Why won't videos on a particular website play under Ubuntu 13.04?

Question

Very oddly, I cannot watch any videos a TV channel website, for example this one: http://www.kanald.com.tr/GalipDervis/Videolar/

I can see from the frame source that it contains an embedded Adobe Flash video and some Java scripts (all of which don't pose any problems elsewhere).

I've tried different web browsers (Chrome/Chromium/Firefox), but it seems I have some sort of video codec problem in my system.

I have installed all sorts of gstreamer plugins, codecs, etc. (maybe too many?) to avoid such problems, but strangely I can watch these videos using Linux Mint 15 Live Session on the same machine.

I wonder how I can find out why a particular video (like this one) won't work on my system?

Solution

This might have to do with a layer of abstraction on top of Flash. You can try to install the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL):

sudo apt-get install hal

Reboot your browser afterwards. This will not work on Chrome, though.

Sources:

• http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/m6replay
• http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/flash-player-11-problems-playing.html

Comments

[don.joey]

Ah that's nice Sadi. Good job.

[Sadi]

I also prefer Chrome (currently using version 31.xxx) but unfortunately uninstalling Adobe Flash plugin didn't result in having the videos concerned played. I wonder if you can see the video play at kanald.com.tr/GalipDervis/Videolar