Need help with rtsp protocol (Firefox and Media Player Classic)

Factual Questions
1

I use the Firefox browser, Media Player Classic, and RealAlternative.

I’m having trouble getting CSpan’s rtsp protocol videos to play on my system. When i click on one of the links under the Video/Audio heading on that page, i get this message. When i click on “Launch Application,” nothing happens.

My Media Player Classic is, i believe, set up to play the rtsp protocol. Here is a view of the “Formats” section of my MPC Options.

If i copy the actual url of the rtsp stream, and paste it into the “Open File” section of MPC, the stream plays fine, so it’s obviously not an actual problem with MPC or RealAlternative. I assume that, for some reason, Firefox is having trouble communicating with MPC and telling it to open and play the RTSP stream.

I did a bit of googling on the matter, and the only suggestion i could find was to add a couple of things to Firefox’s about:config section. Now, i’m usually a bit wary about this sort of thing, but i gave it a go.

I added two things:

network.protocol-handler.external.rtsp (string, value=true)
network.protocol-handler.app.rtsp (string, value=C:\Program Files\mpc\mplayerc.exe)

Now, i don’t really know if i’ve done this wrong, or if it was just the wrong advice to begin with, but it didn’t seem to help.

If i could just right-click on the rtsp link and copy the url, and paste it into MPC every time, i’d be fine with that. But, with the javascript popup links on CSpan i can’t do that, and the only alternative is manually copying out the whole url when the External Protocol Request error message comes up. That seems like too much hard work, so i’m wondering if anyone has any advice that might help me fix the problem.

2

Where on the site does it use RTSP?

3

Actually, that’s not important. What you want to do is add a RTSP protocol handler to the registry. Microsoft offers instructions.

Or you can download this reg file that I made. That should import the relevant entries into the registry for you.

Let me know if that works :slight_smile:

4

Look down the page a bit, in the centre of the page under the Video/Audio heading. All those video links use .rm files delivered by rtsp.

Wow. I’m rather surprised (and somewhat annoyed) that a relatively commonly-used protocol like rtsp requires me to know how to make Registry changes. It’s a bit silly that this sort of thing can’t be set up in Windows Explorer or something like that.

Anyway, many thanks for the advice, and thanks especially for writing a registry file, because i probably would have messed something up. I can’t test it yet as i’m not at home, but as soon as i get home this afternoon i’ll give it a go and let you know the result.

Cheers. :slight_smile:

5

Reply, i’m most grateful. It worked perfectly, and i’m now up and running.

Many thanks for taking the time to help.

6

Sure. Glad to help.