Video WithOut Flash Mozilla Addon

fetch video source of flash based media and play the video directly with Firefox, without the use of the flash plug-in. Works with Firefox for Desktop and Android

Please note that the goal of this addon is to provide glue between a video file and firefox while there are video provider that still require flash. Ultimately this addon will vanish when all web sites will finally switch to native players.

Supported sites/embed video player

YouTube is NOT supported. NO YOUTUBE. (since it works fine with HTML5)

• ScreenWaveMedia's JW Player
• NicoNico
• FC2
• HTML5

Due to some minor variations of providing the video by a same media provider (different version of there player, use of the embed tag) a few videos may not be detected.

Why you may want to use this extension

• You experienced some lag or bad cpu performance using flash
• You only use flash to watch videos, and do not want to install a non-free packages on your linux station (this extension is released under the GPL)
• You are using an OS that do not support flash, like android.
• You want to download a video to your computer (video without flash provides the direct links to videos)
• You experience issue playing video with JWPlayer (error loading media: File could not be played)

Usage

* Install the extension in your firefox desktop or Android
* Browse to one of the supported website containing a video. By default the video are detected when a page load, you can disable this behavior in the preference pane.
*You can also force the video detection if the automatic detection did not worked:
**Firefox Desktop: by pressing ALT-W'.
**Firefox Android: push Menu/Detect Video.

Download the video

* The video can be save with a 'right click / save as' on the 'open in a new tab' link.
* Under android, the video needs to be selected first, then with a long push on the video you can download the video.

Troubleshooting

*If no video is detected:
** Make sure the provider of the video you are trying to detect is supported. (see supported sites/embed video player or the list of modules in the extension preference pane).
** Make sure the module is activated in the extension preference pane.

*If the video is detected but cannot be displayed:
** Make sure you have the right video codec installed
** Open the video in a new tab as it may sometimes be hidden under other element when the video is embed in a given web site.
** Try to download the video (see download section)

You can also report bugs on this extension github page !
https://github.com/odrevet/video-without-flash-restartless
Be sure to indicate the URL of the page with the video and the video provider when reporting a bug.

Pro tips

* To play mp4 under linux you must install the package gst-libav (under arch linux) or gstreamer1.0-libav (under ubuntu)

*To read FLV and other nativly unsupported fomat you can use a media plugin like vlc-web-plugin or gecko-mediaplayer.
Under Windows the vlc web plugin can be install when (re)running the vlc install exe.

* When you have the message 'No video with supported format and mime type found' you can Right click on the player (long push for Firefox for Android) and click 'View Video' to watch the video with a media plugin or 'Save Video As' to download the video.

* Numerous options in the preference pane : select preferred format / quality when available, disable modules.

* If a video is not detected when the page load, try to manually detect the video again with the Alt-w shortcut

How does it works
This extension is glue between Firefox and the video links, not an actual video engine. This extension fetch the direct link to videos using regular expression, XPath, and DOM. When available, a picture and a select control are displayed (the 'video selector') to read the video with firefox, using the firefox internal html5 compliant media player or a plugin like vlc or mplayer if installed.

Each media provider is handled by a 'parser'. Javascript modules (.jsm) that are loaded at startup. The extension can fairly easy be extended due to it modular approach, as new media provider can be added by implementing a new jsm file.

Why a html5 parser ?
By using the HTML5 parser, you can read the video in a media player plugin if installed. (if it does not work with firefox or you simply prefer this option).