> From: "Rick Moen" <
ri...@linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: WoPo Video That Does Not Work
> Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2020 21:59:49 -0700
> Quoting 'Christian Peeples' via BerkeleyLUG (
berke...@googlegroups.com):
>
>> Thank you Michael. It is great to have someone who knows all the programs.
Ah, if only I knew *all* the programs, ... no, not even close.
> The reason Chromium doesn't come by default with extensions to run
> FFmpeg codecs is that Chromium is open source software, and Google is
> taking no chances about A/V and compression patents encumbering it.
Uhm, but I believe sequence went about like this, if I'm not mistaken.
Chris mentioned video (e.g. WoPo example) wasn't playing in browser,
Ubuntu 20.04, and provided URL,
I tried it on my relatively freshly upgraded to Debian stable ...
in Chromium, and it worked
Chris mentioned he hadn't tried it in Chromium, was using Firefox
I tried it in Firefox (on Debian Stable) - also worked.
I think Chris said it worked in Chromium (on Ubuntu 20.04 ... but I
forget ... might also have been Chrome rather than Chromium).
I then did a quick search of 'da Interwebs, something quite like
this:
ubuntu "20.04" firefox video not playing
https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+%2220.04%22+firefox+video+not+playing
Got top "hit":
Firefox not playing videos on Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1274143/firefox-not-playing-videos-on-ubuntu-20-04-4-lts
Which among other things suggested:
sudo apt install ffmpeg
... and knowing what ffmpeg is, that seemed a reasonably sane thing
to try and might fix it ... and Chris did so, and then the video would
play in Firefox.
> Although FFmpeg _per se_ is LGPL with some optional components GPL, many
> of the codecs are covered by restrictive software patents.
> (Unfortunately, A/V and data compression have always been, and probably
> always will be, patent hotspots.) Hence, maybe with extremely rare (and
> bold!) exceptions -- but I don't know of any -- Linux distros do not
> include FFmpeg by default. On some distros, you can't even get binary
> packages of it from package repos.
>
>
https://ffmpeg.org/legal.html
Well ... might depend where one gets one's ffmpeg from. :-)
It typically has a whole lot 'o library dependencies and stuff - lots
of which come from other projects.
And, Debian being Debian, one can install ffmpeg from main, and get
lots of the required libraries and codecs from main - more than enough
to install and use ffmpeg. But I believe there are also many additional
libraries/codecs that don't meet Debian's DFSG criteria, and thus would
not be in main ... and if one has non-free (and possibly also
contrib), can then probably get additional libraries and codecs ...
"essential"? ... probably depends what one wants/needs to do with
ffmpeg. I'd imagine Ubuntu does sort'a kind'a similar ... ish.
Ubuntu plays more loosey-goosey with licenses (e.g. ZFS), and it's
mostly just a single one click once in Ubuntu to enable anything and
everything non-free (or what Debian would term non-free - I think Ubuntu
may label it a bit different ... "proprietary" or the like, I think).
Anyway, checking a Debian VM I have that's stable, and doesn't have ffmpeg
installed ... and without non-free and without contrib ... it looks like
it would be more than happy to install ffmpeg.
Hmmm, interestingly, if I compare (simulated) install, with or
without non-free and contrib - I get same either way,
and with or without --no-install-recommends (at least between with
non-free and contrib, and without). If I however add
--install-suggests it then wants to pull in a relatively insane amount
of additional software ... I didn't even try and compare if that differs
between with non-free and contrib, or without ... way too much goop (I
think it's bringing in a whole DE and X and Wayland and every language and
locale known to Debian, or something pretty crazy collection of stuff
like that).
Also, for Debian, there's much detail regarding ffmpeg in
/usr/share/doc/ffmpeg/copyright ...
wc on that gives: 1159 5067 45441
"Of course" that doesn't fully cover all (potential) patent issues, but
does quite well go over the copyright stuff, and does also include:
FFmpeg can also be combined with non-free libraries, which would make the
resulting binaries unredistributable.
But this is not done for the Debian packages.