Video playback problems, troubleshooting and solutions on Linux.
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Hello!
Recently (not sure since what Vivaldi version) I have a video playback issue, that didn't exist in earlier versions. (Maybe someone has already posted a question about it in this topic or another. If this is the case, I am sorry. Just send me a hint where to find the solution.)
Videos in YouTube, DailyMotion and some other hosting sites don't start automatically on opening the page and even the Flash Player is not loaded. Instead, I have a gray rectangle with an instruction: "Righy-click to open Adobe Flash Player". Doing so starts the player on the page and the video plays normally. However, when I try to play the video in Full Screen mode, it does not open in the browser window, but IN ITS OWN (Unnamed) window which is not exactly Full Screen. Even when maximized, It has a title bar with no title displayed, only the standard window buttons - Menu on the top-left corner and Minimize/Maximize/Close on the top-right. Moving the mouse does not display the standard playback controls - Play/Pause/Stop, progress indicator, etc. The Linux taskbar is also visible on the bottom.
BTW, on some sites like Vimeo the video behaviour is normal (Flash is loaded automatically and Full Screen playback is REAL Full Screen).
I need your advide how to make all online videos play as expected.
I am using Linux Mint 17.3 MATE 32-bit. Chromium and Chrome are not installed. Instead, the available browsers are Firefox 50.1, Vivaldi 1.6.689.46 (Stable) and (Old) Opera 12.16 (waiting hor Vivaldi to mature). The newest versions of pepperflashplugin-nonfree and chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra are installed.
Thanks in advance!
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@Steffie
If you mean Ruario's manual on github:https://gist.github.com/ruario/bec42d156d30affef655
then on my distro, openSUSE, chromium-ffmpeg is not shown anymore either for Leap 42.1 or 42.2. There's chromium-ffmpegsumo but it's not in Packman repo as recommended in the manual and installing it requires to downgrade Chromium.
He also offers a guide to fetch Chrome and extract "Widevine" with a script. There's chromium-plugin-widevinecdm in Packman and just to check I installed it but video still won't play both on cnet and on this testing page (the H.264/MP4 one):
http://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html
Manual install of Widevine with Ruario's script requires installation of "chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra" first, which is not in my repos either.
There's also this script offered:
https://gwendragon.de/repo/linux/vivaldi/vivaldi-libffmpeg-install.sh
but it's only for Ubuntu/Debian, not for openSUSE.
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@StanG -- sorry, i seem to be doing an atrocious job of noticing important info recently, like your specific distro. With luck, or a Soprano nudge heehee, hopefully Ruari might have time to wade in here & advise you...
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@Steffie I hope he will.
I have no idea where these chromium-ffmpeg packages go, I swear I've seen them before. Plus /usr/lib/chromium-browser directory where that libffmpeg.so file is supposed to be copied does not exist on my distro.
There are instructions on how to build libffmpeg.so manually but the last step - where to copy it and how to make Vivaldi to recognize it is not clear.
Btw, I have /opt/vivaldi/lib/libffmpeg.so already but it's probably old.
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@StanG -- This [my] comment is totally off-topic, so i expect a bolt of lightning to strike me down, or else be turned into a pillar of salt soon.
I came to Linux from Windows only a few years ago [& will never go back], but most of my testing, experimentation & adoptions have been restricted to the Debian/Ubuntu derivatives flavour. I've grown comfortable with these environments. I have tinkered with "out-there" [for me] distros like Manjaro & currently KaOS, but they tend to freak me out due to my unfamiliarity with their eco-systems so that my ignorance stops me doing even basic things. Other distros [like your openSUSE] scare the bejeezes out of me merely from reading about them, so i expect it'll be a loooooong time before i'm brave enough to try.
I do hope that you find openSUSE sufficiently fulfilling in lots of other ways important to you, to kinda compensate for the unpleasant problems & apparent lack of distro-support for "basic" stuff like getting a browser of your choice to work in it.
