H264 not working (Firefox doesn't look for ffmpeg?)

[simo...@gmail.com]

(Originally posted here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1192683 , but got no reply since December)

Some context:

- Firefox version: 57.0.1 (official release)

- OS: Linux (Slackware 14.2)

- ffmpeg: compiled from source, .so file: libavcodec.so.57 in /usr/local/lib, which is present in LD_LIBRARY_PATH

- ffmpeg supports H264; relevant line from `ffmpeg -codecs`: DEV.LS h264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (decoders: h264 h264_v4l2m2m h264_vdpau h264_cuvid ) (encoders: libx264 libx264rgb h264_nvenc h264_v4l2m2m h264_vaapi nvenc nvenc_h264 )

- WebM works fine (I can play YouTube videos)

- H264 doesn't work (Youtube's HTML5 support page, https://www.youtube.com/html5?hl=it&gl=IT, confirms that H.264 and MSE & H.264 are not available).

So, basically, I can't play H264 videos on Firefox. I tried using the version of Firefox which came with Slackware, or even compiling it, but no luck.

One thing that I found is that, when running strace, it seems that Firefox doesn't look for libavcodec.so at all. I tried on another machine, with Slackware 14.1, and strace indeed shows that Firefox looks for the library and eventually finds it.

My idea is that something is preventing from triggering the loading of libavcodec, but I have no idea how to find out.

Thanks anyone for for your help!

[Dave Royal]

On Fri, 09 Feb 2018 01:42:17 -0800, simopal6 wrote:

> One thing that I found is that, when running strace, it seems that
> Firefox doesn't look for libavcodec.so at all. I tried on another
> machine, with Slackware 14.1, and strace indeed shows that Firefox looks
> for the library and eventually finds it.
>

On this OpenSuSE machine I have a copy of Fx58 when it was the developer
edition, and I see that it has libmozavcodec.so in the same directory as
the firefox executable.

The packaged version I normally use has no dependencies on libavcodec,
ffmpeg, or any other AV library.

Both play MSE & H.264
--
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[Mark Lloyd]

On 02/09/2018 03:42 AM, simo...@gmail.com wrote:

[snip]

> - H264 doesn't work (Youtube's HTML5 support page, https://www.youtube.com/html5?hl=it&gl=IT, confirms that H.264 and MSE & H.264 are not available).

I use Lubuntu, and got it (as well as MP3) to work by installing
"gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly".


--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Bad command. Bad, bad, command! Sit! Bark! Stay!"

[WaltS48]

Ubuntu 16.04, Firefox 58.0.1, your link shows that H.264 and MSE & H.264
are supported. In fact all are supported and the browser uses the HTML5
player when possible.

As Mark indicates, install gstreamer. I installed all of them, base,
libav, good, bad, ugly and more.

--
Best name ever! Cadet Bone Spurs
Coexist <https://www.coexist.org/>
National Popular Vote <http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/>
Ubuntu 16.04LTS - Unity Desktop

[Dave Royal]

simo...@gmail.com Wrote in message:

>
> One thing that I found is that, when running strace, it seems that Firefox doesn't look for libavcodec.so at all. I tried on another machine, with Slackware 14.1, and strace indeed shows that Firefox looks for the library and eventually finds it.
>

I see that PulseAudio was added in 14.2 which might account for
the difference. I think PA is required by Fx. I wouldn't have
thought gstreamer was essential - I think it would depend on your
desktop - but I don't know.
--
(Remove numerics from my email address)

[rjvb...@gmail.com]

I don't see any evidence with FF 58.02 on Ubuntu (14.04) that it uses gstreamer. The "Web Content" process only loads the various libav libraries from FFmpeg that it needs, from what I can tell.

There's something strange in how it finds them, though. I read on Phoronix that there's a runtime linker (loader, I presume, much as in Audacity?). I had a newer, optimised FFmpeg (v2.8.6) build in /opt/ffmpeg, installed via a PPA and a priori completely invisible for system software. Somehow Firefox picked up the libraries in there though, which broke playback because supposedly too new. I have a similar FFmpeg 3. install under /opt and that build is ignored as expected, funny enough.

[nick.su...@gmail.com]

пятница, 9 февраля 2018 г., 19:50:05 UTC+3 пользователь simo...@gmail.com написал:

I can confirm, that on Firefox-52.8 (ESR!) H.264 playback doesn’t work, too. Youtube html5 video page tells that H.264 and H.264 MSE are not supported. In the dependencies for 52.8 I see ffmpeg and no gstreamer.

ffmpeg -version output is here: https://pastebin.com/raw/hWuihXMV

grep -iE '(libav|ffmpeg|gstreamer)' on strace output shows nothing.