Howto – Play Embedded Real Player Media in Konqueror Using KMplayer

[Caption: 1st spot! Yay!]

Hi! Getting the nphelix.so plugin that comes with RealPlayer 11 Gold to work with Konqueror 3.5.9 is downright painful.

I figured out a way to make KMplayer work with Konqueror to view RealPlayer files. KMPlayer is nifty in that it can use multiple backend engines – not to mention xine and mplayer. This howto works for Kubuntu 8.04 (KDE 3.5.9).

Let’s get on with the howto:-

• Download and install Real Player 11 Gold for Linux from here. Follow the instructions in this howto to do so.
• Next install MPlayer and KMplayer from the repositories. Make sure you have all of the repositories enabled before doing so. Once you’ve done that, In a terminal just do the following:
  

  sudo apt-get install mplayer kmplayer

• Now grab MPlayer’s binary codecs from here. The download is actually a single zipped file. Use Ark to extract it.
• We need to copy all of the codecs to /usr/lib/codecs . Next we need to copy/overwrite some of these codecs with those that came with RealPlayer 11 Gold. RealPlayer’s codecs reside in the /path-to-realplayer-installation/codecs folder. Copy them into the /usr/lib/codecs folder. You can accomplish all of this graphically for this process to be more intuitive. For all of this, Konqueror needs to be run with sudo privileges. So in a terminal do:
  

  sudo konqueror

  Goto /usr/lib and create two folders under /usr/lib – codecs and win32. Now goto /path-to-realplayer-installation/codecs and copy all of the files to /usr/lib/codecs . Konqueror will prompt you that you’re attempting to overwrite. Have no fear! Proceed 🙂 !

• Next we need to create symbolic links (shortcuts) to all of the files you just copied to /usr/lib/codecs in /usr/lib/win32 . To do so we do the following in a terminal (although you could try doing it graphically):
  

  cd /usr/lib/win32

  sudo ln -s /usr/lib/codecs/* .

  Don’t forget that dot! It’s not a typo 🙂 .

• Now we need to configure the xine engine so that it knows where to look for the codecs. Open up Kaffeine. Goto Settings > Xine Engine Parameters > Decoders and enter either /usr/lib/codecs or /usr/lib/win32 in both fields. Click Apply and then OK. We have configured xine.
• Now we need to configure Konqueror to use KMplayer to play Real Player files. Goto Settings > Configure Konqueror > File Associations. In the list under Known Types click on audio and select vdn.rn-realaudio. Click on the tab called Embedding. Click on Add and select Embedded player for KDE (kmplayer_part). You might be having other selections already in your Services Preference Order. So remember to place Embedded player for KDE at the very top. Repeat the whole thing with vdn.rn-realaudio, x-pn-realaudio and x-pn-realaudio-plugin all of which also lie under audio and for vdn.rn-realvideo which comes under video. Do the same for vdn.rn-realmedia, vdn.rn-realmedia-secure, vdn.rn-realmedia-vbr, vdn.rn-realplay, vdn.rn.realsystem-rmj, vdn.rn.realsystem-rmx under applications. Konqueror is now configured to use KMPlayer to play embedded Real Player media. Click on Apply and then OK. Restart Konqueror.
• Test it all out! When an embedded media opens up, an embedded instance of KMplayer should start. You can then specify either xine or mplayer as the engine KMPlayer should use for the media. I’ve found mplayer to be more reliable.

Note that this workaround isn’t perfect and your mileage may vary. You’ll do alright for the most part though 🙂 . Readers are welcome to send in their comments! Cheereo 🙂 .

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SMOG-Grading: 8.0

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