Flock 2026 Multimedia In Fedora: Are We There Yet?

Hello everyone, welcome um to my talk. Uh my name is Dominic Mijvski. Uh most of you may know me as Ratan uh on various Fedora communication channels and I'm here to talk about multimedia in Fedora. Um and uh one thing uh if you have any questions uh during my talk, feel free to interrupt me and ask. uh be happy to answer. Uh and so let's get to it. So um what are we going to talk about uh first um few words about me for those because we have quite a few newcomers uh to flock. So uh I'll introduce myself a bit. Um then uh I'll tell you how we got here uh of the bit of history of how multime media software got into Fedora. Uh then I'll tell you what we are still lacking and why. Uh then we can brag about uh what we already have uh because you'll see it's quite a lot already. And then a few things were uh we could use help from the community uh getting stuff into Fedora because there is stuff that's still not in and we need some help. So um who am I? Um I've been contributing to open source for a very long time as you can see. Uh I actually started with multimedia software. Uh back then it was M player. Uh that got me into into packaging. Uh I also I was also part of the development community there. Then slowly drifted into other things. But you you will find uh contributions from me uh in player ffmpex the DVD access libraries uh one of the uh maybe more niche uh pieces of software uh it's called XMP this is the uh software to play something called modules music modules from amigga times yes uh then uh when I started working at the university I moved over to some scientific software. So uh I packaged quite a lot of it into Fedora and uh we also have uh scientific and technical software sig in Fedora that could use some new uh new contributors because I don't uh I don't use that anymore. So most of my colleagues uh are now former colleagues. Uh so um I I just had to you know orphan all that stuff because there's no point in me maintaining stuff that I don't use. Uh so I came back to multimedia again. Um and we have the multimedia sig these days. uh you'll see uh what we do and uh yeah I've I've been around Fedora for quite a long time so managed to touch uh some of the Fedora governance bodies like the Fedora packaging committee I've been on Fesco for I think one uh term uh the scitec the multimedia sik yeah that I mentioned already and professionally I'm a used to be sis admin then I got bored of it and be decided I want to fix things at the source. So became a system engineer and a couple of years ago I moved into a security engineering because yeah uh now that's something uh that's of interest to me. Uh so I as I mentioned I worked at the university. I did a brief stint at uh CERN in Geneva and uh nowadays I'm working for a large financial institution who is absolutely not involved in me being here. So my opinions more are my own. Uh all right. So uh >> how did we get here? So it's it all started over 20 years ago. Uh actually they have the >> it's almost it's almost 30. >> Yeah, it is. Uh so uh does this work? >> Yes. So fresh RPMs probably some of you might recognize the name. It was one of the first third party repositories. Uh back then it was for Red Hat but soon after for for Fedora as well. Then around the first further release uh the repository was established right in 2003. Uh and then soon after we started getting uh you know multimedia software into Fedora but it was still difficult. We we couldn't have much. We had Gstreamer which we have still still have today and the first uh royalty-free codeex Theora Vorbis uh and then software trickled in slowly for the first like 10 years not much happened right we had we got XMMS X sign some of them are still around but some of them just you know became unmaintained and and dropped from the case of of the software ecosystem. So uh yeah then um around 2007 uh some of the maintainers of the various third party distributions decided to get together and formed RPM fusion which is still here today and like a vital part of our ecosystem. Uh so yeah um after that it seems like the development of uh various software and codecs started accelerating we got uh some fine codecs uh for video from uh after Google bought O and2 uh they released them as open source uh we've got VP9 is still heavily used these days they grew the HDR profiles and so on. So yeah, and it's royalty-free. Yay. Uh so that that's why most of uh YouTube videos work out of the box on Fedora. Um yeah, we we got the Opus codec which is from what I read in the tests, it's quite it's either tied or superior to other codecs like AAC. Uh and actually you uh the H the infamous H.264 codec has been in Fedora since 2015. So almost 10 years. But you know there are better implementations but this one thanks to Cisco uh we can actually uh have out of the box >> ish >> ish. [laughter] Yeah. Then