Ideally, video should be no different than any other web content, but when was the last time you had trouble viewing static text and still images, or even hearing audio, in web pages? But videos are different, and for several reasons:
The enormous size of video files forces web publishers to employ a series of tricks, such as nonstandard streaming protocols, dedicated video servers, and special browser plug-ins, to bring video to your desktop.
The large number of competing formats means that you must have at least a half-dozen browser plug-ins—not to mention all the required codecs, described earlier in this chapter—in order to play most online video.
The aforementioned plug-ins and codecs must be updated to keep up with the technology.
Online video publishers—particularly news organizations—often jury-rig their content to make it difficult or impossible to download to your hard disk. This means they rely more heavily on special plug-ins, JavaScript, and other hand-waving, all of which increase the likelihood that you’ll run into a problem when you watch their videos.
All of this simply means that playing and downloading online video can be a frustrating experience if you don’t know about a few tools and tricks.
First and foremost, make sure you have the latest versions of these four major plug-ins installed in each web browser you use.
Plug-in
Download from
Filename(s) for IE
Filename(s) for Firefox and SeaMonkey
Quicktime
www.quicktime.com
qtplugin.ocx
npqtplugin.dll
npqtpluginx.dll
RealPlayer
www.real.com
rmoc3260.dll
nppl3260.dll
nprpjplug.dll
Shockwave Flash
www.adobe.com
flash9.ocx
npswf32.dll
Windows Media Player
www.microsoft.com
wmp.dll
npdsplay.dll
msdxm.ocx
npwmsdrm.dll
To see a list of plug-ins that are installed in Internet Explorer, open IE, click the Tools drop-down, and select Internet Options. Choose the Programs tab, click Manage add-ons, and then from the Show drop-down, select Add-ons that run without requiring permission. In the Settings box, you can also disable any plug-in you suspect might be causing playback problems, or, if you’re lucky, you may be able to go to Control Panel ➝ Programs and Features to uninstall the plug-in completely.
In Mozilla Firefox (and Mozilla SeaMonkey), just typeabout:pluginsin the address bar and press Enter to see a list of installed plug-ins. (Note that plug-ins, used to view embedded content, are indeed different from extensions, which only add features to the browser interface.) Like IE, Mozilla plug-ins can be uninstalled from Control Panel.
You’ve probably encountered a video on the Web that won’t let you rewind (without starting over) or fast-forward to skip ahead. It’s not such a big deal with 20-second clips, but when you’re watching a half-hour broadcast mostly featuring a talking head, it can be infuriating that you can’t just skip ahead to the car chase.
Usually, this is a limitation of the video file (or of the player), and not simply an option that can be turned on or off. A lot of streaming video clips have this problem, particularly .wmv and .asf videos. To rewind or fast-forward these videos, they must be indexed, something you can only do if the video file is stored on your hard disk. If there’s a web-based video you want to index, you’ll need to download it to your hard disk first—as described in “Download Online Video Clips ,” later in this chapter.
To index a .wmv file, download the free Windows Media Encoder from http:// www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/ encoder/default.mspx and open the Windows Media File Editor. Drag-drop the video onto the Editor window, and from the File menu, select Save and Index. Thereafter, you’ll be able to rewind and fast-forward the clip to your heart’s content.
Control Video Buffering
Most online video clips are designed to stream, allowing you to start watching before your PC has finished downloading. To keep the video playing smoothly, video players often download a few seconds of video ahead of the playback, a technique called buffering (or caching), and sometimes this means you have to wait. The good news is that you can choose when to wait: now, or later.
In Windows Media Player, click the Now Playing button, select More Options, and then choose the Performance tab. Select Buffer [5] seconds of content, the second option in the Network buffering section.
To shorten the lead time so that videos will start playing sooner, enter a small number, say3. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection and number of visitors the web server is currently juggling, those 3 seconds of content could take anywhere from 2 seconds to 20 minutes to download. (Obviously, upgrading to a faster Internet connection will minimize the waiting most of the time.)
Unfortunately, entering a small number means that Media Player has to stop playback more often to buffer more content. If you find that Media Player frequently stops playing to buffer more data, raise the buffer number to10or20seconds. You’ll get smoother playback, but you’ll have to wait longer before your online videos play.
