firefox - is system ffmpeg still needed for h264 playback ?

[ken@…]

When I looked at firefox-48.0 I discovered that it includes shipped ffmpeg (as well as libs ogg,theora,vorbis) and has no option to use system versions. AFAICS, it does not need system ffmpeg, but Igor asked me to check if firefox on a system without system-ffmpeg can play h264 videos.

At the moment I don't have such a system, this ticket is a reminder for me or anybody else to test ff48 when a suitable system is available.

Most of my videos of this type are encoded with x264, or labelled as Adva nced Video Codec in mediainfo. I got big_buck_bunny_720p_h264.mov from ​http://download.blender.org/peach/bigbuckbunny_movies/ and that too is AVC, but from the name I guess it will do ? (398 MB for the 720p variant).

If successful, remove ffmpeg from the runtime dependencies in firefox. Closing as invalid because extra programs (not just ffmpeg!) are needed in my case.

[bdubbs@…]

I built ff48 on my workstation and big_buck_bunny_720p_h264.mov plays fine with it. Looking at the build log, it does appear to build files in /usr/src/firefox/firefox/firefox-48.0/firefox-build-dir/dom/media/platforms/ffmpeg/libav5{3,4,5,7}, etc.

There is no indication I can find that it uses the system ffmpeg. As a curious side note, the link command that incorporates the built ffmpeg object files is 16942 characters long. The ffmpeg files are linked in as static libraries.

Looking at configure --help, there is a line:

--disable-ffmpeg Disable FFmpeg for fragmented H264/AAC decoding

but no indications of using system ffmpeg.

The media/ffvpx/README_MOZILLA file indicates that they are using ffmpeg-3.0.2. that's slightly older than the current version in the book (3.1.1) with particular switches that disable building unused ffmpeg portions.

I'm 95% sure that we can remove the ffmpeg reference in the firefox dependencies, but we need to build/test firefox without any ffmpeg system files to be 100% sure.

[ken@…]

Bad news - without any additions, firefox will play ogg/theora (.ogv) videos - but nothing else.

For mkv and avi it only offers to save the video.

For that Big Buck Bunny mp4 it offers 'open with' but then reports - no applications found for "Quick Time video" files. Similarly for mov, also for wmv except wmv all seem to be described as "application/download" mime type.

It does play youtube.

On the other system where I first built ff48.0 it was able to open the mp4 and at least some of the others, so I guess that runtime ffmpeg is needed.

When I get as far as ffmpeg I'll confirm that.

[ken@…]

I'm (once again) getting increasingly baffled by this - but for the moment I've got a system without ffmpeg and I'll eventually get that closer to a normal full system, so taking the ticket.

Meanwhile, on my haswell where I first built ff48 and noticed there were no obviou s links to system ffmpeg, in the firefox preferences for Applications the only relevant things seem to be:

MPEG-4 video    Always ask
Video podcast   Preview in firefox

What actually happens there is -

mp4 - plays automatically in firefox
mkv - offers the option to open with xine (default) or else to save it
ogv - plays automatically in firefox
wmv - offers the option to open with xine (default) or else to save it
avi - offers the option to open with vlc (default) or download
mov - commercial files play in firefox, but those from my own camera report that the file can't be played because it is corrupt!

[Igor Živković]

Arch Linux still requires ffmpeg for ff48:

​https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/firefox

[ken@…]

Here are the results now that I have installed my full AV stack. They are somewhat disappointing.

mp4 - plays in firefox mkv - offers to open with xine (default, from mime settings) - plays ogv - plays in firefox as before wmv - offers to open with xine (default) but then fails, claiming it is missing avi - offers to open with parole (default), but fails to initialise backend in gstreamer mov - offers to open in xine (default), continues to report my own are corrupt, but plays downloads

And for several of these (NOT mp4) the sound is silent.