then patents started expiring. So, and uh and people actually started moving stuff into Fedora. Uh me included, but not not just me. Uh so, we've got uh MP3 um decoders and encoders. Uh we got uh AC3. MP2 got later into Fedora, but that's just because it was it wasn't on on our radar uh that much. Um then uh yeah someone went and excised [clears throat] the questionable stuff from FD FDK AAC and we were able to get AAC um encoding and decoding into Fedora. Uh and then AV1 happened which was a I would say kind of a game changer because it's a quite modern uh codec that has really good quality at very low bit rates. And so then uh hardware manufacturers started implementing it as well in their GPUs. So yay we we we now have uh AB1 decoding and even encoding hardware acceleration in various GPUs for the let's say modern ones or fairly recent ones. Uh yeah and uh this is our milestone for me the 2022 uh February inclusion of uh ffmpeg into Fedora. Yeah that that kind of uh changed the perspective yeah because suddenly we could bring in everything that depended on ffmpeg into fedora. uh that that means almost everything because yeah some things depend on uh Greamer and Gstreamer actually has a plug-in for FFMP but most of the stuff depends on fm because ffmpe is just you know the uh multimedia framework to go through. So uh once we were able to get that uh yeah we were we were uh like halfway there uh so >> right after yep >> the xit core is not h264 aspect for visual that's like that doesn't exist that's not a thing >> oh okay >> yep >> I'll have that corrected a little bit confused about like why 64 is listed there that way Okay, I have that. >> Yeah, it's it's ME 4. >> Me 4. Yeah, >> small correction to my table. Uh, all right. So, uh, yeah, after that we were able to get some pretty famous stuff like KDM Live. Probably some of you use that. Uh, MPV of course, which is a fork of M Player that's still alive. I mean, M Player is kind of still alive, but I would say most mostly on life support. Uh I I've stopped using it uh after MPV got VA uh API uh support. So yeah, I recommend that one instead. If you were a fan of a player, you can be a fan of MPV. >> Uh sorry, can you repeat? >> Uh yeah, I've been using MPV for like a decade at this point. It's pretty nice. So yeah, we've had it since 2022. Uh right. So uh next OBS Studio. Probably some of you know it and use it uh for uh people streaming stuff. Uh I hear it's pretty uh essential. It's a pretty essential tool. Uh so uh around that time we also formed the multimedia sig uh to organize efforts around multimedia software and uh share maintenance. Um and we started getting more and more stuff uh into Fedora uh like things like VC right probably one of the more famous uh pieces of software uh uh various uh other players like Caffine MPCQT Q play some many of you have your favorite player for your favorite desktop environment so there's one for everyone. Uh yeah. So um an interesting uh new codec called uh open APV appeared around uh half of 2025. We got that into Fedora as well. Uh also a new MPG standard called MPG5. Uh although only the base profiles, but I I hear there are they are quite enough for uh future applications. For example, you should be able to watch uh broadcast TV when it moves to MPG5 standard with what we have in Fedora already. So, this is great. Uh and then we kind of plateaued uh on new stuff because we we managed to get most of uh of what was out there into Fedora. So uh one notable thing is is the IA decoder uh that we got uh in recently although I think I got the date wrong. Uh and then uh yeah some some old stuff that we missed before and we decided to bring over uh which is the uh this was required for some of the AG streamer plugins that we wanted to have in Fedora. So we got that for completeness but no other particular I think they are with uh to do with MPG2 uh streaming encoding the coding uh this is an interesting piece of software mix with X uh it's software for DJs I had an I had a chance to see it in action on one of our local hacker space uh meetups in in Warso. So, uh, they had this panel with, uh, tens of buttons and dials and it was all glowing in different colors. Looked very impressive. And I learned that it it was driven by mix. So, I looked at that and turned out we could bring it into Fedora. Um, so I did just that. uh and upstream is also very responsive. Although it turned out that we needed the uh the AAC decoder this particular one I mean the software can use ffmpeact decoder but then the sample offsets because it's very precise with regards to uh audio sample offsets. So uh if we switch to a different uh codec different implementation of the codec then all the previous stuff that was recorded with mix would would be shifted and uh wrong. So they said um yeah you can you can do that but then you break everyone's previous