The buffering settings discussed here have no effect on video clips stored on your hard disk, nor on video handled by other players (e.g., Flash, Quicktime, and RealOne). To eliminate buffering messages altogether, see “Download Online Video Clips,” next.
Most online video publishers don’t make it easy to download video files to your hard disk, and for good reason. For one, they want you to watch their videos only on their own web sites, where they can show you advertising, sell you products and services, or just keep you lingering around their sites a little longer. They also don’t want to pay to host videos embedded on your web site, nor do they want you to take their copyrighted material and upload it to YouTube. That’s all well and good, but who’s looking out for your needs?
What happens when the publisher takes down a video or moves it to a subscription-based archive before you have a chance to watch it? What if the server is too busy, and your PC isn’t able to stream it smoothly? What if you want to save the video to watch later, or if you want to index it (as described earlier in this section) so you can rewind and fast-forward it? What if the video is long, and you want to watch it on your handheld PC or video-enabled iPod? What if you just want to needlessly fill up your hard drive?
Saving online video into a file on your hard disk can be tricky for several reasons, not the least of which is that there are a bunch of different ways video can be delivered on the Web. And, of course, each format has its own download procedure.
Before you start mucking around, look for the simplest solution. Some sites, such as Google Video, include a download link right on the page. Or, if the video is all by itself, centered in the browser window, and the URL ends with a filename extension commonly associated with video files (e.g., .mpg, .mov, .wmv), then you can often just save the file by pressing Ctrl-S. (Or, go to Page ➝ Save As in IE.) Or, if the clip is playing in a separate Windows Media Player or QuickTime window, try saving it there. Of course, most video publishers will disable the Save As feature, but it’s worth a shot.
The first step is to find out what kind of video file you’re dealing with, and the easiest way to do that is to right-click the center of the video frame in the browser window. The context menu that appears should indicate the plug-in being used, most notably, the About entry (if there is one). How you proceed depends on the plug-in:
Adobe Flash Player/Macromedia Flash Player
Flash-based videos typically come in two parts: the player module and the video file. The Flash plug-in first loads the player module (an .swf file), which in turn downloads and controls the video source (an .flv file); the .flv file is what you want. (This isn’t always the case; if there’s no separate .flv file, then the video is likely embedded in the main .swf file.)
As soon as the player has finished downloading the entire .flv file, you can find it in your web browser cache; see the upcoming sidebar, “Pull Files Out of Your Browser Cache,” for details.
Windows Media Player can’t play .flv files unless you install a special codec, as described in the “Installing and Managing AX Codecs” sidebar, earlier in this chapter. Now, odds are, you won’t be able to find a WMP codec that actually works, so you’ll need to seek out a dedicated .flv file player instead. There are several choices, but the best one is simply called FLV Player, and is available for free from http:// www.martijndevisser.com.
If you don’t feel like digging through your cache folder, or if the cached file doesn’t seem to be playable, you can use one of these handy browser add-ons designed to provide direct links to .flv files on the most popular Flash-based video web sites:
Bookmarklet (Firefox, SeaMonkey, or Opera).
Go to http://1024k.de/bookmarklets/video-bookmarklets.html and drag the “All-In-One Video Bookmarklet” link from the page onto your browser’s Links toolbar. Then, navigate to a video page and click the bookmarklet to open a pop-up window with a download link.
Bookmarklet (Internet Explorer).
Since IE7 doesn’t support bookmarklets longer than 2,083 characters, you won’t be able to use the aforementioned “All-In-One” link. Instead, use the “old” bookmarklets listed at http://1024k.de/bookmarklets/video-bookmarklets.html; you’ll need to install a bookmarklet for each web site you use (e.g., YouTube, Google Video, etc.).
Greasemonkey User Script (Greasemonkey extension plus Firefox/SeaMonkey).
If you have the Greasemonkey extension (available from http://greasespot.net), go to http://1024k.de/bookmarklets/video-bookmarklets.html, click the “All-In-One Video Script” link, and then click Install. Next, navigate to a video page, and click the yellow bar that appears to display the download link.
Firefox Extension (Firefox only).
First, install the VideoDownloader extension from http://videodownloader.net/, and then restart Firefox. Next, navigate to a video page, and click the VideoDownloader status bar icon to display a pop-up window with the download link.
