VLC 'plugin no longer supported' in Chrome/Firefox

[FirstTeamOPS]

I tried to use the "Watch Live" option this weekend and was met with "This plug-in is not supported" in Chrome.

Long story short, I had to re-enable NPAPI plug-in support. (In Chrome) chrome://flags/#enable-npapi click "Enable" and restart Chrome.

Soon, it appears, that option will no longer work as Chrome (and Firefox) are removing NPAPI plug-in support all together, which includes VLC. There are no plans to update the VLC plugin at this time and they suggest moving to HTML5.

I figured I would post the information here as NEWA relies on VLC.

...
VLC inside Chrome would be theoretically possible using Native Client. But that is a large development effort tha the VideoLAN foundation cannot take care of. A very generous sponsor would be required. Even then I am afraid time is running out: https://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation

tl;dr: If you need audio/video playback inside the browser, I can only advise that you start transition to HTML5. In a few months, it will be too late. Better yet, use the VLC or a LibVLC-based application on the desktop.

'Launch external player' should theoretically still work in NEWA. That option never worked correctly for as long as I can remember. "Watch live" using the browser plug-in worked just fine.

VLC thread

[UncleJohnsBand]

Thanks for the info.....NEWA relies on the plugin for the Watch Now feature from the Guide....otherwise it is optional on the streaming page.

Problem with HTML5 is it only supports MP4, Ogg and WebM.....so to use the native video's in NPVR they need to be transcoded which is ok via the Stream options as NEWA uses VLC on the server to transcode over to MP4 format (if selected by users). The Watch Now uses a standard stream from NPVR web server which is not a valid HTML5 format.... and NPVR transcoding is really not that good especially in comparison to what VLC provides quality wise.

I'll have to think about next steps.....I have already implemented FlowPlayer HTML 5 player for videos in libraries.... so I may just move to that as a plugin based rendering in NEWA.... which will still not help the Watch Now from the Guide.....but will work for Stream Now from the event details page.

[FirstTeamOPS]

No problem.

OK, I understand the difference between transcoding versus Watch Now. I'm also fine with using the "live?channel" URLs in VLC, but that's just me

Thanks and keep up the great work UJB!