Cool Video: April 2009 Archives
In OpenBSD, Flash support isn't exactly something to crow about. Flash Player 7 is all that works due to subsequent Linux Flash players needing ALSA sound support, a feature none of the BSD projects possess. And that player only works in the Opera Web browser — and only on i386.
But it turns out that you can watch Flash video in OpenBSD on any platform that runs Mplayer. And this clever hack is something that even Linux, Windows and Mac users can benefit from.
Here's how to do it: While perusing the OpenBSD mailing lists, I saw this post about KeepVid.
Basically what you do is enter the URL of the video in the proper box at http://keepvid.com, and then you get an MP4 video to download. Then you can play that video with Mplayer.
YouTube videos do play in OpenBSD's Opera with Flash, since they don't require Flash 9 or 10, but again, if you have a non-i386 machine (or don't want to run Opera) and want to watch them, this is a great way to do it.
Three things:
1) Not all Flash content has an easily grabbable URL, so I'm not sure http://keepvid.com will work in those instances.
2) Turning a Flash video into an MP4 means you now have a copy on your local machine that you can keep and watch at your leisure and archive as you see fit.
3) http://keepvid.com can be mighty useful even if you don't run a BSD, even if you don't run Linux. If you have no trouble viewing Flash video on your Linux, Windows or Mac OS box, http://keepvid.com still offers you a way to save a Flash movie in MP4 format on your local drive to watch at will with your favorite video player.
For me, anything that knocks Flash off its proprietary pedestal is A-OK.
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