GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 539718
I prefer Flash video to ogg video
Last modified: 2010-04-08 16:44:44 UTC
Ok, this is more an emotional bug report than a real issue, I wasn't even sure if I should file it. But it's wrong that it works this way, so here it goes. I noticed today - on http://mihmo.livejournal.com/57168.html to be exact - that if I get to a site that provides a video in both Flash and in Ogg, I prefer clicking the Flash link. And that's wrong. Afterwards I tried understanding why this is the case. I couldn't completely pin it down yet. I guess it's multiple factors that make using Flash a better experience. Here's a (probably incomplete) list: - Buffering is just so much nicer in Flash. Most Flash videos provide download progress bars and allow seeking backwards. Some (like Google Video) allow seeking forwards into not-yet-downloaded areas, too. - The Flash experience feels snappier, even though it probably isn't (Swfdec takes 100% CPU after all). I guess this has a lot to do with the fact that FLash starts instantly while the Totem plugin takes about a second to start the external binary. - Totem feels out of place. The buttons it presents don't look integrated into the webpage at all most of the time - especially for the Ogg links on Wikipedia, while Flash is tuned to ft perfectly and is mostly themed to match the visual style. Also, the startup lag mentioned above may contribute to this. If a part of a page loads slower than the rest, it looks out of place. - A lot of times, totem presents the video at the wrong size. This mostly happens when there's a direct link to the ogg file which makes totem scale the video to the window size. And 320x240 videos look very pixelated in a maximized browser window. Flash videos however are usually embedded in a website that ensures a proper size.
Buffering should be better with playbin2, as well as feeling snappier, and allowing to seek within what's been downloaded (see dependency). The problem with the "size" is a mozilla bug, see: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=306867 As for totem feeling out of place, I'm afraid I can't do much about that. File a separate bug if you have a better idea on how we could better integrate into pages while have a native look within GNOME.
play2bin? is that used only in the development version? I'm currently using Totem Browser Plugin 2.26.1 and I'm having problems with seeking. I've installed some greasemonkey script for watching Youtube videos with totem-mozilla instead of flash (I think this is a cool idea to get rid of the crappy and slow flash and use free software) The script I use is this one in case anyone is interested: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/34765 The main problem I see is that I can't seek backwards/forwards (and also I don't have visual feedback about what's been downloaded), which renders it pretty uncomfortable since I mostly watch youtube videos seeking forward to the last buffered section or going back to repeat some parts.
oh.. I see.. I can seek forward/backwards when the video has finished playing once, but I have to wait for the whole video to play one first time before I can seek back/forward. I think that there should be some indication in the time slider showing what parts are already downloaded and allow seeking to those parts, similar to the way how Youtube flash video player works.
(In reply to comment #1) > Buffering should be better with playbin2, as well as feeling snappier, and > allowing to seek within what's been downloaded (see dependency). That's done in Totem 2.30.0. The only problem being that we sometimes try to load the stream from the browser itself (using fd://0 to pass the data), instead of streaming it ourselves. > The problem with the "size" is a mozilla bug, see: > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=306867 Filed a similar bug against WebKit: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37278 > As for totem feeling out of place, I'm afraid I can't do much about that. File > a separate bug if you have a better idea on how we could better integrate into > pages while have a native look within GNOME. I'll leave that to a separate bug.