I’ve freshly installed Leap 16.0 (gnome) and am having trouble getting h264 video to play.
VLC media player 3.0.21 Vetinari (revision 3.0.21-0-gdd8bfdbabe8)
[000055a560f427b0] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
Warning: Ignoring XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland on Gnome. Use QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to run on Wayland anyway.
[000055a560fd3650] main playlist: playlist is empty
[00007fc090c1aa10] gstdecode decoder error: no suitable decoder found
[00007fc090c1aa10] main decoder error: Codec `h264' (H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10)) is not supported.
I believe openh264 was pre-installed by the leap 16.0 installer:
todd@localhost:~> sudo zypper search openh264
Refreshing service 'openSUSE'.
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
S | Name | Summary | Type
---+-------------------+------------------------------------------+-----------
i | libopenh264-8 | H.264 codec library | package
| libopenh264-devel | Development files for openh264 | package
i | mozilla-openh264 | H.264 codec support for Mozilla browsers | package
| openh264 | H.264 codec library | srcpackage
todd@localhost:~> sudo zypper in gstreamer-1.24-plugin-openh264 mozilla-openh264
Refreshing service 'openSUSE'.
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
'mozilla-openh264' is already installed.
No update candidate for 'mozilla-openh264-2.6.0-2.suse1600.2.x86_64'. The highest available version is already installed.
'gstreamer-1.24-plugin-openh264' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
No provider of 'gstreamer-1.24-plugin-openh264' found.
Resolving package dependencies...
Nothing to do.
What should my next step be in attempting to resolve the issue?
Yes sorry about that, I’m not really familiar with OpenSUSE yet, and have been stumbling around trying to solve this for a few hours. I’ve now removed the duplicate repo.
OK, that is correct, so apparently you need either ffmpeg-4 from Packman or possibly a higher version of vlc that can use libavcodec61 instead of libavcodec58_134 (but not being a regular user of vlc I might be wrong).
Other players should be able to use libopenh264-8 though.
So you are on Gnome? I was able to play .mp4 in Leap 16RC, but apparently something is different in the released version… stay tuned.
Meanwhile, at least Firefox with the default install (and the libopenh264-8 you already have) can play (at least some) h264 videos, for instance Big_Buck_Bunny
EDIT: smplayer and the underlying mpv work, while I can confirm that totem and showtime complain about a missing decoder (that cannot be found anywhere).
The root problem is that (without Packman and without any HW-provided decoder) gstreamer cannot play h264, while ffmpeg can (using libopenh264-8), so players based on Gstreamer don’t play while player based on ffmpeg play at least the h264 level provided by libopenh264-8.
Try e.g.
Thanks to Bjorn gst-bad 1.26+ in openSUSE:Factory is already built
directly against noopenh264, avoiding the need to use the restricted
openSUSE:Factory:openh264 project for most builds
I’m a little lost here, is it just an overlooked config that can be easily fixed by a bug report or …?
Build with noopenh264, move plugin to main package.
So the change missed Leap16 by a few days, which is unfortunate. But Tumbleweed has the new version.
Something is wrong anyway. The OpenH264 Wiki page doesn’t even mention packman for Leap 16 any longer. So following the instructions there to install openh264 wouldn’t work, even once the Leap16 packman repo was available. Looks to me as if either the Wiki needs to be fixed (document adding packman repo and gstreamer vendor switch), or the gstreamer plugin needs to be updated…(?)
