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

[looking4awayout]

I have installed the Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox, but it does not work on Roytam1's Firefox 45 ESR SSE. The only plugin I get is the Microsoft DRM one. And yes, I do have WMP11 installed on the RDD. Maybe it's not compatible? Not that I'm bothered much, Viewtube and YT 2 Player works good enough. But I'm curious.

Edited October 20, 2019 by looking4awayout

[grey_rat]

Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin creates the folder C:\PFiles\ or D:\PFiles\

Drag and drop folder Plugins in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser , near folders extensions and features

ViewTube: "Works with firefox 48.0 and later". I use Firefox 48.0.2

Basic K-Lite Codec Pack

[looking4awayout]

Thanks, I will try. But I'm still not sure that it works on Firefox 45 ESR SSE. Will find that out.

EDIT: The plugin appears in the list now. But the plugin crashes as soon as I try to load a video. Oh well.

Edited October 22, 2019 by looking4awayout

[Mathwiz]

2 hours ago, grey_rat said:

ViewTube: "Works with firefox 48.0 and later".

2 hours ago, looking4awayout said:

I'm still not sure that it works on Firefox 45 ESR SSE.

45 is earlier than 48, so it won't work. (I know FF 45 ESR has security fixes up through FF 54 or so, but that won't help you run an add-on.)

Edit: Well, I stand corrected. WMP Plug-in seems to date from 2015; FF 45 was released in 2016. So it should work. Perhaps WMP Plug-in requires SSE2....

Edited October 22, 2019 by Mathwiz

[Mathwiz]

According to @redfoxcz FF 48.0.2 is your only hope:

On 2/16/2019 at 7:03 AM, redfoxcz said:

I have already tried to install FF 48.0.2 (latest non-SSE2 version of FF) ... it runs OK with AthlonXP....

You'll go backward on security a bit, but at least it should work with ViewTube, the WMP plug-in, etc.

[looking4awayout]

I'm not concerned that much anyway. Viewtube works well on Firefox 45 ESR SSE, only the WMP plugin crashes. The VLC one does its job without any issue. 

[Dioxaz]

Hello everyone. I hope I'm ny bothering anyone with the silly request I'm writing below.

I used to be able to play MP4 HTML5 streams with my older Firefox 52 under Windows XP. Now it seems that I can't anymore no matter what I try. The latest thing I attempted was starting from a brand new profile. I'm on Firefox 52.9.0, Windows XP SP3 32-bit with the POSready2009 registry hack.

I swear I followed all instructions of the first post without missing any single step. Every about:config option. The primetime_gmp_win_x86_gmc_40673.zip file unzipped in the right folder. Still no dice. I may have missed something obvious but my brain is currently (at least at the moment writing this) unable to process what it could be.

Included are screenshots of about:config, about:plugins and the result of the https://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html page.

Not shown in my screenshots, media.eme.enabled is also set to true. The Adobe Primetime module is indeed set to Always activate.

In fact, I hardly need it in my everyday browsing as I rarely use my XP install nowadays but I wanted do a test regarding playback of level 5.2 MP4 files (Twitter transitions all their transcoded GIFs to level 5.2 MP4 and this cause problems for Windows 7 and 8.1 users but I wanted to test it under XP too). Not even regular MP4 streams play at the moment (Youtube, Twitter or anything else, as the html5 test page suggests it).

Edit: it looks like the https://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html page is no longer reliable as even my usual Firefox 70 within my Windows 7 x64 installation fails to show the videos of that page (all URLs lead to a 404 error, the maintainer of that page NEEDS to do something about those broken links). For the time being, you can't trust this page anymore. 

Edited October 27, 2019 by Dioxaz

[VistaLover]

7 hours ago, Dioxaz said:

Edit: it looks like the https://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html page is no longer reliable as even my usual Firefox 70 within my Windows 7 x64 installation fails to show the videos of that page (all URLs lead to a 404 error, the maintainer of that page NEEDS to do something about those broken links). For the time being, you can't trust this page anymore. 

With respect , the maintainer of that page has already warned visitors that the original functionality of the test page is now broken, for reasons outside his control: 

Quote

Test cases

Test cases have been removed at the request of my ISP;
they were taking up WAY too much bandwidth.

where by "test cases" he actually means the embedded HTML5 video clips...

You should move to an alternate HTML5 video playback test site, e.g.

https://tekeye.uk/html/html5-video-test-page

http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5

http://web.archive.org/web/20190805082454/https://www.youtube.com/html5

(currently web.archive.org is DOWN for me... )

[Dioxaz]

Crap, my bad. I missed that little box saying:

Quote

Test cases have been removed at the request of my ISP; they were taking up WAY too much bandwidth.

