Watch Documentaries Online

It seems that more and more specialized websites appear that list videos from sites such as Youtube and Google Video. At the beginning websites that would post lists of tv shows and movies were the most common ones and they are still very popular. Other websites emerge now that only list anime, sports or music videos.
One sector that was a bit neglected until now is documentaries. Best Online Documentaries is a website that tries to change that. They offer nearly 650 documentaries embedded on their website that are hosted on servers like Google Video or Youtube. Viewers can watch the documentaries online on their website.
Several categories like Biographies, History, Science and Mystery and numerous subcategories make it easy to find what you are interested in. All the videos that I tested worked and have a playing time of 40+ minutes. The language is English. Below is one of the videos that you can find on the website. You could really spend several days there.
Update: The website is no longer available and we have removed links pointing to it from the article. We do have a couple of alternatives for you that you can visit instead for a list of documentary related videos.
Watch Documentary lists categories on the left side that you can click on to see a list of videos filed into those categories. A click on a category such as military, history or religious opens a list of videos that are available. The site offers a large list of documentaries that you can watch right on it. Most work quite well and the majority seems to be hosted on YouTube. Some may display an error when you try to play them which may mean that they are country-locked or have been removed from the video hosting site.
The second video site that uses a very similar approach to things is Top Documentary Films which you can also make use of to watch full length documentaries on the Internet.
Advertisement
Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?