Opening video files as streaming URLs in Firefox/Zoom Player

January 27, 2006 1:00 PM

I want to set up Firefox and Zoom Player (or any other good media player) so that when I click on a .mpg or .wmv link, it starts streaming in my media player. I don't want it to download first.

When using IE and Windows Media Player (under Windows XP SP2), the default behavior is a useful one: when I click on a .mpg or .wmv link, WMP immediately pops up and starts streaming the file. No delay. Using Firefox and a good third-party, free player (in my case Zoom Player, but I've also used BSPlayer), the video file first downloads, then opens as a cached local file in the designated media player.

Zoom Player comes with a Firefox plugin, but all that does is make the video appear in the Firefox window (and in a very user-unfriendly, control-less way). I can manually copy the URL for the video file, then open Zoom Player and paste this in, but I'm looking to make this as easy as under the IE/WMP combination.

If this is a limitation of one of these media players, I'd be willing to consider switching to facilitate this behavior. Hopefully it's not a Firefox limitation.

posted by rxrfrx to computers & internet (6 comments total)

my first thought was:
tools > options > downloads and view the actions of your media files you can change it to use the media plugin, open in default app or choose app.

is it not streaming if you choose to open the link in the application versus the browser plugin?
posted by freudianslipper at 1:52 PM on January 27, 2006

You could try the Media Player Connectivity extension for Firefox.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 2:05 PM on January 27, 2006

freudianslipper, if you choose to open the link in the application, the behavior I described above occurs. The file is downloaded to local cache, and then the cached file is opened in the associated program.
posted by rxrfrx at 2:11 PM on January 27, 2006

Dipsomaniac, that's sort of the opposite of what I want. That extension appears to take things that are already streams, and make them save-able and more flexible. I want to go from plain file-links to stream-links.
posted by rxrfrx at 2:13 PM on January 27, 2006

OK, I'm halfway there.

I installed an extension called Launchy, which allows you to pass the URL to your favorite program, which will ideally open it as a stream.

The bad news is that you can't set this as a default action as far as I can tell; you need to enter a context menu for each link, and tell it specifically to open in your favorite media player.

I just need to figure out how to make this the default action.
posted by rxrfrx at 2:40 PM on January 27, 2006

oh darnit theres gotta be an extension to edit your available actions but I can't seem to find one.
posted by freudianslipper at 2:50 PM on January 27, 2006