Thank you very much for your links. I think they should be added to the the first post and the older link removed.

After indeed picking up one of the good pages you linked me, it's much better. So at least, my issue is solved when creating a new profile. I also took the opportunity to test out Level 5.2 MP4 files and they work too!! But there's one caveat, hardware acceleration doesn't seem to work (it looks like I forgot I didn't have hardware acceleration back when I was still using XP). This explains why Level 5.2 MP4 work too. I wonder if acceleration is possible with the Adobe Primetime plugin. It looks like it's my older profile that was causing MP4 not to play anymore (the plugin was installed automatically). I guess I'll see that later.

[VistaLover]

On 10/22/2019 at 9:26 PM, looking4awayout said:

But the plugin crashes as soon as I try to load a video.

On 10/23/2019 at 11:28 AM, looking4awayout said:

Viewtube works well on Firefox 45 ESR SSE, only the WMP plugin crashes.

iF I understood correctly, the ViewTube userscript generates direct links to Youtube video clips, which are then fed to the WMP NPAPI browser plugin; the plugin then simply invokes an instance of WMP11 loaded with the YT clip to be played back; however, WMP11 lacks native support for the formats (container and codecs) employed by YT; have you noticed

On 10/22/2019 at 9:18 PM, grey_rat said:

Basic K-Lite Codec Pack

? You need to have installed an SSE-only version of K-Lite CP (or other Codec Pack) to enable WMP11 to play (at least) MP4 (h264+aac) youtube clips; is that requirement met in your setup?

On 10/22/2019 at 11:42 PM, Mathwiz said:

On 10/22/2019 at 9:18 PM, grey_rat said:

ViewTube: "Works with firefox 48.0 and later".

On 10/22/2019 at 9:26 PM, looking4awayout said:

I'm still not sure that it works on Firefox 45 ESR SSE.

45 is earlier than 48, so it won't work.

@Mathwiz: The userscript variety of ViewTube will install and work in FxESR 45 if an appropriate userscript manager (legacy) extension is already installed there; what won't work in FxESR 45 (but will in Fx 48) is the WebExtension flavour of ViewTube (simply because rudimentary WE support was first introduced in Fx 48 ).

On 10/22/2019 at 11:42 PM, Mathwiz said:

WMP Plug-in seems to date from 2015

Actually, many years before that!

https://web.archive.org/web/20170304053612/http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-download

Quote

Date Posted: 4/13/2007

Edited October 30, 2019 by VistaLover

[VistaLover]

2 hours ago, Dioxaz said:

hardware acceleration doesn't seem to work (it looks like I forgot I didn't have hardware acceleration back when I was still using XP).

I don't think you can have HW gfx acceleration for in-browser HTML5 MP4 video (and certainly not HW video decoding) under XP (please someone chime in if you know otherwise ) ...

2 hours ago, Dioxaz said:

I wonder if acceleration is possible with the Adobe Primetime plugin

HW video decoding when the Adobe Primetime CDM is being used as a h264 decoder is not possible, even on WinOSes where the WMF framework is present (Vista SP2+; the browser there has access to patented video decoders) and a compatible GPU is installed...

[grey_rat]

The default WMP9 also works.

! In IE6 settings must enable TLS 1.0

 

WMP has hardware acceleration configuration

 

Hardware Decoder:

[grey_rat]

For pale moon 27-28 it is necessary to install:

Greasemonkey for Pale Moon https://addons.palemoon.org/search/?terms=Greasemonkey+ (greasemonkey-3.31.4-pm_forkBranch.xpi)

viewtube.user.js https://github.com/sebaro/ViewTube/raw/master/viewtube.user.js or view https://github.com/sebaro/ViewTube/blob/master/viewtube.user.js

 

http://sebaro.pro/contact/

[VistaLover]

2 hours ago, grey_rat said:

For pale moon 27-28 it is necessary to install:

... I've hinted about this previously in this thread:

On 10/28/2019 at 1:48 AM, VistaLover said:

The userscript variety of ViewTube will install and work in FxESR 45 if an appropriate userscript manager (legacy) extension is already installed there; what won't work in FxESR 45 (but will in Fx 48) is the WebExtension flavour of ViewTube

So, for browsers not supporting the WebExtensions iteration of ViewTube (e.g. NM27/28 or FxESR 45), it is necessary to first install an XUL flavour of a userscript manager (like GMfPM) and then proceed with installing the userscript (*.user.js) flavour of ViewTube...

[grey_rat]

For K-Meleon is installed greasemonkey-3.9.xpi https://legacycollector.org/firefox-addons/748/greasemonkey-3.9.xpi , but the script is not installed