Well, this is fun.

I've got the `repo-openh264` repo configured (codecs.opensuse.org) and it has a `gstreamer-plugin-openh264` package available. But it's only v1.22 and GStreamer is at 1.28 in #openSUSE #Tumbleweed now. And if I install it then one of the conflicts indicates that it's now bundled in `gstreamer-plugins-bad` (and I can see a SO file in the list)

That repo has the `mozilla-openh264` package as well.

There's a different version of of libopenh264 with a version string that includes `noopenh264`, but it's from repo-oss.

If I run `ffmpeg -codecs | grep 264` then I get a line ` ..V.LS h264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10`, so it knows SOMETHING about the codec.

But even after switching packages, ffplay still gives "No decoder could be found for codec h264" and Videos gives "requires a H.264 (Baseline Profile) decoder plugin, which is not installed" 😐

And I can't just uninstall and reinstall the whole of GStreamer because that rips out loads of other packages with it (and ignoring the dependencies defeats the idea of "try to clean it up")

Okay, so the `noopenh264` package is, as expected, a placeholder for licensing and build purposes. So that won't work.

There is a wiki page. That extra repo is necessary. So it _should_ be working. But it isn't. Awesome 😐

https://en.opensuse.org/OpenH264#Installation

Still poking this.

`gst-inspect-1.0` lists "libav: avdec_h264: libav H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 decoder" and "openh264: openh264dec: OpenH264 video decoder" amongst other plugins. So _it_ can see something.

But `gst-play-1.0` reports a missing plugin and then PackageKit says "Did not install codec: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name is not activatable"

Found someone suggesting that it could be libav. But I've got gstreamer-plugins-libav, which is pulling in libavcodec62.

And if I re-enable Packman and install their bad/ugly-codecs then it STILL doesn't work. I'm missing something and I can't see what.

Balls and bugger it. Time for a rollback. Thank goodness for Snapper! #openSUSE #Tumbleweed #Btrfs

Awesome. My video may have been broken for a while. I've rolled back and I'm getting green videos 😬 So it's _trying_ to play them. But failing somewhere.

Edit: Rolled back further. It's not the NVidia update that broke it either. It was something before that. And it's all videos in Totem.

But ffplay is working. And gst-play-1.0 is working. It's just Totem. Wonderful. I wonder what it is doing differently.

Posting on the forums in case anyone can help.

https://forums.opensuse.org/t/h-264-videos-not-working-without-packman/192697

Green videos is apparently a VA-API problem. So maybe something not playing nicely with NVidia drivers. But uninstalling gstreamer-plugins-vaapi didn't immediately help (and I think it would revert back to software rendering anyway, if I understand correctly)

I got a fix for my GStreamer/h264 codec issue!

Delete the cache 😐

Yes, the cache that had an up-to-date modification time (and so was presumably getting updated, if not rebuild, when watching videos) still had SOMETHING broken in it that wasn't going away. `rm .cache/gstreamer-1.0/registry.x86_64.bin` forced a _full_ rebuild and now it works.