Some notes on multimedia support in iceweasel

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

I've spent the morning testing different browser plugins in Lenny to
see how multimedia work.  The situation is not very good.  The plugin
options are:

  mozilla-plugin-vlc

    Based on VLC, should support all the formats supported by VLC.
    The plugin does not support all these formats, because the plugin
    fail to announce all the mime types it can handle (I've submitted
    patches to have a few of the missing ones added).  The plugin do
    not have any control buttons (for pause etc), and is unable to
    stream media files (downloads before playing).  The plugin seem at
    the moment unable to play the video part.  Apparently it used to
    be able to do that.  Only the audio is played, even for films.
    Some times crashes the browser.  Not sure how it work with
    proxies.

  mozilla-mplayer

    Embedded player with included buttons for controlling the player.
    Announces support for a lot of mime types (more than the others),
    and seem to work pretty well as an embedded player.  It lack
    support for the mime type audio/x-m4a (#490402).  Some times
    crashes the browser.  I've been unable to get it to work with a
    proxy.  Currently missing in Lenny, should show up in a few days.

  kaffeine-mozilla

    Plugin to launch kaffeine for the formats it support.  Not an
    embedded player.  Have not tested it much so far.  Not
    sure how it work with proxies.

  totem-mozilla

    Have not tested it much so far.  Not sure how it work with
    proxies.

Are there others to test?

What mime types are important to test?  I've identified these so far:

  audio/x-mpegurl - Audio streams from http://www.nrk.no/lyd/

  audio/mp4
  audio/x-m4a     - Audio clip from http://loekebergskole.no/

No idea yet what mime type is used by NRK or TV2 for its streaming
video.

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen