No video playback - how fix

[Robert Baer]

Happens in Windows XP SP3, FireFox 52.9.0 and SeaMonkey 2.49.4.

Problem shows in some news pages, e-mail with embedded videos.
YouTube works OK, no error messages.

Help?
Thanks

[Paul]

Some of the info you need, shows in the

youtube.com/html5

status page. Your setup will be "missing" some options,
options that with care, would not be an issue.

It really depends on what video wrapper a site uses,
what HTML5 video option a site uses, as to whether
a video will play.

And, as it turns out, the *browser* is actually capable.

What's "missing", is WinXP SP3 doesn't have DXVA2.

WinXP only has DXVA.

The browsers do something inappropriate in that situation,
and you don't get to see video.

If the exact same browsers are moved to a Windows 8.1 system,
the video will play!

I tested this. I couldn't believe it. That the idiotic browsers
have a "system issue". I thought the lack of video was
"just a browser issue", but the same browsers, as poor as
they might be, can manage this if riding on top of Windows 8.1.

Who knows, they might work on top of Vista too, but who the
hell still runs Vista ? (With its badly broken Windows Update
responses.)

If there was some way to back-port DXVA2 to WinXP, this would not
be an issue for you.

And as far as I can determine, there won't be any new versions
of Seamonkey. The next "step" for them, is a huge step, requiring
eons of work from any developers still interested in doing such
work. It's like hiking in the hills, and discovering a hill in
front of you the size of Mount Everest. That's what the Seamonkey
team faces now.

It's the same hill facing the Thunderbird developers, and as
near as I can determine, they "don't have much oxygen left".
They could be left stranded (dead) on the side of Everest.

If you hitch your wagon to the wrong software ("software reuse"),
this is what happens to you. Dead, somewhere on the side of Mount
Everest.

Paul

[VanguardLH]

E-mail doesn't do video. It passes the content to some handler. Could
be VLC, WMP, or a web browser.

You're back on Windows XP, so you're using the latest web browsers for
that old platform. The world moves on. Likely there is a codec used in
encoding the video stream that you don't have.

You could try installing the K-Lite Codec Pack to see if it happens to
add a codec that you're missing. Personally, I go with their Full pack,
but don't include the player. Some folks do, because maybe it will use
one of the included codecs and play a video that other apps cannot play
even with the availability of the proper codec. It also includes the
Icaros thumbnail previewer (the images you see for icons of image and
video files in Explorer). I use that Icaros (used something else many
years ago but don't remember its name); however, if you are using
another thumbnail previewer/cacher then don't install the Icaros one.

https://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

What are some examples of news pages with either links to video files
you download or streaming sources for video? If there are multiple
videos on a page, which one doesn't play for you? I might be able to
capture the video stream using Replay Media Capture which tells me which
codec was used.

[Robert Baer]

Had to stumble around some, found some examples
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6066195921001/#sp=show-clips
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6066192708001/#sp=show-clips
(many of this type)

https://try.nation.foxnews.com/ride-to-work/?cmpid=org=NAT::ag=owned::mc=FNC_display::src=FNC_web::cmp=nat_1::add=watch_ridetowork_soft
Error message on above "Video format or MIME type not supported".
This is more typical.

What pisses me off, is this BS use of minimal contrast, in this case
dark grey text on a back background.

I remember that if there was more than one on a page, NONE worked.

Have downloaded K-Lite, but have yet to install it.

Thanks.

[Robert Baer]

Had to get K-Lite 13.8.5 for installation.
Seemed only codec is available; still nogo (no player).

[Paul]

I was able to get this one with Youtube-dl program.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6066195921001/#sp=show-clips

Gordon Chang - The Kim family playbook is to be belligerent and hostile-6066195921001.mp4

74,021,664 bytes (length 3:46)

The video played in VLC Media Player. 1280x720.

When I played the video in Linux Mint, the entire OS crashed.
(Not just the player.) Proving once again, that video is
a tough topic for computers.