Please note i am not being snide or mean, not taking shots at you or openSUSE, but am only enunciating my own inadequacies for taking on complex challenges like that. Good luck.
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Tower's SSD = Linux Mint 17.3 x64 KDE 4.14.2 [< 26/9/16]; now Maui 2.1 "Blue Tang" x64 Plasma 5.8.4.
Lappy's SSD = Linux Mint 18 x64 Xfce+Compiz [< 25/12/16]; now Maui 2.1 "Blue Tang" x64 Plasma 5.8.4. -
@Gwen-Dragon said in Video playback problems, troubleshooting and solutions on Linux.:
@StanG said in Video playback problems, troubleshooting and solutions on Linux.:
https://gwendragon.de/repo/linux/vivaldi/vivaldi-libffmpeg-install.sh
but it's only for Ubuntu/Debian, not for openSUSE.I am sorry, but i am a Debian user, not a Linux multi-distribution packager and can not help others without knowledge.
Users who want to have my updater script for non-Debian are invited to add OpenSuSE code or tell me how to do it.
And OpenSuSE people can read https://gist.github.com/ruario/bec42d156d30affef655#file-h264-vivaldi-linux-md an check which package they should install.OpenSuSE has no package anymore. You need to compile chrome-ffmpeg yourself. OpenSuSE packages are rarely updated, strange.openSuSE Packman removed the package because it is not needed for chromium anymore.
@Gwen-Dragon i just manipulated your script and it seems to work fine for openSuSE. Even though /usr/lib/chromium-browser would actually be the wrong place but that does not really matter. It would be nice if you could add openSuSE maybe just with a little warning. Cheers -
@StanG said in Video playback problems, troubleshooting and solutions on Linux.:
@Steffie I hope he will.
I have no idea where these chromium-ffmpeg packages go, I swear I've seen them before. Plus /usr/lib/chromium-browser directory where that libffmpeg.so file is supposed to be copied does not exist on my distro.
There are instructions on how to build libffmpeg.so manually but the last step - where to copy it and how to make Vivaldi to recognize it is not clear.
Btw, I have /opt/vivaldi/lib/libffmpeg.so already but it's probably old.
Does not really matter if /usr/lib/chromium-browser does not exist. Just create it and it should work. Otherwise try /usr/lib64/chromium or overwrite the one from /opt/vivaldi/lib (not really recommended).
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Thanks everybody, videos play now.
On openSUSE I used Vivaldi itself to download the latest file, which is "chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_55.0.2883.87-0ubuntu2.1328_amd64.deb", from
http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/
Then extracted it in terminal, changed permissions, and copied two created directories to where they are expected by Vivaldi (that is to /usr/lib/chromium-browser for libffmpeg.so) - all this was done using @Gwen-Dragon's code at the end of her script with little tweaks in syntax, the last step required "su -" in openSUSE but sudo should have worked, too.
The script, referred in the first few posts in this thread, is here:
https://gwendragon.de/repo/linux/vivaldi/vivaldi-libffmpeg-install.sh
Commands I used in terminal (put the downloaded file to a new "tmp" directory and run from there if you want):
ar p chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_55.0.2883.87-0ubuntu2.1328_amd64.deb data.tar.xz | tar xJf - ./usr/share/doc/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra/changelog.Debian.gz ./usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so chmod -R u+w,go+r-w,a-s . su - find usr -type f | tar --owner=0 --group=0 -cf- -T- | tar -xf- -C /
Restart Vivaldi and it's all good. Both in stable and in snapshot.
@Steffie This libffmpeg.so file comes with Vivaldi install but somehow doesn't work. Now that Vivaldi has a repo for openSUSE it should be updated to a correct version with each Vivaldi update, I'm pretty sure Ruario will automate this process in the future. Or maybe it's the right version but it's not where Vivaldi looks for it and simply copying it to /usr/lib/chromium-browser would have done the trick, too. Fixing this would require tweaking Vivaldi itself, not just repackaging .deb like it was done in the beginning. This has nothing to do with my OS.
