Or mpv / SMPlayer wrapper. I found that on my SL7 computers, especially 
a Lenovo S20 from 2010ish, it plays with no artifacts and jump forward 
or back work much better and faster than VLC. SMPlayer wrapper is 
"better" than mpv in 2 ways:
1) It remembers the volume you had set from one file to the next (I 
don't love max volume surprises with headphones!)
2) It has some info in the GUI it provides around mpv to teach you the 
keyboard shortcuts and ostensibly  let you change them. The downside is 
the overlay GUI seems a little more sensitive to mouse movements and 
popping up fullscreen compared to mpv or VLC (though it may also just be 
the horrible garishness of the UI. Honestly, if there is a VLC GUI 
wrapper for mpv player, I'd get the best of all worlds!).

nux-dextop has all the above for SL7.

James Pulver
CLASSE Computer Group
Cornell University

On 01/21/2018 06:49 PM, David Sommerseth wrote:
> On 21/01/18 18:42, Dan wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I'm vaguely aware that the standard SL (and presumably RHEL)
>> repositories don't contain any decoder for the H264 video codec,
>> because someone, somewhere considers the codec to be too heavily
>> patent-encumbered to distribute the decoder.  I'm also vaguely aware
>> that some other GNU/Linux distros _do_ distribute H264 decoders.  Does
>> anyone have any information about _why_ different distros have
>> reached different decisions about this question of law, please?
> 
> Red Hat has grown to become a large and rich enterprise.  So for them to
> gamble on possible patents hits, patent holders requiring royalties, etc, it
> makes sense to have a clean separation from potential issues.  When also
> considering the vast amount of users both Fedora and Red Hat based products
> covers, this gets a bit clearer (IMO, at least).
> 
> Debian has a similar approach as well, even though you can enable some
> "non-free" repositories where you get a lot of these codecs.  Similar for
> Ubuntu as well, even though Ubuntu tends to ship with these repositories
> enabled by default.  But attacking Debian or Ubuntu is a very different type
> of legal attack than on an established US enterprise.
> 
> Regardless of the emotional side of things.  Many of these various codecs
> _are_ patent encumbered, many also requires agreements and royalty fees to use
> and distribute. And any other means of using those codecs are in violation.
> You can question whether these patents are valid and if you must obey these
> patents; but that's more a discussion for legal counsellors.
> 
> However, there is an alternative which resolves this in a clean way.  Fluendo
> (the company behind GStreamer) have their ONEPLAY Codec pack [1], which costs
> €20.  Support agreement (including updates to their codec pack) starts at €19
> for a 5 years agreement.  I consider this reasonable.  I've also used their
> codecs, and it feels more stable and somewhat better performing than several
> of the "free" alternatives.
> 
> [1] <https://fluendo.com/en/oneplay/>
> 
> The quickest shortcut around all this without any costs is probably to get the
> VLC player.
> 
> Just my 2cents.
> 
>