Totem Player won't play an internet video, but VLC does

[Shane H]

Doesn't work in Totem, but works in VLC 1.1.9.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: libgstreamer0.10-0 0.10.32-3ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl fglrx
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: 67cbf0133f3ec38cf0f7c04e3e4a6b89
CheckboxSystem: 2954e74ba17fb0e37fc942cd1d9fab4e
Date: Sat May 14 01:20:44 2011
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/totem
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_IE.UTF-8
 LANGUAGE=en_IE:en
SourcePackage: gstreamer0.10
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-05-13 (0 days ago)

[Shane H (shane.h)]

URL: http://wiki.uky.edu/blackboard/Media/BB_9video.mov

[madbiologist (me-again)]

Does it play back properly if you issue the following at a command prompt? :

gst-launch-0.10 playbin2 uri=http://wiki.uky.edu/blackboard/Media/BB_9video.mov

[Shane H (shane.h)]

Yes.
It works fine if I use the above commands.

(Possibly unrelated:) There are occasional buffering delays though.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

Yeah, I get lots of buffering delays too when I use the command in comment #3, so I decided to try and play it in Totem again and wait longer this time. After downloading over half of the video it began to play smoothly and continued to do so until the end. This is on Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx". I haven't tried it on 11.04 "Natty Narwhal".

Does waiting longer for Totem work for you?

[madbiologist (me-again)]

I downloaded the file to my hard drive (that seems to be a fairly low bandwidth/slow server) and then it played back immediately and smoothly.

It also seems to be quite a large file for two minutes of H.264 video. I would have expected about 20MB. Perhaps this is due to the Raw 16-bit PCM audio?

[Shane H (shane.h)]

I didn't try it.
In my opinion, Totem should know itself how long to wait before
splaying the video to avoid mid-video buffering – like YouTube's video
player does.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

That's exactly what Totem does here. Are you getting a different experience? If so, please describe in more detail, and perhaps include a screenshot if relevant.

[Shane H (shane.h)]

I suppose the file size is rather large. If you go on YouTube and select very high resolution (i.e. large file size per second), the same thing might happen.

My internet connection is somewhere between 1 and 3 Mbits/second.