It's not distros job to support my favorite browsers, it's browser developers job, or rather service they provide, to compile packages for different distros. At first Ruario wrote a script to install Vivaldi from .deb, then he got a job at Vivaldi and created a repo for openSUSE, next step would be getting this up to scratch so that openSUSE adds Vivaldi to their own repos. It took them maybe a year to accept new Opera.
When this eventually happens then users will go to openSUSE forums and not here for support with system related things like codecs. If there are bugs openSUSE has a proper system in place to deal with them, too, and by then @Gwen-Dragon won't be offering fixes with "SCRIPT MAY MISBEHAVE AND EXPLODE YOUR LINUX INSTALLATION" disclaimers in them. openSUSE users are pretty well shielded from "exploding" stuff like this.
I don't mean this as criticism of Gwen, just a sign of teething problems.
Also this fix will work only until Vivaldi uses the same Chromium version, which is not the right way to fix things, but it will do for now.
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@StanG -- Happy for you that it's now working, yay.
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@Gwen-Dragon i actually just looked through your script and didn't find anything that would not work with openSUSE so i removed everything libffmpeg.so that i previously had and replaced "ubuntu" with "opensuse" in lines 118, 142 and 182 to make it run through and it works fine.
i actually think it should work for most distros. Maybe you can add a little disclaimer and ask if one wishes to continue anyway..
If there is an old libffmpeg in /usr/lib64/chromium (the place from the former chromium-ffmpeg package) then the new one in /usr/lib/chromium-browser seems to be preferred in a quick test. So no problem there either.
I didn't test the cronjob stuff but i don't see a reason why this shouldn't work. -
@StanG
I don't see "edit" button for my posted replies, but terminal commands I gave in the previous one can't be used "as is".The last line
find usr -type f | tar --owner=0 --group=0 -cf- -T- | tar -xf- -C /
could copy a lot of extra stuff from the current directory so it's better to extract downloaded file into a new one, which is what Gwen's script does, and after "su -" you should get bumped out to your home directory on openSUSE so you need to return to the directory where extracted files are, or don't use "su -" and preface that last command with "sudo" instead.
Maybe mods can add a warning to https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/85798
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Wouldn't Packman be able to provide chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra for distros it supports, like openSUSE? They have k3b (for disk burning) compiled with mp3 support, for example, while official openSUSE k3b package isn't.
And how do you format words that they appear small and red? Is there a formatting guide somewhere here? How do you add "code" tag?
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@StanG
Yes Packman could and they did until mid of December when they said it is not needed for chromium anymore so we drop it.
code
can be written between `backticks
And a small formatting guide is found if you click on the little question mark behind compose on the top right of the editing field.
Edit: Edit is hidden behind those three little dots if you are logged in -
@dLeon @sophos02
Three dots for me hide "Bookmark" and "Share" menu, and then also "Flag this post for moderation" for someone else's replies. Can't find Edit.Why is it that Chromium doesn't need
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
to play h264/mp4 anymore but Vivaldi built from the same version 55 does? Does Chromium play it natively or does it rely on codecs already installed by the OS? In any case, hope it means that we'll soon get this functionality, too, without the need to install extra codecs manually.Another thing, I'm not being greedy, but since it's the one thread for all video problems - how can we get Netflix support in Vivaldi? I saw Ruario's old solution but it didn't work for me then. What's the status now?
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@StanG said in Video playback problems, troubleshooting and solutions on Linux.:
"how can we get Netflix support in Vivaldi? I saw Ruario's old solution but it didn't work for me then. What's the status now?"
We already have it now. There's been a plethora of NF - V threads over the past 2 years. I watch NF on V every night, for hours, & have done so for a very long time. I didn't do anything special to achieve this functionality, just followed the guidance in the threads.
If you've complied, & it didn't work for you, then [though you won't like me saying it again] i'd have to suspect a problem specific to your distro. It certainly can't be a generic V fault.
