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Enable MP4 (H.264 + AAC) HTML5 video in Firefox on Windows XP without Flash


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Hi,

I never tried this workaround, since XP is used by relatives and noone ever complainded, until now.

Something didn't work On XP SP3, November 2017 POSReady updates.

H264/MP4 is marked red on both testing sites.

I go here.

Le installing, following the procedure. Added all about:config things as listed as necessary or helpful.

Create folder and subfolder as requested.

Get zip package from wayback machine and unpack as asked.

Plugin marked as ready to install.

Restart firefox... lots of trouble, system reboot....

-----------------------------------------

Once again whole procedure.

Plugin marked as installed.

Test sites show H264 is not functional.

Reboot Firefox...

----------------------------------

All non-boolean configs are gone from about:config.

WTF?

Add them once again, including the crosed-out boolean (it is not necessary, but not harmful, am I right?).

Plugin working.

I disable auto update from plugin GUI, some boolean appears.

Test sites - all reds.

Reboot Firefox...

-----------------------------------

about:config - non boolean values dissapeared again, plugin marked as 'ready to install'.

Give up go here to cry...

 

 

From the thing I found in this thread I did not change user agent (as facebook videos work), I did not change one variable shown as reuired for FF51 plus for new profiles, as it is shown as installed, I did not fully disable flash, as Family loves it, and... that's all.

I still have this Cisco H264 codec automatically installed by Mozilla into plugins running, could it cause a trouble?

Sorry for bad writing, I'm in a hurry...

Oh and one more thing - by 'profile folder' you mean 'Main folder' or 'Local Folder', I have one profile here and two folders.

I didn't need to panic, fixed it myself changing this %Version% to 51.0.

Edited by Mcinwwl
fixed
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So I missed Dave saying he found an automatic user agent string switcher, but I have tested quite a number of them and the best I've found is called "UAControl" (the latest version, 0.1.3.1.1-signed.1-signed).

Very nice UI, easy to use, and it works perfectly for me on Facebook!

This is the string I am sending to www.facebook.com: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:52.5) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.5

Notice that I have corrected the default string which has the incorrect minor version number (52.0 instead of 52.5 for some reason).  Also, I am spoofing Windows 7 for this site, but I have no need to WOW the site with my fake 64-bit capabilities!

Facebook's UA sniffing here actually does make sense - for the average users who are unaware of this unsupported Firefox plugin, we would indeed require Flash to play videos on Windows Vista or earlier since it's not natively supported below Windows 7.

I just thank God, Adobe, mixit, and others that we have this and it still works though, because the Flash plugin performance on Facebook is absolutely horrible, at least on my machine!

Edited by ThomasW
accidental sending before finished!
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  • 2 weeks later...

To briefly respond to Destro without derailing this thread, if you want some reasons for going back to Windows XP, especially the x86-64 edition, I think usability and customizability would be the main reasons!

I wrote something about this here on the Pale Moon forums, and I also highly recommend the reviews of Nathan Lineback at his Toasty Technology Page!

If you want to discuss this further, I recommend you create a new topic on the relevant forum, but best of luck! :)

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Greetings.

I could install Primetime and it was not easy. But now the question arises. (FF-52)

Do you have problems with viewing, for example, on YouTube?

Within the 23-25 minute video suddenly stops reproducing (the circle of buffering), but the sound continues. I noticed that this happens often at 25:21. What could be the problem? I've never had this before.

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I always had that trouble with any version of FF and also with Pale Moon / New Moon.

It always freezes at 23 min :
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1126635

It happens on YT and on any site using HTML5 videos, a workaround was to use Flash Player instead of HTML5 but that no longer works.

I have an old Dell laptop with a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT.

It seems that not everyone have this bug, but what cause this ?
The graphic card ? A power saving bug ? A buffering bug ?

It's a mystery. :-P

Edited by hotnuma
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I have the same issue with the video always freezing at 25:21. Just before this point the video stutters and then freezes. Audio continues playing ok.

FF52 about:support page says :

Hardware H264 Decoding    No

PM26.5 about:support page says :

Direct2D Enabled    Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version 10.6 or newer.
DirectWrite Enabled    false (0.0.0.0)
(yes, I don't care :D )

I'd say it isn't caused by hardware acceleration. Haven't experienced it on Youtube since I never used their HTML5 video player. For me it happens in custom players and also in internal HTML video player as well so it is a rather general problem with HTML5 video. But it's really no big deal. :)

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On 23/12/2017 at 6:46 PM, fiat1 said:

[…] on YouTube?

Within the 23-25 minute video suddenly stops reproducing (the circle of buffering), but the sound continues. I noticed that this happens often at 25:21.

Same problem here... :(

Edited by NT Five
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  • 5 weeks later...

I spent quite a good time looking after a working solution for my XP SP2 installation.

I just don't wanted to switch to SP3 for many reasons, and the adobe primetime plugin failed with each and every FF version and about:config tweaks I tried. I analysed crash logs without any success.

Then I checked dependencies eme-adobe.dll plugins relies on. I noticed it need GetLogicalProcessorInformation function, which is a common issue with SP2 KERNEL32.DLL , who doesn't export this function, implemented with SP3. They said!

Then I tried to get hold on a hotfix for Kernel32.dll close enough to SP3, and tadaaa!

The QFE version of kernel32.dll, 5.1.2600.3119 (xpsp_sp2_qfe.070416-1259) provides GetLogicalProcessorInformation !  (don't ask me why, I guess this hotfix was compiled in the pre-SP3 era.)

So, to make your tweak work on XP SP2, just install the QFE version of KB935839 hotfix:

Download http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/6/b/c6babe1a-30f5-4f3e-a343-5167d9e2a914/WindowsXP-KB935839-x86-ENU.exe for english locale,

or for french btw http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/c/1/bc1341a6-2a23-4eae-bb38-66f0cdde7af3/WindowsXP-KB935839-x86-FRA.exe

Append /b:SP2QFE to the installer's command line to force the QFE version of the hotfix (as the GDR default version does NOT feature GetLogicalProcessorInformation), click OK, follow the hotfix installer, then reboot.

It just works!

It may be a good idea to archive these hotfixes, as many of them get harder to find every day while Microsoft purges XP's support.

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On 15.11.2017 at 8:03 AM, TeconMoon said:

If another human being exists in the world that uses Windows XP x64, hopefully that's useful ;)

Yes. It works. I have Firefox ESR 52.6 and Windows XP x64. YouTube works up to 8K. But having problem with CPU 90% load when play 4K+ videos even with my i7-2600K and GTX960, no hardware acceleration :(

Edited by Andreasmir
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On 23.12.2017 at 11:00 PM, hotnuma said:

I always had that trouble with any version of FF and also with Pale Moon / New Moon.

It always freezes at 23 min :
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1126635

It happens on YT and on any site using HTML5 videos, a workaround was to use Flash Player instead of HTML5 but that no longer works.

I have an old Dell laptop with a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT.

It seems that not everyone have this bug, but what cause this ?
The graphic card ? A power saving bug ? A buffering bug ?

Greetings.
I tested 41 and 52 versions of firefox and all the time the video is interrupted but the sound continues after 23-25 minutes.
In particular, I tested with different cache settings. I also removed the flash from the PC. I also removed all add-ons including adblock plus. And this does not correct the problem in any way.

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