MSE support

[abhi701]

Hi Moonchild, Thanks for keeping this amazing browser alive with your well thought off development. I came across palemoon when i was just about to give off firefox because of some really shocking changes in its development. Why would one sacrifice "status bar" the most common place for many of us for many shortcuts we like to place. This may be an attempt to make firefox weaker in competition with chrome bcoz now major source of firefox revenue is through google.
But thanks for all your efforts.

Now here is a feature request from my side:
I dont know much about technicals but what i came across is that firefox 31 will now be supporting MSE(media source extensions) according to the author of youtubeHTML5 when i had following conversation with the author : "https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ws/608706/"
I am quoting his reply in case " I will add the missing resolutions in the next release. They were not necessary when firefox did not support MSE, because then only 360p and 720p were available. MSE will become available in firefox 31 (and activated by default maybe in 33)"

Is there any plan from your side to support MSE .
Thanks

[dark_moon]

Ah so MSE is the reason why youtube html5 videos are not available in 1080p.

[damamm]

Also would love to see PM support this. Can't wait to get rid of flash.

Just a note: MSE support in firefox was already available since v29 or v30, but isn't enabled by default (gotta enable media.mediasource.enabled in about:config). I have tested and can confirm it works without any hitches (at least as far as youtube go, where I could use all resolutions on html5). other source about this
On the other hand, fox v31 rolled out and it doesn't seem like they enabled it yet by default.

edit: actually, not only it isn't enabled, but seems to have gotten broken or whatever. can't get it to work anymore here on v31.
oh, mozilla... rectified below

[Moonchild]

Ah so MSE is the reason why youtube html5 videos are not available in 1080p.

No, the reason is because Google stopped serving HD videos through anything BUT MSE when using HTML5. That doesn't mean that Pale Moon can't play them, it just means that they aren't served.
...And Youtube for HD probably incorporating VP9 as a proprietary codec which is still a point that apparently nobody is willing to touch, even a month after reporting it in bug #1026707

[Jonguy30]

Oh great, so it's google messing things up? Also, if anyone doesn't know they're starting to force people into using HTML 5 all over youtube. First google implemented it in chrome and now in Firefox 33 I believe google will push HTML 5 into all users. However they haven't announced yet if they'll do it in IE as well. Flash will become impossible to use on YT.

It's a bad Google

[Moonchild]

Well for Chrome it's not an issue since VP9 is owned by Google so there's no legal issue. Maybe YouTube will become a "Chrome Only" site eventually, or everyone that kisses Google's boots if not already owned.
And at the rate things are done, Firefox might as well be considered a Google product.

IE will likely go for H.265 instead. Codec wars. Got to have something to fight about.

[Jonguy30]

W
And at the rate things are done, Firefox might as well be considered a Google product.

Oh yes, Firefox is a "Google product". And don't forget the new "malware scanning" that's been implemented in the newest versions. Every time you download a file it's sent to google against a malware list. It can cause false positives you know... oh and privacy.

It sure will be interesting what IE comes up with. IE is Microsoft after all, and they're a rival to Google.

[damamm]

rectifying my previous edit and making a further note:

it would seem that MSE didn't get broken in v31. Instead, it's just unfinished and it doesn't yet support the combination of "MSE + H264" videos (older videos on yt). On the other hand, it seems that "MSE + VP9"(newer videos on yt) is already implemented and works fine. That would be consistent with what I see on youtube HTML5's page.

If this is correct, then it means Mozilla has already implemented google's VP9 into firefox, and h264 might/should come next.

[Jonguy30]

If you go to ghacks.net there is a post that mentions that only nightly supports all of the html5 technologies. That includes MSE & H.2.64 and also MSE & WebM VP9. It will still take a couple of firefox versions to enable all of the html5 stuff.

[buggy]

Off-topic:
Google's search bar + vulgar Chrome UI copy + Google's infiltred "security" service by default = already a Google product by-product, "derived from a chemical reaction and typically recognized as 'other income'." The only question is how long? > "a by-product can be useful and marketable or it can be considered waste".

[damamm]

Out of curiosity: is this something we can expect for v25?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

MSE? I doubt it not until it is complete.. MozCo Bug 778617 has a whole stack of bugs that are only half finished as of current mozilla trunk. This will likely be evaluated for implementation in Pale Moon once it is done. Even then it may not be accepted but nothing can happen until it is completed.

Though MSE will not be implemented anytime soon (if at all) we will have pure VP9 and OPUS decoding in v25!

[__NM64__]

A few things relating to YouTube I would like to point out that hasn't been mentioned.


First, it's important to note that flash player is compatible with DASH. However, flash player has not had any new codecs added to it since AVC/h.264 was added back in 2007.


