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


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On 8/5/2017 at 0:44 AM, LoneCrusader said:

I just went through this same problem on a machine I built for someone else. I kept getting the "will be installed shortly" message until I manually set 51.0 in the %VERSION% section of the update URL and manually forced it to check for updates. Then it magically decided that it would work...:wacko:

Thanks LoneCrusader!  Ok based on what you said here is what I did.  First I went to about:config and looked for media.gmp-manager.url and CHANGED TO: ( Change %VERSION% after GMP to: 51.0 )
https://aus5.mozilla.org/update/3/GMP/51.0/%BUILD_ID%/%BUILD_TARGET%/%LOCALE%/%CHANNEL%/%OS_VERSION%/%DISTRIBUTION%/%DISTRIBUTION_VERSION%/update.xml.

No joy, primetime content still says it will installed shortly.

Then from another thread from user Krzy I added media.mp4.enabled=true to about:config.

Nope, same - same.  Still no H.264 and MSE & H.264

I feel that at this time I'm just digging a deeper hole.  Help, anyone out there have additional insights?
Thanks in advance.

Mac

Edited by Mac
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8 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

Will it now install itself automatically if it's no longer available to download?
Won't people have to do it all manually from now on?
:dubbio:

Hi Dave-H

I followed all of the proper steps in the proper order from Mixit's post on page 1 for manual installation. To include the modifications to the FF profiles and line by line modifications to the about:config files. Oh and getting the three archived files to insert into folder 17.

I thought this whole exercise was to do a manual install for those of us who missed the time window for the automatic install from Adobe.

Cheers,

Mac

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7 hours ago, Mac said:

Thanks LoneCrusader!  Ok based on what you said here is what I did.  First I went to about:config and looked for media.gmp-manager.url and CHANGED TO: ( Change %VERSION% after GMP to: 51.0 )
https://aus5.mozilla.org/update/3/GMP/51.0/%BUILD_ID%/%BUILD_TARGET%/%LOCALE%/%CHANNEL%/%OS_VERSION%/%DISTRIBUTION%/%DISTRIBUTION_VERSION%/update.xml.

No joy, primetime content still says it will installed shortly.

Then from another thread from user Krzy I added media.mp4.enabled=true to about:config.

Nope, same - same.  Still no H.264 and MSE & H.264

I feel that at this time I'm just digging a deeper hole.  Help, anyone out there have additional insights?
Thanks in advance.

Mac

Interesting. That step was the last one I tried before the plugin was successfully installed. I had restarted Firefox several times prior to this but it refused to finish until after I had changed the URL and forced it to manually check for updates. Looks like that particular change may not be the trigger, but I didn't do anything else. Maybe one must do some kind of ritual in order to be granted success...:wacko:

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Thanks for the Coreinfo output! It eliminates some hypotheses I had. Then again, it also show you're using an AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 940 based machine.
As it happens, I do have one machine based on the selfsame processor and a rather old motherboard (a M2NPV-VM board with 8 GiB RAM), having an onboard GeForce 6150, and FF 52.2.0 esr with the @mixit tricks displays HTML5/H.264 video just fine! :crazy:
So, I'll ask you to kindly perform just one more test, please access this test page and see whether all 3 videos display OK for you or not. TIA.

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@mixit

Just want to say that the instructions in the OP worked right away for me on a computer running Windows XP and Firefox 46.0.2.  So I'll just have to find a way to install FF 46 or newer on my main computer.  Thanks!

 
Edit: I finally got around to creating a second (clean) install of FF on my main rig starting off with FF35 using a separate profile and worked it up gradually until version 46.  The instructions in the OP worked like a charm!

Edited by Tomcat76
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No joy, primetime content still says it will installed shortly.

I had the same problem. The solution was that I used a wrong type for "media.gmp-eme-adobe.abi".

I used "integer" instead of "string". Check all new prefs for a similar error. Else I have no ideas.

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I'm going to finally verify that I have this working under Windows 2000. I think I've spent the last few hours trying to get this stupid thing to work. And even though I followed what blackwingcat had on his website, I still couldn't get it to work. So what I ended up doing was manually going into environment variables under your Windows system properties (right click My Computer and click properties, or just use the System control panel icon to get to it) And then I created a new variable name and then putting a 1 for the value (I did it under user variables. I suppose system variables would work too but I haven't tried it). And low and behold, it finally finally works! I'm running Firefox version 50, so I can confirm it's working. I can finally watch video on outlets like the weather channel as well. It's unreal. :thumbup

To make things easy for others, like dencorso says that the settings in about:config are case sensitive...if you have to create new booleans or strings, just copy what you see on the first post. That way you don't have to mess things up trying to type it all out. It actually helps to have MSFN open in a different browser while you're doing this so you can just copy and paste between browsers since putting a new window up to create a new whatever, it locks you out until you close that window again so being able to switch back and forth without having to have the extra clicks would probably be a good thing.

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Just wanna chime in about something.

If you're using the ESR release, and you updated to the recently released 52.3.0 Version. You might experience that h264 no longer works.

Well to fix this issue, all you need to do is to overwrite the plugin with the files you downloaded earlier. Restart firefox, and the plugin will work again.

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I made an account just to say that I got this working on Vista SP1. It might help others as well if you add to the first post that this can be a big help on Vista also.

 

Huge thanks goes out to the OP and anyone else involved, I had been trying to solve this issue for a while and couldn't figure out anything to help aside from using another browser. I actually wish I'd known about this sooner, because I first started noticing problems on a couple sites going as far back as maybe 1-2 years. Then for about the past 7 months I haven't been on the internet on any of my PC's, and when I just recently came back online I now suddenly noticed problems on tons of sites including youtube which is how I eventually got here. Thanks again.

 

I'll also point out that I'm using the portable version of Firefox ESR. I too had the "will be installed shortly" problem for quite a while, and just could not figure out how to get past it. Even once I got it working, I noticed something where I would restart the browser or close it, and then the next time I'd open it, the plugin would be back to not working, either missing entirely or giving the "installed shortly" message again. Some of those manual entries in the about:config page would also be missing; completely gone, and I had to actually re-enter them. The most bizarre part is that the 17 folder also went missing and so did the files inside it. I had copied them in the folder and then they'd just be gone. This happened about 2 or 3 times, and I kept having to re-create the 17 folder, re-add the files, re-add some of the about:config entries, and so on. I even had to re-download the zip file once because I had already deleted it after I thought I finally had it all set up and working. I'm not sure what exactly changed but I've restarted my browser since then and now everything stays working even after restarting.

 

Based on that, here's my best advice for people who are getting the "will be installed shortly" message or any other problems in getting this set up. I would make sure to add all the about:config entries first, and then only add the 17 folder and the 3 eme-adobe files after the entries have all been added first, it seemed like that might've made a difference. I would also go back and double check and triple check those about:config entries because as I said, in my case some of them actually disappeared after closing and re-opening the browser at first and I had to actually re-enter a couple of them (like I said I'm using firefox portable edition). It was lucky I even went back and checked because after entering them once, I just assumed they'd still be there for good. I would also avoid closing or restarting the browser to try to get it to take effect because I seemed to have the most problems when I did that. Towards the end when I finally got it all working for good, I stopped restarting the browser and just let it recognize the plugin by itself. The last thing which I'm not sure is related is, when I was first trying to set it up, I added all of the "optional" about:config entries from the first post, and when some of the entries kept disappearing on me and I was having to re-enter them, I stopped entering in the optional ones and only did the necessary ones, and it seemed like I stopped having as many problems after that.

 

I hope others can eventually get it working as I did.

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