Re: [revision] www/mozilla-firefox: Inform about H264 decoding in pkg-readme

Kirill A. Korinsky wrote (2025-01-08 22:58 CET):
> On Wed, 08 Jan 2025 22:27:49 +0100,
> Klemens Nanni <kn@openbsd.org> wrote:
> >
> > 8 янв. 2025 г. 18:26:37 Johannes Thyssen Tishman <johannes@thyssentishman.com>:
> >
> > > Some web conferencing applications, like Webex or Jitsi-meet, require
> > > H264 hardware decoding to work, but in Firefox, this feature is disabled
> > > by default.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Can it not detect it at runtime or is there a reason to not use it?
> >
> > I am under the impression that you want to offload whenever possible.
> >
>
> I just tried test meeting in webex.com and it indeed, doesn't work under
> firefox with error:
>
> Your browser doesn't meet Webex system requirements. Install and
> activate the OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.
> and then try joining again.
>
> Before I had join the meeting the cam works.

It's not about _your_ cam. It's about how it plays other cams to you.

> Thus, I also had tested it at chromium, and it works.

Yes, chromium has h264 enabled by default, (our) firefox does not.
Toggle the mentioned about:config key on, and webex will work.

Here is a h264 support test page:
https://mozilla.github.io/webrtc-landing/pc_test_no_h264.html

It's not only webex that will work better. It's just that webex has no
fallback implemented (like jitsi, when configured...).

We spend quite some time to get the openh264 plugin to run when
Johannes figured out that it's not needed and toggling
"media.webrtc.hw.h264.enabled" to "true" is sufficient.

I think this should be mentioned in the README.

(Can someone test if media.webrtc.hw.h264.enabled works on a system
without libva / hardware h264 decoding support?)

I played a bit with firefox on my mac and there, h264 works
EITHER with the cisco openh264 plugin activated, OR with
media.webrtc.hw.h264.enabled toggled on.

Getting the cisco plugin to run looks possible, but would
need some patching, because it expects the plugin library to
be available on an external URL and has some expectations
about the filename and the directory layout.
See firefox $WRKSRC/toolkit/content/gmp-sources/openh264.json

Best Regards,
Stefan