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VLC Plugin

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alois

13 May, 2012 03:07 AM

Am I completely off the mark here or could the VLC plugin be used to decode H.264 content in Mozilla browsers on 10.4 & 10.5?

1. 1 Posted by asad on 16 May, 2012 06:47 PM

   

   Anything can decode H.264/.mp4 (e.g., the QuickTime plug-in can handle that codec and file format); the problem is that the video tag isn't handled by a plug-in, but is handled by native code internal to the browser.

   So to use something else, you'd have to write a native backend in the browser (like the one for Ogg) that calls your decoder. And the decoder would have to support the API required for video (e.g., at least initially on 10.5, Safari's QuickTime vide support didn't support all the required attributes of the video tag, such as no-buffer and seeking, because the QuickTime API in the OS didn't have a way to do that, and the Mozilla QuickTime-based implementation never got beyond barely playing video and couldn't support the video API.)

   Or you'd have to do something that rewrites the video tags on web pages into object tags (which aren't directly compatible), and then whatever plug-in you have for the H.264/.mp4 media type would handle the object video. That assumes the site doesn't sniff for video + H.264/.mp4 before it decides to insert the video tag.

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2. Support Staff 2 Posted by Chris (chtrusch... on 16 May, 2012 09:48 PM

   

   Asad, thanks for your comment. Your brackets for objects caused a formatting error plus a false classification as spam on Tenderapp. I edited your comment to appear normally.

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3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 17 May, 2012 12:37 AM

   

   I think Asad hit all the points I was going to mention. We await Mozilla's solution with interest.

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4. Cameron Kaiser closed this discussion on 17 May, 2012 12:37 AM.