[gentoo-user] Re: Half error message on attempting to access You Tube from Firefox

[»Q« <boxcars@gmx.net>]

On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 18:58:55 -0400
Fernando Rodriguez <frodriguez.developer@outlook.com> wrote:

> Do you have the "OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems"
> firefox add-on installed (I think it comes with firefox). I have it
> but I still don't have H.264 checked on that page and I can't play
> some H.264 videos like this one
> https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us. If you have it,
> do you mind disabling it to check if that's where you're getting
> H.264 support from?

I don't understand all the details -- not by a long stretch -- but
AIUI, the Cisco thing makes it possible to use H.264 for real-time
video chat, called WebRTC by the W3C and "Firefox Hello" by Mozilla.

Judging by Alan's USE flags, it's not available for Fx 31.x.  In later
versions gmp-autoupdate controls it -- with that flag set, Firefox
will silently download the thing and updates to it from Cisco.  Mozilla
won't bundle it because it's patent-encumbered.  It comes from Cisco as
a binary.

There's also media-plugins/gmp-openh264, which I guess means the Gentoo
devs hope to offer it built from source -- I haven't looked at the
ebuilds.

> I have no problems playing youtube videos without it (both HTML5 and
> Flash) and I don't have gstreamer enabled on firefox.

That makes me worried I gave Alan a bum steer.