monline

On Windows I got used to watching Quicktime videos in the browser, either by using Apple's Quicktime or by installing Quicktime Alternative. On Debian/Ubuntu you've several options for Quicktime playback in the browser ... just as if you wanted to do it on a downloaded file. You can use an Mplayer plugin or a VLC plugin. The latter is called mozilla-plugin-vlc so to put it up you just have to execute the apt-get install mozilla-plugin-vlc command. This'll install the VLC player too if it was not yet on your system.

However I had some difficulties to make it work at first since I tried to use it on a Compaq Evo T20 thin client. You've to start the VLC player first and change some settings ... since (to my best knowledge) you cannot do this inside the browser plugin. The following has to be changed in Preferences:

• in the Audio section uncheck "Enable audio" (or at least if you don't use audio on the thin client; leaving this enabled'll not crash your player, but disabling'll definitely save some resources)
• check the "Advanced options" at the bottom-right of the preferences window and in the Video/Output modules section in each item uncheck the "Use shared memory" (without this VLC will constantly crash when you start to play a movie

That's all. Video playback worked just fine (even in browser) with these settings. However you should know that in Firefox the movie appears at first with a black screen and the "(no video)" label. This is quite misleading since it only means the VLC plugin is loading the movie. Wait some time (until the movie is downloaded by the plugin) and the playback will start. Actually it seems to me as if the plugin would download the whole file before starting playback ... what about streaming? Hmm ... on the second run it seems that streaming might be possible by tweaking some settings, but I'd prefer if it worked out of the box.

PS: if you've problems with playback in the browser, first start with making it work in the VLC client and only try it in the browser if the client already plays the movie.

PS2: I've found that using the MediaPlayerConnectivity Firefox plugin makes life a lot easier. This way embedded Quicktime video is not started automatically, just an icon is displayed. However clicking the icon starts the VLC client and the playback is started instantly, no precaching, no delay, etc. I like it. Moreover you've controls (pause, skip forward, backward) that the plugin does not have.