recordings. So uh we kind of had to wait until until uh Fat 2 was was uh in Fedora. Uh yeah and uh this is my wishful thinking uh uh because this is something I mean AV2 just got released like last month. uh uh so if if anyone wants uh they are welcome to look at the uh software and uh submit it for Fedora and AP2X a IPX I will be talking about in just a minute so uh but first what we are still missing and yeah for various reasons we can get into Fedora so the uh some parts of H264 4 that we still can't get in. So the only thing we can have is uh the open H.264 from Cisco. The other implementations are still not okay from what I hear, but that might change uh at some at some point in the future. We are uh reviewing the situation from time to time and uh re-evaluating it. Uh then there's uh the thing I mentioned about MPG5. There's two profiles base baseline with a base profile that we have in Fedora already and there is a main profile which we can't have but it's it's optional and uh we should be able to decode everything with with what we have. Uh and then there is the h the other two H.265 H265, H266 that that are heavily encumbered. So, not we're not going to see them in in Fedora for for quite a few years to come, which is sad. Uh, as far as I know, we can't have uh the more advanced AAC encoding just yet. Um, but that's more or less what I can say about it. But let's move to what we can brag about, right? So, uh I bet because there's kind of uh perception uh that is I would say unjustified at this point that Fedora is lacking in the in the multimedia space. But in fact, we have almost everything. What we are missing is just those couple of codecs. So, uh, if you name a piece of software, it's probably already in Fedora. And if you can't find it in Fedora, uh, come to us or, uh, even better, submit it yourself and tag us. We'll help reviewing it. Um, so do anyone does anyone um have any piece of software that's related to multimedia that they don't find in Fedora and would like to see them? No. Neil, sunshine, and moonlight. Oh, what's that? Uh, it uses uh um it's basically video streaming based remote access for like being able to do remote game play and things like that. Think of like GeForce Now or Steam Play except totally open source and you can do whatever you want with it. >> Okay, nice. Might might be something that the gaming s is interested in as well. >> Yeah, I think this is something that multiple groups of people would be very interested in. >> Yes, but for now. >> Yeah, >> we have a terrace spec >> sunshine. We could add >> I do. I could. >> Okay, great. >> Sounds like a win for everyone. Uh, all right. So, yeah, we we have the media libraries and frameworks, FFMP, pack, greamer, we have QT, uh, multimedia. So, all the uh, yeah, there's a question from the audience uh, in the third row. Please pass the microphone. Thank you. So you mentioned that uh Fedora doesn't have H.265 uh codec but RPM Fusion does ship libde 265 and x265. So the decoder and encoder like how are those different? Uh yeah so RPM fusion is not part of Fedora they are our friends but it's separate independent project and we I mean we can tell them what to do they they are they are independent uh so yeah we can kind of say that there is stuff that uh that you might want to look at uh elsewhere but uh we can't have that in Fedora we Fedora cannot distribute that so yes we know about that But that's about it. Uh you're welcome to use it if you like, but we can we can only talk about what we have in Fedora and what we can uh legally distribute. Right. Uh right. So as I was mentioning, uh we've got lots of multimedia software already. Practically everything that or almost everything that you would uh want to use. So uh in terms of video players, my favorite MPV, but there is al of course VLC and the various uh desktop specific players like caffeine uh Showtime. I think Showtime is the is the new uh you know uh default player used to be totem but I think they replaced it in the recent releases. There are a couple of uh yeah cafe is the KD one or is is is there a different >> official one? >> We have Haruna which is MPV based based. >> We have Dragon player which is G streamer based. We have Haruna which is MPV blaz based. >> Cool. >> I'll put them next time. Uh yeah actually there's another Gstreamerbased player which is extremely small. I I like I like it. uh very much because it's it's so so uh simple like I think the package is about a half of megabyte because it's just a wrapper around various Gstreamer and GTK interfaces so it's pretty cool um no bells and frills just just plain player uh we've got various audio players right uh so my favorite odacious but there's decibels which is I think the new default for bome Uh there's and lollipop rhythmops. I I think that this was one of the default ones before maybe still is uh xms too which is a kind of