ok im learning - at the ball and chains house for the weekend so will try this fix next week
OPTION 1, GECKO MEDIA PLAYER
Gecko Media Player is similar to mplayerplug-in, as it uses GNOME MPlayer to play virtually all formats, but works well without the need of adding any configuration options. Installation and setup is simple, just copy and paste the following commands into the terminal:
sudo apt-get remove kaffeine-mozilla mozilla-helix-player mozilla-mplayer mozilla-plugin-vlc totem-mozilla xine-plugin
sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer gecko-mediaplayer
or if you're running Kubuntu, you might want the KDE front-end for MPlayer/Xine:
sudo apt-get install kmplayer gecko-mediaplayer
Restart your web browser and test the plug-in here. If you have problems viewing the trailers, please refer to the troubleshooting section.
Note: Please REBOOT if you are not carrying on with the rest of the howto, as you have made lot's of changes to your system and could have some strange problems until you start a fresh session. If you still have problems after rebooting, please read the troubleshooting section at the bottom.
also found some useful commands
Some helpful commands to know
startx - If you happen to end up at a command-prompt without any graphics, you can log in and try typing this command to get back to the graphical (or "x") system. Theoretically this shouldn't happen, of course, since Ubuntu has implemented "bulletproof X," but it's a good thing to know anyway.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg - If you're having screen resolution problems that can't be solved via point-and-click, you can try this command. It'll walk you through setting up your video settings again. If you don't know the answers to certain questions, just go with the defaults for those questions.
xkill - Kills a misbehaving application. Once this command is run, the mouse cursor will become a skull and crossbones. Any window you click on after that will close immediately. Kubuntu has a keyboard shortcut built in for this already: Control-Alt-Escape.
killall gnome-panel - Refreshes the Gnome panel. Particularly helpful if you've added new menu items that don't appear or have changed icons. The Kubuntu equivalent is killall kicker.
top - A quick way to see what applications are using the most resources at any given time.
man - Gives you the manual for an application. For example, if you want to learn how to use Wine, you would type man wine.
rm - Deletes a file. For example, if you had a file called putmeinthetrash, you could type in rm putme* to delete it.
ls - Lists the files and folders in a directory.
cd - Changes directories (that's right--just as it does in MS-DOS).
if you cant tell im not used to this whole terminal principle
and although i tend to answer my own threads i like to keep stuff noted for future purposes and also anyone else with the same issue
