I can't remember if I posted this before, but it's been on my mind to do so for a while. As an Amazon Prime member -- and I think this applies to Amazon Student and Amazon Mom members also -- I have access to a few thousand free movies and TV shows. These are only available as streaming Flash videos on the Mac, and are not available at all on i-Devices AFAIK. I also don't know if these are available outside of the US.
On those rare occasions when i feel like playing a movie, I use the following steps to launch and control these instant videos on my Mac. This might not be the best method so please feel free to comment if you have a better mousetrap. 1. Install the "ClickToFlash" Safari extension. You can find and install it by going to the Safari Extensions Gallery from the Safari Menu or by going directly to the following site: https://extensions.apple.com/ and using VO+f to search for "clickto". 2. Go to the main Amazon site and log in. 3. Go to your Prime page. I do this by using the Item Chooser VO+i to locate the link labelled "Amazon Prime." 4. To browse the library of Prime elegible instant videos, I use the Item Chooser to locate the link labelled "Browse Instant VIdeos." 5. On the resulting page I am able to browse videos by navigating through various categories using the standard VO commands and the Web Rotor. I can also use Amazon's standard search bar to search for a title in the "Amazon Instant Video" category. 6. Once I've located a video I want to watch, I can VO+Spacebar on the link labelled "Prime Members" and this will open a page for this video. This page includes a brief description of the video along with viewer ratings and other info. 7. If I want to play this video, I can start it by locating and clicking the button labelled "button-watch-prime." Again, I tend to just use the ItemChooser to quickly find this button. Amazon seems to have chosen to make this button immune to the standard VO+Spacebar press, so you might need to bring the mouse pointer to the VO cursor by pressing VO+Command+F5 and then either clicking the mouse/trackpad button or double-clicking the VO+Shift+Spacebar combination to activate the button and start the movie playing. 8. Depending on your Click2Flash settings, the video might start playing or you might hear nothing. Mine is the latter case as I prefer to launch it myself. I do this by using the mouse/trackpad to move the pointer around the screen until I hear VO announce "Group." This is apparently how VO reports the Flash pane. When I've heard this, I click the mouse/trackpad button and this tells Click2Flash to let the Flash content begin playing. Note that I also have VO set to"Speak text under mouse after delay" with the delay set to 0 seconds. Thiese settings are found in VO Utility / Verbosity / Announcements. 9. With Click2FLash installed it is possible to control these Flash videos to some extent. I'm able to Pause, Play, skip forward, skip backward and adjust the volume as follows:. Pause/Play: Press the spacebar. Skip forward: Press the Right Arrow key. Skip backward: Press the Left Arrow key. Adjust video volume: Press the Up or Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease the volume. Note that the system seems to require that the focus be inside the Flash pane for these key commands to work. I sometimes need to move the mouse pointer back into the Flash pane labelled "Group" and click again to return focus. Cheers, Bryan <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