The only problem with doing it this way, is we
shouldn't need to do it this way.

Paul

[VanguardLH]

Going to the 1st hyperlink with Replay Media Capture (RMC) ready, it
captured a video stream with the following properties:

Name: FOX News Player 1.mp4
Source: https://foxnews-f.akamaihd.net/i/BrightCove/694940094001/2019/07/31/694940094001_6066,199081001_6066195921001,198638001_6066195921001,198760001_6066195921001,200063001_6066195921001,.mp4.csmil/master.m3u8?set-akamai-hls-revision=5
Audio: AAC, 128 kbs, 48000 Hz, stereo
Video: H264, 1280x720, 2482 kbs, 29.97 fps
Size: 70.6 MB

Google Chrome is the default web browser in my Win10 setup, so the HLS
(HTTP Live Stream) downloader inside of Chrome got used to retrieve the
video and audio streams.

To me, the H.264 codec seemed normal. But then I remembered you use
Firefox and an old version of it.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/open-h264-plugin-firefox

In Firefox, go to about:plugins. Is there an H264 plugin listed? In
the Firefox x64 v68.0.1 that I have in Win10, the OpenH264 plugin is
listed as version 1.8.1 and state = Enabled.

I've read where Firefox's H264 decoder requires the Microsoft Media
Foundation; see:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/medfound/microsoft-media-foundation-sdk

That was released for Windows Vista and up, so not available for Windows
XP. I found a forum post about the problem, but it's complicated.

https://msfn.org/board/topic/175591-enable-mp4-h264-aac-html5-video-in-firefox-on-windows-xp-without-flash/

It mentions Adobe's Primetime CDM plugin, but that got removed in FF 52.

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/10/firefox-52-adobe-primetime-cdm-removal/

Yet the following article makes it look like you should get a prompt
when you hit a web page that wants to deliver DRM'ed content:

https://techdows.com/2016/09/firefox-52-mozilla-disables-adobe-primetime-cdm-plugin.html

Since this has to do with DRM which is handled inside the web browser
(using the old Primetime plugin), I'm not sure installing a codec via
K-Lite that is external to the web browser is going to help.

This is similar to VideoLAN's VLC player which uses its own private
library of codecs. Installing K-Lite's codecs provides access to those
programs that call the globally accessible codecs via the registry but
has no effect on those programs that use their own private codec
library. That's why K-Lite can install a codec needed for a video but
it still won't play in VLC which doesn't have the codec. Same for
plug-ins inside the web browser as those are needed for use within that
program to handle the content.

You can try wading through those forum articles or finding your own via
"Firefox 52 H264" to figure out if you can get Firefox to work with
videos encoded using H.264.

[Robert Baer]

Neither K-Lite Mega nor K-Lite Full helped; just the view/interface
changed.
So it is uninstalled, i am back to "normal" and i give up.

[VanguardLH]

Robert Baer wrote:

> i am back to "normal" and i give up.

For Google Chrome, v49 is the last version that supports Windows XP.
H.264 decoding wasn't added to Chrome until v50. So, the latest
versions of both Firefox and Chrome available for Windows XP do not have
H.264 support.

While there are articles (e.g., http://wp.xin.at/archives/4059) that
describe how to get H.264 to work inside of Firefox pre-52, looks like
you don't want to try. Sometimes the fix is just too much work for
something that isn't critical to you.

