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I was wondering if there is a way to play Flash videos without the Flash browser plugin and redirect it to other players like VLC or mplayer?

e.g. Imagine I was on Youtube, then the next thing I do is click on a video link, the link loades up and then somehow VLC plays the video, instead of Adobe Flash.

Can this be done?

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you can always look at open source implementations like Gnash or Swfdec – MaQleod Mar 10 '11 at 1:53
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You can use a Firefox extension like DownloadHelper to download YouTube videos (or videos from many other Flash video sites), or any such suitable software. You can then play them with VLC. (VLC supports all the formats it could possibly download them in.)

However, for many YouTube videos, you don't need Flash at all. Enable the HTML5 beta and you will be able to view many YouTube videos using the built-in HTML5 <video> technology built in to recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Note that some videos, like ones with ads, don't work with the HTML5 player so you'll still need to do the above or use the Flash plugin to play them.

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yea.. but the downloadhelper isn't exactly automatic... its manual – chutsu Mar 11 '11 at 10:02
html5 videos on youtuve doesn't work on every videos... atleast not for me – chutsu Mar 11 '11 at 10:03
@chutsu: Unfortunately AFAIK there is no automatic way to accomplish this. As I indicated in my answer YouTube currently doesn't offer videos with ads and certain others via HTML5. – Patches Mar 11 '11 at 10:47
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You can download a wonderful extension, if using Safari, called Youtube5. It converts all youtube videos to html5 and in addition has a nice UI. I find it more reliable than Youtubes own html5 website. On a sidenote: The latest flash update (10.2 i think) is supposedly using the graphics card rather than the cpu when watching flash videos.

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