Pull Files Out of Your Browser Cache
Web browsers store copies of recently viewed pages and all associated media (images, audio, and video) in a folder on your hard disk, called the cache. This improves performance when you’re surfing, but also makes it easy to grab copies of media files—such as Flash videos (.flv files)—for storage elsewhere.
Internet Explorer’s cache folder is \Users\{username}\AppData\Local\ Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files. (In IE, go to Tools ➝ Internet Options, click Settings in the Browsing history section, and then click View files.) Sort the list by file type to group all the .flv files together, and then drag the file out of the folder or double-click it to play it.
Neither Mozilla Firefox nor Mozilla SeaMonkey assign filename extensions for their cached files, so you’ll have to do a little detective work to find a recently viewed .flv file. If you’re using Mozilla Firefox, open the Cache sub-folder of \Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, and sort the listing by date. If you see a particularly large file with a date sometime in the last few minutes, try adding the .flv extension to its filename, and then double-click it to view it. If the video plays (provided you have an FLV player installed), go ahead and drag the file out of the cache; otherwise, undo the rename and try again with a different file.
Apple QuickTime
QuickTime files are typically the easiest videos to deal with. If the video file is playing by itself in the center of the browser window, select Page ➝ Save As in Internet Explorer (or File ➝ Save As in any other browser). If the video is playing in a standalone QuickTime window, you can select File ➝ Save As and save the file right on the spot, but only if you’re using QuickTime Pro (the extra-cost upgrade to the free QuickTime player).
If the video is embedded in a web page, you’ll need one of these add-ons to yank it out:
Go to http://plasmasturm.org/code/bookmarklets/ and drag the “unembed” link from the page onto your browser’s Links toolbar. Then, navigate to a video page and click the bookmarklet to download the embedded video.
Greasemonkey User Script (Greasemonkey extension plus Firefox/SeaMonkey).
If you have the Greasemonkey extension (available at http://greasespot.net), go to http://neugierig.org/software/greasemonkey/, and install the “unembed” user script. This adds a download link next to any embedded video; just click the link to download the video file.
Firefox/SeaMonkey Extension (Firefox or SeaMonkey).
Get the AdBlock Plus extension from http://adblockplus.org/, and then restart your browser. Open the Adblock Plus Preferences window, select Options, and turn on the Show tabs on Flash and Java option. Thereafter, a small tab will appear just above embedded videos; click the tab to view the URL, highlight the URL text and copy it to the clipboard, and then click Cancel. Armed with the URL of the source video file, download the file as described in the upcoming “Download Files Without Viewing Them” sidebar.
Real Player
If the video is embedded in a web page (including a small pop-up web page), try right-clicking the video itself. Select Play in RealPlayer to open the clip in a standalone window, and then in Real Player, select File ➝ Clip Properties ➝ View Clip Info. Armed with the URL of the file, download it as described in the upcoming “Download Files Without Viewing Them” sidebar.
The file you download likely won’t be the video itself, but rather only an .ram file, a playlist of sorts that points to one or more videos stored on a server somewhere. Open Notepad and drag the .ram file into it to view the URL inside. If the URL begins withhttp://, you can probably download it normally, again following the routine in the “Download Files Without Viewing Them” sidebar. On the other hand, if the URL begins withrtsp://(which stands for Real Time Streaming Protocol), you’ll need a special program capable of downloading the stream to a file.
Copy the URL (highlight and press Ctrl-C) and paste it (Ctrl-V) into a program like CoCSoft Stream Down (http://stream-down.cocsoft.com), shown in Figure 4-7, or WMRecorder (http://www.wmrecorder.com).
Download Files Without Viewing Them
Type a URL into your browser’s address bar and hit Enter, and the browser will attempt to display the file in its own window or launch the associated player. Only if the file can’t be displayed (such as a .zip or .exe), will you get a standard Save As dialog. But what if you want to save (download) a file the browser wants to open, such as a video?
If you’re using Mozilla SeaMonkey, this is easy. Instead of pressing the Enter key in the address bar, press Shift-Enter to save the file instead of opening it. This won’t work in Internet Explorer or Firefox, though, so you’ll need a slightly trickier method for those browsers.
