Sound and video freezing up Firefox

[Leonard Chatagnier]

--- On Sat, 8/1/09, Ray Parrish <crp at cmc.net> wrote:

  
> Hi Leonard,
> 
> How do I change swf to flashplugin-nonfree? I have both of
> them installed, and I just tried disabling swf in Firefox,
> however I was not presented with flashplugin-nonfree in
> about:plugins.
> 
> I'm trying to read the update-alternatives man page, but
> I'm confused. Can you tell me the specific command to run
> with it to get the newer version of plugin-nonfree working?
> Right now I have version 9.0.r999 instead of the ten
> version?
>
Ok, It's not hard.  If you don't have flashplugin-nonfree then you must install it first.  And it must be without error on the install.  Now, I don't know all the ins and outs of the options for update-alternatives and have only used the --all option which steps you through all the alternative listings and allows you to enter a number to change the default or just hit enter to accept the current default for any listing that has an optional condition.  Where ther is only one option for a listing, it just steps through them saying so in the output.  There are several listings and the flash listing is toward the end of the listings so you can just hit enter for all that comes up until you see something about flash or read and select for each entry.  There is probably some option to use or just grepping that would bring up just the flash entry but my capabilities are not that good. Here is one of the flash-plugin entries for one of the browsers I have
 installed(I believe there will be an entry for each browser install that accepts a flash option but not sure of that):
"There are 2 alternatives which provide `midbrowser-flashplugin'.

  Selection    Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
 +        1    /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so
*         2    /var/lib/flashplugin-installer/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:

Note that my selection has the /npwrapper.* because I'm using 64 bit Jaunty.  Probably different for 32 bit.
There are several entries for flash-plugin so you need to use the --all option to be sure you see all of them.
Note the libswf*.so and libflashplayer.so; you want the last one for the flash-plugin/player to work.
Hope that's enough detail for your needs.
Note it does no good to disable swf in the browser config because that's not the problem.  The problem is that swf=999 is set as default and you want flash-plugin (libflashplayer.so) set as default for all browsers you use. Also you wont see flashplugin in about:plugins but two shockwave flash entries as I mentioned in my original reply.  Good Luck.
Len