Veoh Player working with Wine on Feisty

[carlotheman]

As we know, Veoh Networks is a great place to trade productivity for entertainment, but usually, we as Linux users, feel a bit left out after five minutes at the most.

Luckily, I found that the Veoh Player actually CAN work on Ubuntu, with the help of the infinitely compatible Wine. But to call that trivial would be a little on the light-hearted side, and entertainment is a serious business. So, I decided, it is time for a little guide.

** Note: This will probably work in principle on other incarnations of GNU/Linux too, but it took a little experimenting to find the right version of Veoh Player to do the job right; so if you're using something else than Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn this could very well be true for you too. Please feel encouraged to tinker yourself... and maybe write a guide!

In order to never think about what to do next again (if you don't mind sitting in front of a screen all day), you need:

* Ubuntu Feisty Fawn & Wine [Please install this via Synaptic, apt-get, ...]
* Mozilla Firefox for Windows, Version 2.0.6 (Yes, for Windows) [Download]
* Veoh Player for Windows, Version 3.2.1.1073 [Download]
* A Veoh.com account [Create]
* Approximately 50MB disk space (plus several GB for videos)

I started out by installing FireFox for Windows. After downloading, I simply doubleclicked the downloaded file. A typical Windows installer box showed up, which I endured to the end, when it asked me to launch Firefox, which I did. I agreed to let FireFox be my default browser and closed.

Firefox is necessary because the VeohClient only downloads files, but you need some way of knowing which file you want it to download; this, it does through a browser plugin which gets activated when you click the 'Download' link of a video on Veoh.com. So the easiest way I know of to get that browser plugin activated is to install FireFox for Windows first.

Next I installed Veoh for Windows. Installation was rather straight-forward, with the same installation routine that luckily we mostly don't have to spend countless hours of hour lives with using Ubuntu, most of the time. (I am happy we can spend countless hours of hour life watching Internet video instead.) I used all default options here.

After doing this (and waiting unreasonably long at the 'Publishing Product Information' step), Veoh Client started up, just like it would in Windows. Wine prompted me to install 'Gecko for Wine', to which I agreed. After a convenient installation procedure, Veoh was there. I quickly closed the 'introduction' page before it could cause me any trouble.

I right-clicked the tray Icon and selected 'Settings' from the menu. There, I de-activated Pop-Up messages in the 'Download' tab (they're slow when running Veoh this way) and pressed the 'Enter' key (some buttons don't show up properly but they do work, and pressing enter is easier than clicking in the dark with a mouse).

I was ready. So I logged into my account on Veoh from the Windows Firefox, and selected a video I wanted to watch (I'm too embarrassed to tell you which one it was). I clicked the download link, and Presto! Download started.

It was a defining moment of my life. May it be for you.

Carlo