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H.264 / GStreamer Turned On For Firefox On Linux

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  • #21
    Originally posted by Artemis3 View Post
    h264 is actually open, but patent encumbered; something that matters in 4 or 5 countries.
    In any case, it is time for h265, vp9 and Daala.
    thats why its smart to use gstreamer. firefox does not need to ship a h264 decoder, it just checks which codecs gstreamer has. the distros don't need to ship a h264 codec, because new codecs can be added at run time. the user can decide whether they want to install a h264 codec. either from a non-free/restricted repo, or they can pay for a licensed codec from fluendo.

    (Also gstreamer was added as a build option in firefox 14, it is trivial to enable in gentoo).

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    • #22
      Does anyone know how to increase the amount of videos can be played at once? I seem to have a limit on the VDPAU based playback

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      • #23
        Originally posted by peppepz View Post
        ...after all, probably every piece of software is covered by some patent in the USA. FAT's short file names are patented, for instance, and Microsoft is very litigious about that. Yet I see the FAT driver enabled by default in every Linux distribution
        Except that patent is invalid, it has prior art, whose creator is... Linus Torvalds. See this for more information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF0dar-T6E4

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        • #24
          Originally posted by ssam View Post
          thats why its smart to use gstreamer. firefox does not need to ship a h264 decoder, it just checks which codecs gstreamer has. the distros don't need to ship a h264 codec, because new codecs can be added at run time. the user can decide whether they want to install a h264 codec. either from a non-free/restricted repo, or they can pay for a licensed codec from fluendo.

          (Also gstreamer was added as a build option in firefox 14, it is trivial to enable in gentoo).
          :-D
          Which is why I like using Gentoo, it makes one lazy, as experimental features are so easy to enable :-)

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          • #25
            Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
            They've only enabled support for gstreamer .10, not 1.0, which is a separate bug.
            Gstreamer 0.10 and 1.0 can be parallely installed, and most distros do that AFAIK.

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            • #26
              Originally posted by peppepz View Post
              ...after all, probably every piece of software is covered by some patent in the USA. FAT's short file names are patented, for instance, and Microsoft is very litigious about that. Yet I see the FAT driver enabled by default in every Linux distribution - so my first thought is, "why should h.264 be any different".

              However, lest they be sued in the USA, distributions will probably not ship an h.264 codec for GStreamer by default... So the net effect, in the end, is that users will still see that many videos won't play on Linux out of the box.
              Installing a Gstreamer plugin is not really rocket science...

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              • #27
                Originally posted by r1348 View Post
                Gstreamer 0.10 and 1.0 can be parallely installed, and most distros do that AFAIK.
                Yes, but they can't be linked into the same app because of symbol clashes. And that's an issue, because one of the libs firefox links with in turn links with gstreamer itself - presumably the newer version on the system. I'm not really sure how they handled that.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by timothyja View Post
                  That's because Linux has a workaround for the short file names patent. Short filename are a relic of very old windows versions (3.1 etc) and not really used anywhere these days so the linux implementation does not fill the short name with an actual short name instead it just fills it with random junk characters.
                  The workaround patch never got merged into mainline. Are distributions carrying it on their own? Among other problems, Windows XP woud bluescreen when it encountered certain unusual shortnames generated by Linux.

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by r1348 View Post
                    Installing a Gstreamer plugin is not really rocket science...
                    Yes but for legal reasons it can't come from the official repository of the distribution. So you'll probably also need to add an extra repository. Yet more work for an unexperienced user to do such a basic task as watching YouTube, which is a problem that the HTML5 <video> tag was expected to solve.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post
                      Except that patent is invalid, it has prior art, whose creator is... Linus Torvalds. See this for more information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF0dar-T6E4
                      If you ask me, every software patent should be invalid. However, what matters is the opinion of the courts, and the invalidity of that patent has never been proclaimed there. MS is successfully extorting money from most Android hardware manufacturers in the world because of that patent. Even B&N settled with them (http://www.inquisitr.com/227573/micr...-barnes-noble/). MS wouldn't be getting all that undeserved money if their ludicrous patents were so easily invalidated.

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