Open Notepad and paste the URL of the file you want to download. In front of the URL, add this text:
<a href="
and then after the URL, add this:
">download</a>
Save the file on your desktop as download.html, and then double-click the new file to open it in your browser. Right-click the lone download link on the page, and select Save Target As.
Alternatively, you can use Bulk Downloader, available at http://www.creativelement.com/powertools/. Just choose the List Manually tab, paste the URL (or URLs) into the box, and then click Download.
Figure 4-7. Use a program like CoCSoft Stream Down to download streaming video clips to your hard disk
If all goes well, you should have a file on your hard disk in about the same amount of time as it would take to watch the video from start to finish; just double-click the file icon to play the clip.
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player videos are a pain in the neck because of the wide variety of tricks publishers must use to get the videos to appear in web pages. If you encounter one of these beasts, first try the bookmarklets and extensions for QuickTime videos, listed earlier in this section. If none of those work, you’ll need to do some digging to get the URL of the source file.
If the video is playing in a standalone Windows Media Player window, getting the URL is not too hard: from the File menu, select Properties, and it will be shown in the Location field (see Figure 4-8).
Figure 4-8. Get the URL of an online Windows Media Player video clip
If the video is embedded in a web page, getting the URL is a little trickier. If you’re using Firefox or SeaMonkey, right-click an empty area of the web page and select View Page Info. Click the Media tab, and then scroll down the list until you see the URL of the video, which is often the only entry that isn’t an image file (.jpg, .gif, etc.).
Firefox and SeaMonkey users can also use the AdBlock Plus extension, described in the Apple QuickTime portion of this section, to get the URL of an embedded Media Player video file.
If you’re using Internet Explorer, right-click an empty area of the web page and select View Source (this works in Firefox and SeaMonkey, too); some familiarity with HTML will make this task much easier. Press Ctrl-F and search the code for text that would likely appear in a video clip URL, such as.asf,.asx,.wmv, orrstp:. Somewhere in the code, you’ll hopefully find a full (or partial) URL for the source video clip that looks something likerstp://www.some.server/videos/penguin.asx. If you’re lucky enough to find the URL, you can proceed to download it by following the instructions for Real Player, previously in this section. Otherwise, you may be out of luck.
Microsoft revamped the audio subsystem in Windows Vista in order to solve a series of problems it maintains caused stability and quality shortcomings in earlier versions. For one, Microsoft moved most of the code that handles sound out of the drivers and into another echelon of Vista’s architecture. In short, this is why your sound doesn’t work.
Next, Microsoft redesigned the tools you use to manage sound in Vista, such as the Volume Control and the Sound dialog in Control Panel. This is why you can’t find anything.
As a result, manufacturers of sound cards simply discontinued their older products rather than trying to make them Vista-compatible. This is why you have to throw out your old sound card, and why you shouldn’t spend too much on a new one.
Get Sound Where There Is None
Sound in Windows Vista is quite a bit more complicated than it needs to be, so troubleshooting sound problems is a real chore. The best way to fix a PC that won’t play sound is with a systematic approach.
Start with the obvious. If you’re using external speakers, make sure they’re plugged in, turned on, and turned up. Try plugging the speakers into an iPod, home stereo, or other audio source to make sure they’re actually working.
Using a laptop with integrated speakers? Most laptops have their own independent volume controls, and some are unlucky enough to have two or three. The first type is the old-school walkman-esque dial, usually found right next to the headphone/speaker jack (sometimes these dials only control external audio, but not always). The second type is usually found on the keyboard, accessed by holding the Fn key while pressing another key decorated with a speaker icon. The third type is found on newer laptops, in the group of media quick-access buttons. Make your best effort to turn all these controls up.
Sometimes the push-button volume controls on laptops operate the system volume directly, and sometimes they merely send signals to a Windows application that, in turn, controls the volume. If your laptop’s volume controls don’t seem to be working, the application with which they communicate may not be installed or running. You can usually download the media access software from the PC manufacturer’s web site.
If hardware volume controls are a dead end, open the Vista’s Volume Mixer (sndvol.exe*), and then open the Device menu. If there’s more than one device listed, make sure the one you want to use has a checkmark next to it. Turn up the Device volume control as high as it will go. Also check the subordinate volume controls to the right, one for each open sound-enabled application and one for Windows itself, and make sure they’re all turned up.