I'm sure H.264 (AVC) isn't the end-all encoding scheme. H.265 (HEVC) is
already showing up. More will come, but the web browsers back on
Windows XP won't support those new schemes, either.

https://www.boxcast.com/blog/hevc-h.265-vs.-h.264-avc-whats-the-difference

If more resolution can be delivered with equal or smaller stream size,
sites will move to the new encoding schemes. What you can view online
will become even more limited. Sites dropped Adobe Flash and moved to
HTML5 <video>. Same will happen when better encoding schemes become
popular and widely supported in the latest web browsers.

https://caniuse.com/#search=h264
While Firefox has partially (aka flakily) supported H.264 since
version 21, it used the PrimeTime plug-in that got removed in v52(the
latest for Windows XP) and replaced by the OpenH264 plug-in but that
requires OS support (Windows Media Platform) which wasn't available
until Windows Vista, and later.

versus

https://caniuse.com/#search=h265
which has yet to get widely adopted, but likely will as sites pressure
web clients to support H265. Plugins for Chrome are starting to show
up for H265. Mozilla won't add H265 until there is a free and open
source (FOSS) plug-in for that decoding scheme. Since Mozilla dumped
XUL/XPCOM for extensions, maybe someone will port the Chrome extension
for H265 to one usable by Firefox.

Did you ever go to about:plugins to see which, if any for H264, are
installed in your instance of Firefox?

[Robert Baer]

Here is what FireFox 2.9.0 sez:
Installed plugins

OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.

File: 1.6
Path: C:\Documents and Settings\Robert Baer\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\fcr364fw.default\gmp-gmpopenh264\1.6
Version: 1.6
State: Enabled
This plugin is automatically installed by Mozilla to comply with
the WebRTC specification and to enable WebRTC calls with devices that
require the H.264 video codec. Visit http://www.openh264.org/ to view
the codec source code and learn more about the implementation.

MIME Type Description Suffixes
Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library

File: npdsplay.dll
Path: C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\npdsplay.dll
Version: 3.0.2.629
State: Enabled
Npdsplay dll

MIME Type Description Suffixes
application/asx Media Files *
video/x-ms-asf-plugin Media Files *
application/x-mplayer2 Media Files *
video/x-ms-asf Media Files asf,asx,*
video/x-ms-wm Media Files wm,*
audio/x-ms-wma Media Files wma,*
audio/x-ms-wax Media Files wax,*
video/x-ms-wmv Media Files wmv,*
video/x-ms-wvx Media Files wvx,*
Microsoft® DRM

File: npwmsdrm.dll
Path: C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\npwmsdrm.dll
Version: 9.0.0.4503
State: Enabled
DRM Store Netscape Plugin

MIME Type Description Suffixes
application/x-drm Network Interface Plugin nip
Microsoft® DRM

File: npdrmv2.dll
Path: C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\npdrmv2.dll
Version: 9.0.0.4503
State: Enabled
DRM Netscape Network Object

MIME Type Description Suffixes
application/x-drm-v2 Network Interface Plugin nip
Windows Presentation Foundation

File: NPWPF.dll
Path: C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Windows Presentation
Foundation\NPWPF.dll
Version: 3.5.30729.1
State: Enabled
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) plug-in for Mozilla browsers

MIME Type Description Suffixes
application/x-ms-xbap XAML Browser Application xbap
application/xaml+xml XAML Document xaml
Zoom launcher - 3.0.1

File: npzoomplugin.dll
Path: C:\Documents and Settings\Robert Baer\Application
Data\Zoom\bin\npzoomplugin.dll
Version: 4.4.53901.616
State: Enabled
Zoom launcher - 3.0.1

MIME Type Description Suffixes
application/x-zoom-scriptable-plugin Zoom launcher - 3.0.1 zoom
** END LIST **

What the heck is this zoom plugin? Where did it come from?
I uninstalled it; does that remove it from FF?

Do i have any other junk that should be removed?

Thanks

[Robert Baer]

Got OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.

File: 1.6
Path: C:\Documents and Settings\Robert Baer\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\fcr364fw.default\gmp-gmpopenh264\1.6
Version: 1.6
State: Enabled
This plugin is automatically installed by Mozilla to comply with
the WebRTC specification and to enable WebRTC calls with devices that
require the H.264 video codec. Visit http://www.openh264.org/ to view
the codec source code and learn more about the implementation.

Discovered that uninstalling Zoom removed it from FireFox, which is nice.
Should speed some things.

