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Re: WoPo Video That Does Not Work ... Firefox ... Choromium ...ffmpeg ...

From: "Rick Moen" <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Subject: Re: WoPo Video That Does Not Work
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2020 21:59:49 -0700



Quoting 'Christian Peeples' via BerkeleyLUG (berkeleylug@googlegroups.com):


Thank you Michael.  It is great to have someone who knows all the programs.


Ah, if only I knew *all* the programs, ... no, not even close.



The reason Chromium doesn't come by default with extensions to run
FFmpeg codecs is that Chromium is open source software, and Google is
taking no chances about A/V and compression patents encumbering it.


Uhm, but I believe sequence went about like this, if I'm not mistaken.
Chris mentioned video (e.g. WoPo example) wasn't playing in browser,
Ubuntu 20.04, and provided URL,
I tried it on my relatively freshly upgraded to Debian stable ...
in Chromium, and it worked
Chris mentioned he hadn't tried it in Chromium, was using Firefox
I tried it in Firefox (on Debian Stable) - also worked.
I think Chris said it worked in Chromium (on Ubuntu 20.04 ... but I
forget ... might also have been Chrome rather than Chromium).
I then did a quick search of 'da Interwebs, something quite like
this:
ubuntu "20.04" firefox video not playing
https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+%2220.04%22+firefox+video+not+playing
Got top "hit":
Firefox not playing videos on Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1274143/firefox-not-playing-videos-on-ubuntu-20-04-4-lts
Which among other things suggested:
sudo apt install ffmpeg
... and knowing what ffmpeg is, that seemed a reasonably sane thing
to try and might fix it ... and Chris did so, and then the video would
play in Firefox.


Although FFmpeg _per se_ is LGPL with some optional components GPL, many
of the codecs are covered by restrictive software patents.
(Unfortunately, A/V and data compression have always been, and probably
always will be, patent hotspots.)  Hence, maybe with extremely rare (and
bold!) exceptions -- but I don't know of any -- Linux distros do not
include FFmpeg by default.  On some distros, you can't even get binary
packages of it from package repos.

https://ffmpeg.org/legal.html


Well ... might depend where one gets one's ffmpeg from.  :-)
It typically has a whole lot 'o library dependencies and stuff - lots
of which come from other projects.

And, Debian being Debian, one can install ffmpeg from main, and get
lots of the required libraries and codecs from main - more than enough
to install and use ffmpeg.  But I believe there are also many additional
libraries/codecs that don't meet Debian's DFSG criteria, and thus would
not be in main ... and if one has non-free (and possibly also
contrib), can then probably get additional libraries and codecs ...
"essential"? ... probably depends what one wants/needs to do with
ffmpeg.  I'd imagine Ubuntu does sort'a kind'a similar ... ish.
Ubuntu plays more loosey-goosey with licenses (e.g. ZFS), and it's
mostly just a single one click once in Ubuntu to enable anything and
everything non-free (or what Debian would term non-free - I think Ubuntu
may label it a bit different ... "proprietary" or the like, I think).

Anyway, checking a Debian VM I have that's stable, and doesn't have ffmpeg
installed ... and without non-free and without contrib ... it looks like
it would be more than happy to install ffmpeg.
Hmmm, interestingly, if I compare (simulated) install, with or
without non-free and contrib - I get same either way,
and with or without --no-install-recommends (at least between with
non-free and contrib, and without).  If I however add
--install-suggests it then wants to pull in a relatively insane amount
of additional software ... I didn't even try and compare if that differs
between with non-free and contrib, or without ... way too much goop (I
think it's bringing in a whole DE and X and Wayland and every language and
locale known to Debian, or something pretty crazy collection of stuff
like that).

Also, for Debian, there's much detail regarding ffmpeg in
/usr/share/doc/ffmpeg/copyright ...
wc on that gives:    1159    5067   45441
"Of course" that doesn't fully cover all (potential) patent issues, but
does quite well go over the copyright stuff, and does also include:
 FFmpeg can also be combined with non-free libraries, which would make the
 resulting binaries unredistributable.
 But this is not done for the Debian packages.

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