HOWTO: mplayerplug-in 2.85 for Hoary

[drigloi]

As you might know mplayerplug-in is a handy Mozilla/Firefox plugin for streaming media contents on webpages. Currently Hoary has the quite aged version 2.70 of this plugin. Since that version things have changed significantly - now mplayerplug-in is one of the best option for viewing streaming video on web pages under Linux.

Here is how to compile it under Hoary:

NOTE:
I have enabled the following repositories (see ubuntuguide.org on how to do it):
main
restricted
universe
multiverse
hoary-backports
Because I have backports enabled I am able to install mplayer and the latest Mozilla browser (Hoary's Mozilla is 1.7.6 while backports has the latest stable 1.7.8 which I use). This guide is based on Mozilla 1.7.8 - I don't know if it is working with the 1.7.6.

1. Set up mplayer & w32codecs

sudo apt-get install mplayer w32codecs

2. Grab latest mplayerplug-in source from here:

wget http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mplayerplug-in/mplayerplug-in-2.85.tar.gz

3. Untar the mplayerplug-in source

tar -xvzf mplayerplug-in-2.85.tar.gz

4. Prepare dependencies for the build:

sudo apt-get install mozilla-dev libxpm-dev libgtk2.0-dev

5. Grab gecko-sdk from here:

wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.7.8/gecko-sdk-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.7.8.tar.gz

6. Untar gecko-sdk:

tar -xvzf gecko-sdk-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.7.8.tar.gz

7. Compile mplayerplug-in:

cd mplayerplug-in
./configure --with-gecko-sdk=../gecko-sdk
make

8. the "make install" (you should remove the old mozilla-mplayer package prior this step!)

sudo cp mplayerplug-in.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins
sudo cp mplayerplug-in.xpt /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/components
sudo cp mplayerplug-in.types /etc
sudo cp mplayerplug-in.conf /etc

9. Prepare the config file:

sudo gedit /etc/mplayerplug-in.conf

Edit it like this:

#debug=0
#logfile=$HOME/mpp.log
vo=xv,x11
ao=esd,oss,arts
#download=1
#dload-dir=$HOME/tmp
#keep-download=0
#noembed=0
cachesize=1024
#use-mimetypes=0
#enable-real=0
#enable-wm=1
#enable-qt=1
#enable-mpeg=1
#enable-ogg=1
#enable-smil=1
#qt-speed=med
#rtsp-use-tcp=0
#nomediacache=0
#framedrop=0
#autosync=0
#mc=1
#black-background=0
#user-agent=NSPlayer

As you see we've changed "vo" to "xv,x11", "ao" to "esd,oss,arts" and "cachesize" to "1024".

10. Restart Firefox and there you are!!!