continuation of the old XM. Uh Maro, I think that's also KD1. Uh so we've got video editors uh the famous KDN live but there there are also a couple of others like Olive OpenShot shortcut PTV haven't used many of them but I hear at least KD and life is what people recommend. Uh we've got audio editors. So uh Audacity Ardour uh reverse. So I haven't used anything apart from Audacity, but yeah, knock yourself out. Uh try them. Uh we've got subtitle editors. Um for anyone who uh does subtitles, I I used to uh be a member of uh anime fan. subbing community. So, uh I was I'm pretty uh partial to to to to fun subs and various styling techniques. So, yeah, it's it's nice to have software for that in Fedora. And yeah, DNA servers. Uh I actually maintain many DNA. Uh it works pretty well. You can put stuff on your uh on your home lab server uh and have all the various uh devices like uh even your TV for example probably supports smart TV and DNA there are various players for Android probably some hardware audio players can also stream from DNA so yeah you can set that up it's very easy and you can stream music and videos uh to your devices from a Linux server, Fedora server. All right. Uh yeah, as I me mentioned in uh in passing um earlier, we need some help with getting uh the AV2 codec implementations. There are two uh open source and can go into Fedora. There is an open source uh and royalty-free implementation from Qualcomm of the APX codeex. uh but somebody needs to make that into an actual library that can be used from other software because right now it's just a code dump into Android open source project and there are a couple of applications that uh have a large audience but they are still not in Fedora. Uh I from what I know they can go into Fedora. There was an attempt to package jellyfin but it's uh it's a bit of a mess of bundled stuff so that attempt was abandoned but um yeah you're welcome to restart the effort and uh I would love to see Kodi in Fedora uh but uh yeah that's also a large project that will need some effort to uh to package uh properly in Fedora. All right. Uh other stuff that you can help with, of course, promote royalty-free unencumbered codecs. Uh you can join our SIG and help us maintain software uh in Fedora. Uh like I mentioned, uh you can help us with getting the missing codecs packaged. Uh and any software related to multimedia that you are still missing in Fedora, come to us. We'll help. uh of course uh as fed federa values dictate uh work with upstreams that's uh always uh the best way and uh test and report issues like we we love to hear from users when they have problems or successes of course. So um we still have a one minute or two for questions. So uh the mics are yours. I have a a dilemma uh as a person who uh after many years uh of using various Linux distribution then being in uh an unwantedly wallet garden where everything worked. finally switched back a year ago uh and using a Ferrerora based distribution but uh with all of this uh I'm not that much limited because uh I'm using container based uh distribution uh all the applications are in flatp packs uh most of the codecs are supported and then I get into the pain point I am afraid we cannot do anything with which is DRM uh because yeah if I want to watch uh a sports game uh in a TV I cannot played it uh in on my Linux computer. I have to buy uh some um like a TV where uh the app uh is uh directly distributed by uh the company that uh broadcasts the TV because if I open it in a web browser, it's uh I don't have a system that's provided by a commercial company. So there is no DRM. Uh so I cannot watch anything. Is there anything we can do as Federa users as Federa uh to get that unwanted but also wanted stamp uh and have DRM u related content into our uh onto our screens. >> Yeah. Okay. So uh that's not really related to Fedora. That's uh that's something for upstream uh for Firefox and Chrome. Uh Firefox and Chrome and probably other browsers as well do support uh DRM. There is a standard for that. uh you can actually Firefox if you enable the option in the settings downloads the binary blob that will process the DRM content and will let you watch assuming the because there are various levels of let's say DRM so if the uh broadcaster supports this level of DRM that Firefox on Linux supports then it will just work so for example uh various streaming services like uh Netflix, this Naples and others just work. Uh they might not work on platforms like uh ARM 64. Uh although there are ways around that, but in general well what what DRM stuff I I access just works. So it's we would need to look at your particular uh case uh to be able to say anything. In general, it should work. Okay, then we would need to look at your specific case. >> Um, we're out of time, but we have coffee now. So, let's thank our speaker and >> thank you very much. [applause]