Now, what is this about HTML5 <video> / viewer?
I think i have seen this actually used in the past, but it is not in
the FF list.
So...i used DuckDuckGo asking for "firefox html5 viewer", directed to
"Get the latest Firefox browser", downloaded proffered Firefox Setup
52.9.0esr.exe which if i remember correctly, is the SAME and if so,
there is a liar here (NO HTML5 viewer for FF).

[Paul]

The Cisco H.264 plugin is for WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications).

A typical usage is for video phone calls.

It's not intended to extend the video playback capability of the browser.

Yes, I was disappointed too.

Maybe it would be easy for someone to hack FFMPEG into a
browser, as a means to extend playback. But the problem is,
every page uses a "wrapper" for video, and that wrapper
will be looking for particular things, so not any olde
hack is going to work.

You don't think all this stuff happened by accident, do you :-/

Paul

[VanguardLH]

Robert Baer wrote:

> Now, what is this about HTML5 <video> / viewer?

HTML code. HTML is all text with tags, and one of them in version 5 of
HTML is <video>. The web browser has to natively support HTML5 <video>.
The web brower's rendering engine would have to support the HTML5
features.

https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

That shows you how the latest versions do regarding HTML5 support.
There's a "Your browser" link that will run the HTML5 test against
whatever web browser you use to visit that page.

They say latest Chrome gets a score of 528 (out of 555) points. When I
tested my Chrome v75, it got 535. While they show Chrome v66 as
current, obviously that page has not been updated for awhile as Chrome
is now at v75.

I ran my Firefox v68.0.1 at their test site and got a score of 478.

None of them get 100% because HTML5 is still a moving target. Some
features have not yet been ratified yet some web browsers are already
supporting those features.

[VanguardLH]

Robert Baer wrote:

> What the heck is this zoom plugin? Where did it come from?
> I uninstalled it; does that remove it from FF?

https://www.shouldiblockit.com/npzoomplugin.dll-45810.aspx
https://www.shouldiremoveit.com/Zoom-75759-program.aspx

Zoom: Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen ...
https://zoom.us/
Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an
easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat,
and webinars ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362593-Zoom-Launcher-Plugin

My guess it is some chat client for webinars, meetings, conferences, and
chatting by employees that goes through their zoom.us service.

You should go through the list of extensions installed in the web
browser to see which you've never used or can do without, and uninstall
the dross, or disable it and use Firefox for a few weeks to see if
there's missing functionality you really want back. Uninstall any
plug-ins you don't need. As I recall, you cannot uninstall the
Primetime, OpenH254, or WideVine plug-ins because they are coded into
the web browser (i.e., internal plug-ins, not installable plug-ins).

[Paul]

The problem with HTML5 in the kind of browsers
Robert has access to, is they're looking for DXVA2
subsystem. Windows XP does not have DXVA2, it only
has DXVA.

This is why the

youtube.com/html5

test page, for Seamonkey 2.49 returns better results
when run on Windows 8 (using the same hardware and video card)
as it does when Seamonkey 2.49 runs on WinXP SP3 fully patched.

If there was a way to get DXVA2 on WinXP, then the results
would be better.

I tested all this stuff, and was shocked at the results.
I thought it was the browsers that were responsible, but
it turned out it was the OS that made the difference.

Paul

[VanguardLH]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/medfound/about-dxva-2-0
"The DXVA 2 API requires Windows Vista or later."

Not everything gets backported to Windows XP, especially since that's
been a dead, er, unsupported OS since 2014. Pretty soon Windows 7 will
suffer the same fate. Well, actually mainstream support ended back in
2015 for Windows 7, and it's the extended support that ends in a few
months on Jan 14, 2020. As I recall, extended support doesn't include
feature updates, so anything that becomes available in Win8/10 won't get
backported to Win7, either (unless Microsoft feels some financial pinch
from corporate customers or fear some major vulnerability).