btw, Firefox 43+ on Linux uses the system ffmpeg library. Before that it used GStreamer, which was very crashy and usually just called ffmpeg anyway. :) Firefox

btw, Firefox 43+ on Linux uses the system ffmpeg library. Before that it used GStreamer, which was very crashy and usually just called ffmpeg anyway. :) Firefox telemetry shows that 97% of Linux users have ffmpeg, but only 70% have GStreamer. So this change increases H.264 availability, reduces crashing, while removing code. The Cisco OpenH264 plugin is currently only used for WebRTC, not MP4 video playback. OpenH264 only supports H.264 Baseline Profile, but YouTube, for example, uses the higher-quality H.264 Main Profile. Cisco or Mozilla could add Main Profile support to OpenH264, but people would still need an AAC decoder to watch most MP4 videos. ffmpeg solves both codec problems. For the 3% of Linux users (and 2% of Windows users) who don't already have H.264 and AAC codecs installed, Adobe's CDM (their DRM plugin for HTML5 video) will eventually allow Firefox to decode H.264 and AAC content that is not DRM'd. Props to Adobe! :)