How to install codec H.264? (Shotcut + Sony A6400 camera)

Ask Fedora
,
1

Hello,

I edit videos with Shotcut.

I used to work with Windows 11 and I have moved to Fedora 41 just 2 days ago.

With Fedora, Shotcut refuses to process videos from my Sony A6400 camera.

I have tried to open one video with the video player Totem. And I get this error message : “the following codec is missing: meta/x-gst-fourcc-rtmd”

The Sony A6400 codec is H.264 (High Profile).

I have then enabled the RPM Fusion repositories. But this does not solve the problem.

Do you know how to install H.264 codec on Fedora 41 in order to open and work with videos from a Sony A6400 camera ?

Thank you very muck for you help.

Have a nice day, Clement

repo id repo name
copr:copr.fedorainfracloud.org:phracek:PyCharm Copr repo for PyCharm owned by phracek
fedora Fedora 41 - x86_64
fedora-cisco-openh264 Fedora 41 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64
google-chrome google-chrome
rpmfusion-free RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Free
rpmfusion-free-updates RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Free - Updates
rpmfusion-nonfree RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Nonfree
rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Nonfree - NVIDIA Dr
rpmfusion-nonfree-steam RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Nonfree - Steam
rpmfusion-nonfree-updates RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Nonfree - Updates
updates Fedora 41 - x86_64 - Updates

Capture d’écran du 2025-01-13 15-23-00
Capture d’écran du 2025-01-13 15-23-00742×212 24.2 KB

Capture d’écran du 2025-01-13 15-21-42
Capture d’écran du 2025-01-13 15-21-421187×433 73.8 KB

2

It seems you already have the rpmfusion repos enabled as shown here

For most non-fedora multimedia codecs you may wish to install libavcodec-freeworld h264enc x264 x265 (from rpmfusion) and openh264 (from cisco).
sudo dnf install libavcodec-freeworld h264enc x264 x265 openh264 --allowerasing

1 Like
3

Thank you very much for you answer Jeff.

I have installed the extra codecs. Unfortunatelly this does not solve the issue.

What else may I try ?

4

I seem to be running into the same issue where trying to open a video from my Sony A6400 with Totem returns “meta/x-gst-fourcc-rtmd decoder is required to play the file, but is not installed”. I’m not planning to edit, however, I’m not able to view the video at all. Which I want to do. Installing VLC doesn’t help, playing the video only gives audio and a frame change every ~30 seconds.

A reddit thread with a similar issue also mentions video from a sony camera having similar behaviour. User u/chrisawi suggests installing Totem from flathub, with OP saying it fixed the problem.

After reading that post I installed VLC as a flatpak and the video ran perfectly. Maybe if you install Shotcut from flathub it will work? You should try that.

I wonder if the following issue is similar to this: How to fix VLC in Fedora 40?

When I ran vlc in terminal it would show similar errors constantly. Maybe the user wouldn’t expect the camera to cause an issue like this (I don’t think any regular person would) , which is why their responses seem unhelpful

Edit: That post never mentions the “meta/x-gst-fourcc-rtmd decoder is required to play the file, but is not installed” error

Why would installing from flathub suddenly make it work?

5

I recently ran into the same issue in Totem. However if I click “Find in software” popup in Totem the video will start playing which is kind of strange.

Shotcut and VLC plays the video without any error.