Lately we have been working with the Workstation Working Group to setup the ability to build and make available a legal h.264 codec for fedora. Cisco has made available a patent grant for the codec, you can find out more about it at the openh264 project. One of the main conditions is that you have to download the binary rpms from Cisco directly. In order to meet this requirement we have blocked downloading the built rpms from koji, and put up a site hosting the repodata. The download of the rpms then comes from Cisco.
if you are using gnome and you go to play media using h.264 you should be prompted to enable the repo and install the rpms. If you are using any other environment or want to just use dnf, follow the following steps:
Enable the repo, it ships disabled with metadata enabled
$ sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled fedora-cisco-openh264
then install the mozilla integration and the gstreamer plugin
$ sudo dnf install mozilla-openh264 gstreamer1-plugin-openh264 Importing GPG key 0x81B46521: Userid : "Fedora (24) <fedora-24-primary@fedoraproject.org>" Fingerprint: 5048 BDBB A5E7 76E5 47B0 9CCC 73BD E983 81B4 6521 From : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-24-armhfp Is this ok [y/N]: y Fedora 24 openh264 (From Cisco) - armhfp Last metadata expiration check: 0:02:13 ago on Wed May 11 13:38:09 2016. Dependencies resolved. ======================================================================= Package Arch Version Repository Size ======================================================================= Installing: gstreamer1-plugin-openh264 armv7hl 1.6.1-2.fc24 fedora-cisco-openh264 20 k mozilla-openh264 armv7hl 1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24 fedora-cisco-openh264 295 k openh264 armv7hl 1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24 fedora-cisco-openh264 290 k Transaction Summary ======================================================================= Install 3 Packages Total download size: 604 k Installed size: 1.4 M Is this ok [y/N]: y Downloading Packages: (1/3): gstreamer1-plugin-openh264-1.6.1-2.fc24.armv7hl.rpm 12 kB/s | 20 kB 00:01 (2/3): mozilla-openh264-1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24.armv7hl.rpm 168 kB/s | 295 kB 00:01 (3/3): openh264-1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24.armv7hl.rpm 158 kB/s | 290 kB 00:01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 322 kB/s | 604 kB 00:01 Running transaction check Transaction check succeeded. Running transaction test Transaction test succeeded. Running transaction Installing : openh264-1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24.armv7hl 1/3 Installing : mozilla-openh264-1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24.armv7hl 2/3 Installing : gstreamer1-plugin-openh264-1.6.1-2.fc24.armv7hl 3/3 Verifying : mozilla-openh264-1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24.armv7hl 1/3 Verifying : gstreamer1-plugin-openh264-1.6.1-2.fc24.armv7hl 2/3 Verifying : openh264-1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24.armv7hl 3/3 Installed: gstreamer1-plugin-openh264.armv7hl 1.6.1-2.fc24 mozilla-openh264.armv7hl 1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24 openh264.armv7hl 1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24 Complete!
The repodata for this repo and the rpms are signed with the fedora key. right now we only have the fedora 24 repo up, we will be aiming to finalise the process and get Rawhide and Fedora 23 rpms and repos up this week also.
I would like to thank the Workstation Working group and Cisco for sorting out the agreements for this to be possible.
12 responses to “installing openh264 on Fedora 24”
Firefox 46.0.1 still says H.264 is not supported if I visit http://www.youtube.com/html5 – what’s wrong?
I have the same issue at that link.
# rpm -q firefox mozilla-openh264 gstreamer1-plugin-openh264 openh264
firefox-45.0.1-4.fc25.x86_64
mozilla-openh264-1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24.x86_64
gstreamer1-plugin-openh264-1.6.1-2.fc24.x86_64
openh264-1.5.2-0.4.git21e44bd.fc24.x86_64
[…] on Fedora infrastructure, but then distributed by Cisco. Fedora Release Engineer Dennis Gilmore explains more on his blog, and shows the steps to enable this on Fedora 24. (F23 coming […]
[…] on Fedora infrastructure, but then distributed by Cisco. Fedora Release Engineer Dennis Gilmore explains more on his blog, and shows the steps to enable this on Fedora 24. (F23 coming […]
That’s because Firefox dropped gstreamer support and loads ffmpeg-libs now. If you want to play h264 by Firefox you need to install ffmpeg-libs from rpmfusion.org.
So, I followed these directions, but I found nothing worked yet (at least not according to youtube.com/html5), until I went into firefox’s menu => Addons => Plugins, where “OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco…” was listed as Disabled/Never-Activate. After manually enabling it (Always Activate), then things worked as expected.
OpenH264, at this time, only supports Baseline profile.
“The profile you need for most online videos is the High profile. ”
— https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2016/05/12/h264-in-fedora-workstation/
From what I’ve read, Firefox uses OpenH264 only for WebRTC, not HTML5 tag.
See: https://andreasgal.com/2014/10/14/openh264-now-in-firefox/
Rex, I’m surprised you got youtube.com/html5 to work without installing ffmpeg. I don’t understand how that is possible.
Following the steps from Rex, I was not able to get youtube to report back that it works. I do not have ffmpeg installed.
To get FULL h264 support, you must install ffmpeg-libs from RPMFusion.
(Tested on FC24 with Firefox 49.0)
1) Install RPMFusion (of course the primary RPMFusion ftp is down!)
$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://ftp.riken.jp/Linux/rpmfusion/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-24.noarch.rpm
$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://ftp.riken.jp/Linux/rpmfusion/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-24.noarch.rpm
2) Install ffmpeg-libs
$ sudo dnf install -y ffmpeg-libs
3) NO Need to change ANY about:config options, not even enable the cisco plugin!
Restart Firefox.
4) Ask why Fedora made it so difficult to get something so basic working, and why so few posts about this exist.
5) Enjoy one of the most featured Linux distros around.
That does not give you a codec that is covered by a patent grant. Cisco has paid for a patent grant and using the methods in the post, while not covering all use cases gives you legal coverage
Beside the missing HighProfiles the OpenH264 also does not provide AAC audio decoder.
[…] Installing openh264 on Fedora 24 by Dennis Gilmore: https://ausil.us/wordpress/?p=126 […]