will have different tabbed options, one of them is NETWORK. You go into that one and open the flash video when it loads the link to the video will appear there all you have to do is copy it either to VLC or totem both of them play streams. I'm a huge VLC fan, but I gotta give it to TOTEm in this one it loads the videos a la flash if you leave it paused it will download the video VLC will not.
share improve this answer answered Jul 2 at 23:27 user60606 1 11

in what way is this different from my answer on vlc and totem? cipricus Jul 4 at 6:33

Your Answer

http://askubuntu.com/questions/169622/how-to-play-embedded-flash-videos-in-external-players[7/21/2013 9:05:41 PM]

vlc - How to play embedded flash videos in external players? - Ask Ubuntu

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http://askubuntu.com/questions/169622/how-to-play-embedded-flash-videos-in-external-players[7/21/2013 9:05:41 PM]