Why can't firefox invoke the system dll or libraries for H.264 encode/decode? Like many video players do.

Why must every browser ship its own codec or even Unicode collection is beyond me.

Because of a long tradition of the system libraries being fucked.

All this stuff started in the days of Windows XP, which shipped with such a meagre selection of codecs you couldn't even play DVDs.

And the codecs you could download? Either they cost money (i.e. most users wouldn't have them), or they were dodging license costs by some questionable means, or they had bigger aspirations than just providing a mere codec (flash/realplayer/quicktime)

VLC arose out of that and became popular because, by ignoring the system codecs, it could actually play the damn file.

VLC also has the advantage of being developed in France, where the legal system does not recognise software patents.

Really! My respect for France has gone up a few notches.

Don't get too excited, in France there's a tax on all storage devices (sd cards, usb sticks, hdds, laptops, phones etc) to help subsidise the record and film industry...

Note that internal HDDs aren't taxed under this tax, only external ones. (So if you don't want to pay it, you can just buy a SATA HDd and an adaptor). Phones are taxed though (yes this doesn't make any sense technically)

Is the tax on a phone's storage capacity or its overall retail price?

On the storage capacity

We have that in Italy too, but at least that means that ripping CDs or DVDs is entirely legal. It's actually called private copy contribution.

Yep it actually came from Germany, and was afterward adopted by a lot of european countries

Germany has that too. Even on paper, since you could copy pages under copyright.

Honestly, I'd take that trade. A narrow, stupid tax is definitely the lesser of two evils here. (Especially as it means I'd have a moral license to pirate whatever I wish!)

There was a lot of back and forth [0] over this back when Firefox added support for system libraries. The FOSS purists only wanted to support codecs they could include in Gecko (long before OpenH264) while the pragmatists wanted to make a useful web browser.

Support for system libraries first appeared on mobile platforms because it was essential. At the time (ca 2011/12) the likes of YouTube and Vimeo were only delivering MP4 to mobile clients.

The purists seemed to think that somehow if Firefox held the line on (likely but not guaranteed) unencumbered formats/codecs that every content producer would see the light and go with those objectively worse codecs with no hardware acceleration for video content.

This completely ignored the fact that Flash was common on desktops and supported encumbered codecs just fine. It was in fact the primary delivery vehicle for them. The NPAPI content hole let the purists be intransigent while actually using content on the web. They were also ignoring the design of the HTML5 video tag that encouraged inclusion of multiple source formats and some sort of fallback including object embeds.

As for Microsoft they were still pushing the various Windows Media codecs as the One True Way in the Windows XP and Vista eras. They had to support MP4 with Windows 7 because every smartphone and most stand alone cameras were capturing video in MPEG-4 codecs if not file formats.

[0] https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.dev.platform/c/-xTei5rYT...

Microsoft still doesn't include basic codecs like H.264 in some Windows editions ("N" and "KN" for some regions in the EU and Korea), but those users can download Microsoft's Windows Media Feature Pack to get the codecs:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-video-audio-problem...

Firefox used to be able to do this, but they don't anymore for strategic or political reasons. They don't want website authors to depend on certain codecs that some users have on their PC but some others don't. I can understand the rationale, but think it is a bit sad.

For H.264, it's a question of patents IIRC. Cisco granted a free of charge decoder, but not necessarily an encoder.

Hi ow can I pay to get the encoder into my FF? Like I paid to get some en/decoding in my raspberry pi’s.

I personally believe Raspberry Pi made the wrong decision in using non-free hardware which required non-free firmware to operate key features such as video encoding/decoding.

Why would we encourage Firefox or others to do the same and develop a business model based on patents? Especially so when these patents are owned by huge conglomerates of corporate psychopaths (hello MPEG-LA) and the software editor we're talking about (Mozilla) had to lay-off a lot of staff during the confinement by lack of funds.

To be fair, Firefox is more than capable to encode/decode into free codecs and there's no reason why a third party plugin couldn't support H264 encoding as well. It falls on Apple to support proper standards for their communications platform and not on Firefox to support every piece of proprietary tech they can come up with.

But well, we all know what Apple thinks of standards. With their AirPlay, iMessage, iCloud and other Apple-specific solutions. If only we had free-software, standards-compliant solutions to all these computing problems. /s

For the record, I very much agree with you.

I'm pretty sure it does use system libraries for decode

It's possible and it's compile time option, source package managers like portage allow you to do that.

That's why it downloads the openh264 encoder binary from Cisco

Maybe... Google Duo works in Firefox (and even Opera) though.

Important: Google Duo is available on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

Source: https://support.google.com/duo/answer/6386089

Does Duo send H.264?

As far as I've read about Duo it seems to be AV1:

https://www.xda-developers.com/google-duo-lyra-codec-better-...

...though I'm not sure whether they use it consistently.

How does this happen? AV1 encoding codec was still work in progress, and most chips don't support any hardware acceleration for this. Can we get reasonable frame rates on core CPU for av1 encoding already?

Duo uses AV1 for very low bandwidth calls. And then a mix of H.264 / VP8 / VP9 etc.. depending on many parameters. Disclaimer: worked on the product. https://blog.google/products/duo/4-new-google-duo-features-h...