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Tower's SSD = Linux Mint 17.3 x64 KDE 4.14.2 [< 26/9/16]; now Maui 2.1 "Blue Tang" x64 Plasma 5.8.4.
Lappy's SSD = Linux Mint 18 x64 Xfce+Compiz [< 25/12/16]; now Maui 2.1 "Blue Tang" x64 Plasma 5.8.4. -
Just checked, after fixing h264/mp4 playback problem Vivaldi plays Netflix without errors.
The solution to h264/mp4 is, in a nutshell, to obtain a correct version of
libffmpeg.so
and put it in a directory expected by Vivaldi. It has nothing to do with any particular distro. Same goes for Netflix.I've noticed that Ruario's fix page has this in it as well:
Issue the following commands:
CHRVER=48.0.2564.109
This probably won't work because it would then fetch an old Chromium version while Vivaldi is already on 55. If it doesn't work it won't work for any distro, too.
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@StanG said in [Video playback problems, troubleshooting
CHRVER=48.0.2564.109
This probably won't work because it would then fetch an old Chromium version while Vivaldi is already on 55.
Yes it will, did you actually try it? Because I did. That version number is not selected on a whim nor have I failed to update it.
The version that matters is not the version of Chromium but the version of ffmpeg bundled with Chromium. This has not updated for a while and last time it did we reverted the change so that
libffmpeg.so
files all the way back to Chromium 48 could be used.obtain a correct version of libffmpeg.so and put it in a directory expected by Vivaldi.
Yes and that directory is /usr/lib/chromium-browser/libs/. If you are placing it within the Vivaldi directories and forget about it you are lining yourself up nicely for future problems. In the most serious case a crash on startup.
Consider when ffmpeg is updated within Vivaldi and then consider what would happen if we try and access symbols that are not present within the lib that is placed by hand.
Libs placed in /usr/lib/chromium-browser/libs/ will have their version verified by comparing to /usr/share/doc/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra/changelog.Debian.gz. If you place a lib directly in the Vivaldi directory there is nothing that allows us to verify the version number before loading it. This is fine when a package maintainer is keeping the ffmpeg and Vivaldi packages in sync (like Arch). It does not work for an individual who copies the file in once and then forgets about it.
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@StanG said in Video playback problems, troubleshooting and solutions on Linux.:
@StanG
I don't see "edit" button for my posted replies, but terminal commands I gave in the previous one can't be used "as is".The last line
find usr -type f | tar --owner=0 --group=0 -cf- -T- | tar -xf- -C /
could copy a lot of extra stuff from the current directory
maybe you should read the entire script and attempt to understand it before making such statements. Exactly what extra stuff do you expect to be copied when several lines above in the script there the staging directory was cleared if present, only two files were extracted into it and then the script switched into that directory. Thus only two files can be copied.
Edit: OK maybe I should read this entire thread before I comment! It seems you are reffering to Gwen's script. Sorry, I have not looked at that for some time. That said, while she coes not clear the working directory she is using a uniquely named working directory, so it shouldn't be a massive issue.
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@ruario said in Video playback problems, troubleshooting and solutions on Linux.:
maybe you should read the entire script and attempt to understand it before making such statements.
I was referring to description of what I did myself and on three lines of code I put in this post, I was not commenting on the entire Gwen script.
In those comments I only suggested that downloaded .deb file be put in a new empty directory but, in fact, it's a must. Gwen's script does that already but the commands I used from it and then put in my post don't. If someone copy pastes them into his terminal it might end in big trouble - that's what I wanted to edit in that reply. Plus
su -
on openSUSE bumps one out of whatever folder he was in anyway.Your own script fetches the latest version of
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
but instructions for manual built are for Chromium 48 - anyone reading this would suspect it's an error. -
@dLeon said in Video playback problems, troubleshooting and solutions on Linux.:
that build Environment Variable should be set to what Chromium version Vivaldi built on. That's just an example.
That is my point. It does not need to be. The ffmpeg versions need to be roughly the same not chromium. Chromium does not upgrade their internal ffmpeg with every single release