#45 Cannot choose WebM or FLV video sources in ClickToPlugin/ClickToPlay

[Anonymous]

Originally created by: Tobias.N...@gmail.com
Originally owned by: Tobias.N...@gmail.com

I have a question regarding the way Leopard Webkit interacts with ClickToPlugin?. On intel macs the CTP source selector shows flv sources while on powerpc only mp4 sources are shown. This happens even if Perian is installed and QuickTime? is able to play flv files. On older hardware the ability to access 240p content could be very useful, so I emailed Marc Hoyois to ask him if this feature could be implemented on PPC macs. This is what he told me:

"Safari maintains its own database of video formats that it thinks it can play, and the extension simply uses this data (which is really the only data it can use: the extension cannot know whether Perian is actually installed or not). So, for whatever reason, your Safari on PowerPC cannot play (or at least thinks it cannot) FLV video even with Perian. I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that."

I was wondering if flv playback could be enabled in Leopard Webkit. This would be another extremely useful enhancement.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: Tobias.N...@gmail.com

I investigated a little in this.
There was this change that is meant to ignore QuickTime reporting to be able to play back WebM and FLV video (it is assumed that Perian enables QuickTime to do so):
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86409
That change should be part of Safari 6 and the WebKit nightlies as well (so 10.6 didn't get it).
However you can disable that behaviour by choosing to disable website specific hacks in the Safari developer menu.
While I expected that to enable FLV playback it doesn't. QuickTime 7 apparently doesn't admit it can play back FLV video although it can. Perian works around that using their "Open in QT Player" shim (like Flip4Mac as well), so we must assume this is a general shortcoming of the old QuickTime.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: mcl...@gmail.com

Thanks for investigating this.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: Tobias.N...@gmail.com

Found a way to make QuickTime admit that it does support flv container type!
Unzip the attached zip archive and run the script.
It will add the needed entries (see the two contained text files) to the QuickTime Player application bundle (specifically the file Info.plist).
The check to verify if a registration is needed is very simple as it just looks for the string "video/x-flv" in that file and doesn't do anything if there are any occurrences found.
The QuickTime Player application bundle is expected to be located at the default position!

You may need to log out (or even restart? or even somewhat more like open QuickTime Player after restarting/logging out?) in order for the registration to be effective. I had done the modifications some days ago and nothing changed, but now it works!
Disabling website specific hacks in the Safari developer menu doesn't seem to be necessary.

Labels: -Type-Defect Type-Enhancement
Status: Started

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: Tobias.N...@gmail.com

Do you also expect WebM as a source choice? From what I saw during debugging QuickTime does already admit it can play WebM.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: Tobias.N...@gmail.com

Here an updated version of the script that does now work from any location and the registration should also be automatic now.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: mcl...@gmail.com

Once again an impressive work!
I was having problems with the first version of the script but the second one updated the info.plist in QuickTime successfully. ClickToPlugin now works in the same way it does on Intel Macs. The ability to select 240p flv videos should be very useful on slower Macs.
QuickTime does indeed admit it can play WebM (and I must say that It is surprisingly efficient with WebM playback), but I think that ClickToPlugin never offered WebM as an option in flash replacement (I've never seen it doing so on my Intel machine).
Thank you again for your work. I think you shoud add that script to the download section, and perhaps add a note in the wiki.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: Tobias.N...@gmail.com

(No comment was entered for this change.)

Summary: Cannot choose WebM or FLV video sources in ClickToPlugin/ClickToPlay

[Yehudi Yrushlme]

Other Info.plist tweeks that can improve Perian performance can be found here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/25243/perian-s-type-installer and here: http://www.quicklookplugins.com/2007/12/16/mkv-matroska-video-files/ .