Error Message From Flash Player (resend)

[Tommy Trussell]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 2:43 PM, Jay Ridgley <jridgley2 at austin.rr.com>
wrote:

> I am having a small problem with flash player (24.0.0.221) running on 64
> bit Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
>
> I get the message: Video format or MIMEtype is not supported. When trying
> to play Watch SpaceX's Falcon 9... from CNNMoney Videos, or from any other
> video.
>
> What is wrong I have tried to search for that message but have found
> nothing that is relevant. Some OLD stuff but nothing current.
>
> I did receive one response suggesting that I change my browser... I do not
> wish to do so. I ave 2 other systems running 16.04 that function correctly,
> however, they are running the 32 bit version
>
> Should I change the flash player to some other version? If so, do I
> completely uninstall  24.0.0.221 or just do an unistall?
>


Most of the time I use the Chromium browser BECAUSE it doesn't have flash
in it. Give it a try!

But I opened up Firefox on my 16.04 LTS "Xenial"  system and confirmed that
I have the same version of the Adobe Flash player installed that you
mentioned. If you must have flash, I don't think you have much choice for
functional plugins for Firefox -- Adobe's Flash plugin is probably the only
one you'd be happy with.

SO to test your concern, I searched found a video on the CNN Money web site
about the SpaceX Falcon 9.

It worked! Here's the specific video I tested:

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2017/02/19/watch-spacex-flawless-landing.cnnmoney/

It plays fine on my version of Firefox with the Flash Player 24.0.0.221
installed.

It also plays fine (after a delay) in Chromium that has NO Flash player
installed.

SO the CNN web site is "smart" enough to switch to HTML5, at least for that
page.

SO I will posit that you may have some "cruft" (random junk) in your
Firefox profile that's making the videos unplayable.

Try this:

1) Close Firefox by choosing File --> Quit

2) In Unity hold down Alt and press the F2 key. In the box that appears,
type

firefox -p

[If you're not running Unity, you can open a terminal and execute the same
command from there.]

3) Create a new profile, and open the browser using it.

4) See if your video plays now.

5a) If it plays, you have some strangeness in your settings. If it STILL
doesn't play, you may have a software issue (packages not completely
installed or something). Check your software updates. Maybe something
important is missing.

6) Either go back to your original profile OR switch to your new one. You
can tell Firefox which profile you want to open by default.

If the settings are crufty, and you don't want to lose your bookmarks or
history or whatever, Firefox MAY be able to fix your profile by itself. It
might not even lose your settings, though Mozilla can back them up for
safekeeping if that worries you (see the Sync option in Preferences).

To get Firefox to clean things up on its own, try this:

1) In Firefox, choose Help --> Troubleshooting Information

2) Click the button that says "Refresh Firefox."

NOTE: I'm not sure it tries hard to preserve crufty stuff as it cleans.
Make a backup of your ~/.mozilla/firefox directory, if you're concerned
about losing bookmarks or whatever.


P.S.: Other folks were trying to be helpful in suggesting another browser.
I agree -- but in general I try to avoid the Adobe Flash Player, because
it's frequently a cause of security concerns and crashes and memory issues.
Plus it has some serious functional flaws, and Adobe hasn't added any
features to the linux version in years. If you need to view video with DRM
(Digital Rights Management), DRM frequently won't work with Adobe's linux
Flash player, for example. SO I keep Google Chrome installed for when I
need Flash to work. Most of the time I stick with Chromium.

But Firefox can work with HTML5 video too. Try uninstalling the Flash
player and see if you can still use many of the sites you've been trying.
Over time, more and more sites automatically switch to HTML5 when they
don't see Flash available.
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