MSE DASH-based videos are actually a different format (not codec!) on YouTube compared to the plain non-DASH HTML5 videos, even for the same resolution (they have different bitrates, filesizes, and fmt value). You can see this with any DASH-compatible YouTube downloader such as Complete YouTube Saver or the like.

So what has happened is that the newer DASH formats, specifically those for AVC/h.264, pretty much replaced all the pre-existing formats. All the VP8 formats except fmt43 (360p) were discontinued and removed, and the old fmt18 (AVC 360p) and fmt22 (AVC 720p) formats were left in place along with the old FLV and 3GP formats. Pretty much all the non-DASH formats that are still present are used for mobile, embeded, and fall-back compatibility.*


Now the thing is, VP9 was introduced on YouTube after they started using DASH as standard, so it's no surprise that it's only available as a DASH format. And of course, VP9 isn't supported in flash player either.

Lastly, much like VP9, the few 60fps demonstration test videos were only introduced 2 months ago, so again it's no surprise that it only applies to the DASH formats. However, unlike VP9, the 60fps versions are not new formats but rather apply to the pre-existing DASH formats for anything that's 720p and larger.



*
fmt17 & fmt35, 3GP - used on "dumb" phone devices
fmt18, 480x360 AVC/MP4 - created for the first iPhone, the very first AVC format YouTube introduced
fmt22, 1280x720 AVC/MP4 - likely used on smart TVs and blu-ray players, the second AVC format YouTube introduced
fmt5, 400x240 FLV/h.263 - likely for legacy fallback reasons, the same codec as what YouTube used when the site was created
fmt43, 640x360 VP8/WebM - used on lower-end devices that lack h.264 acceleration (like the Wii), was one of if not the first HTML5 format

[Moonchild]

The thing is, you don't need MSE for DASH support (in fact, Firefox 22 and 23 (I think) supported non-MSE DASH video but it was removed again when they decided to go the MSE route), and it can be ported easily to e.g. Flash as well through an adaptive actionscript (See dash.as) and you can use standard javascript to also achieve the same thing. So, this is very much a political/server-operator decision to require MSE for streaming. Any browser supporting MSE also supports DASH since it's part of the implementation, but it doesn't automatically mean that any browser without MSE does not support it.

In addition, DASH is really not important unless you are on limited bandwidth and you still want to squeeze a higher bitrate video out of your connection. It is very similar to what RealMedia did with their adaptive bitrate streaming, and I personally always hated the fact that video would unnecessarily degrade - I'd rather have a few frames dropped than things becoming blocky and low-res.

[__NM64__]

In addition, DASH is really not important unless you are on limited bandwidth and you still want to squeeze a higher bitrate video out of your connection. It is very similar to what RealMedia did with their adaptive bitrate streaming, and I personally always hated the fact that video would unnecessarily degrade - I'd rather have a few frames dropped than things becoming blocky and low-res.

Actually on really low bandwidth DASH is typically worse. I should know, I have a whopping 3Mbps down. The main issue is that it tries loading multiple video streams, but the user's connection just can't handle the bandwidth. However, YouTube has mitigated the issue recently by making their DASH formats have lesser bitrates...though unless you're using VP9 the video quality definitely suffers compared to non-DASH.

One thing that's really annoying about DASH though is that it only takes into consideration one's bandwidth, not one's playback performance. I'm on a measly AMD E-350 and, due to the lack of SSSE3 optimizations in web browsers, 720p VP9 on YouTube is a slideshow (however I can play it just fine in 64bit MPC-HC).

[__NM64__]

Apologies for the double-post, but I've now come accross two YouTube videos that have broken seeking (other than via arrow keys) in HTML5 unless you have MSE enabled (the former I discovered on my own, while the latter was pointed out to me by my sister). These videos also do not autoplay in HTML5 unless MSE is enabled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouSgFj771f8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEfkZ509Fdw

[Moonchild]

Yeah, seeking is broken because they use their own player controls that obviously don't work. Nothing to do with MSE or DASH or the video format.

[Kocayine]

May I ask why exactly MSE needs to be absolutely polished before it can even be implemented (in the same way it's implemented in official Firefox)? Flash Player is absolutely terrible, I've never had so many troubles playing YouTube videos as I do now (seems like it got worse in Pale Moon when I switched from Firefox) and HTML5 is more stable but not exactly a great experience considering there's only 360p and 720p.

[dark_moon]

Yes its bad that youtube videos need MSE for play html5 videos in 1080p.

[Kocayine]

Yes its bad that youtube videos need MSE for play html5 videos in 1080p.

What's your point? That's the way it is.