Next, go to Control Panel ➝ Sound, and choose the Playback tab (Figure 4-9). If, again, there’s more than one device listed here, highlight the one you want to use and click the Set Default button.
Figure 4-9. More than one sound device on your PC? If so, you may have been setting the volume on the wrong card all this time
Note that a single hardware device, such as a sound card, may be responsible for multiple sound devices shown in Control Panel. For instance, most higher-end audio cards have both analog (headphone jack) and digital (coax or optical/SPDIF) outputs, so make sure the one you’re using is set as the default, and is marked with the little green checkmark icon.
With the sound device you want to use highlighted in the Playback window, click the Properties button, and choose the Custom tab, and make sure the Digital Output Only option is turned off. Then choose the Levels tab, and make sure all the volume controls here are turned up, and none are muted. (Muted levels have small red symbols on the blue speaker buttons, as shown—albeit in black and white—in Figure 4-10.)
Figure 4-10.The volume controls for your sound card’s inputs and outputs are buried in Control Panel, not in the Volume Mixer
Next, choose the Advanced tab. Click Test to play three tones in the left channel, followed by three in the right (more if you have a 5.1 or 6.1 setup).
If you don’t hear anything, and you don’t see an error message at this point, there’s likely a problem with your speaker jack, cable, or speakers.
If you hear only three tones, it means only one stereo channel is working; either the left or right channel (or speaker) is out. The left channel tones decrease in frequency (higher to lower), while the right channel tones increase (lower to higher).
If you have more than two speakers, but don’t hear sound out of all of them, close the Properties window and click Configure to show the Speaker Setup page. Follow the prompts to tell Windows how many speakers you have.
If you hear sound in some applications and not others, it could be the fault of the Exclusive Mode options in the Properties window. Try turning off one or both of the options here, click Apply, and try again.
If you hear the tones, but you can’t hear music played from an audio CD, the analog audio cable that typically connects CD drives in desktop PCs to sound cards might be missing, or plugged into the wrong connector. (Laptops and newer SATA drives don’t usually use these cables.) It’s a thin cable with small, plastic, three- or four-conductor plugs, and is found inside your PC case. Unless you’re using an add-on sound card, this cable should be plugged into your motherboard; if there’s more than one port, try the others until you get sound.
If you see the message, “Failed to play test tone,” it means there’s a problem with the driver. Either it’s the wrong driver for the device, the driver isn’t Vista compatible, or the device itself is not Vista compatible. Solutions are discussed shortly
If you have more than one audio device, and the current default won’t produce any sound, try the others, if possible. For instance, if your add-on sound card doesn’t work, but the sound outputs on your motherboard do, then you know your sound card is the problem.
Trying to get the sound adapter built in to your motherboard (desktop or laptop) to work? Check your BIOS settings and make sure the adapter is enabled, as described in Appendix A.
If none of the tools in Control Panel or the Volume Mixer seem to help, it’s time to start looking at your sound device. Open Control Panel ➝ Device Manager (or launch devmgmt.msc), and expand the Sound, video and game controllers branch. If your device isn’t listed, then Windows hasn’t detected it, and hasn’t loaded a driver for it. If it’s listed, but its icon is covered with a red X, then it’s just disabled; right-click the device and select Enable.
If the device icon is covered with a yellow exclamation point, then there’s something wrong with the driver or the device. The first course of action is to right-click the device and select Uninstall. Check the Delete the driver software for this device option, and click OK. When the uninstallation is complete, restart Windows, and Vista should redetect the device and install new drivers by itself. If this doesn’t work, visit the sound card manufacturer’s web site and download the latest drivers for your card.
Now, if none of your sound devices work, including ones that are supposed to be Vista-compatible, you may have stumbled upon a nasty problem that sometimes affects Vista when it’s been installed over an earlier version of Windows. If this is the case with your PC, you should spend some time and remove any remnants of old audio drivers. But be prepared for the possibility that Vista will never produce sound reliably until it has been reinstalled from scratch. To test this hypothesis, try installing another copy of Vista alongside your current installation; see Chapter 1 for details on setting up a dual-boot system.
Please check back next week for the continuation of this article.
Working with Media in Vista
