Solved Snapshot unable to play videos on some web sites (fix pending)

[edwardp]

On Reddit and Yahoo, Snapshot is unable to play videos.

On Reddit, the window where the video would appear, will display one frame of the video, a circle with rotating arrow (indicating it's loading in), the image repeatedly blinks and this process repeats itself. As this occurs on multiple Linux distributions, I'm wondering if this might actually be a Chromium issue? Snapshot currently has Chromium 114.

On Yahoo, the video window will display a statement that the video cannot be played.

Turning off the ad/tracker blockers has no affect.

Stable has an earlier Chromium version and the same videos play perfectly.

[DoctorG]

@edwardp said in Snapshot unable to play videos on some web sites:

I'll wait for the fix.

Best idea as 6.0 Stable runs nice with videos

[DoctorG]

@edwardp But that is a known issue for 61. Snapshot on Linux! See

💡Dig around in https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/87075/upgrade-to-chromium-114-vivaldi-browser-snapshot-3023-3 and you could find some solution how to get/compile a libffmpeg for Vivaldi which plays.

[edwardp]

@DoctorG Originally missed that. Thanks. Didn't know that it affected proprietary media. I'll wait for the fix.

[DoctorG]

@edwardp said in Snapshot unable to play videos on some web sites:

I'll wait for the fix.

Best idea as 6.0 Stable runs nice with videos

[eye4bear]

I see now I am not the only one experiencing this same issue. This has happened several times before, curious why it is never caught before the update is released as it seems to be an on-going issue at this point.

[Ruarí]

It was caught. It was listed as a known issue from the time that the post was created.

It is also the first comment in the comment section below and most of the comments in the thread. If you want to run snapshots, you should read the post and the comments. Otherwise stick with stable.

[Ruarí]

@edwardp Your sig states "Debian Sid" thus you will have a new enough glibc (Sid should be on 2.36) to just do this suggestion from my follow up comment in the snapshot.

@Ruarí said in Upgrade to Chromium 114 – Vivaldi Browser snapshot 3023.3:

As an alternative, If you run an Arch-based distro or close derivative you can use the "Arch Linux herecura repo" vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs package by @blackikeeagle.

Indeed, even if you do not have Arch, so long as you have glibc 2.35 or above¹ (any modern Fedora, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or newer, or openSUSE Tumbleweed) you can use the contents of that package by just extracting the file and manually placing it, thus allowing you to skip the compilation step and large download (of my previous post) altogether.

curl -O https://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

tar --one-top-level -xf vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

sudo cp vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg/opt/vivaldi-snapshot/libffmpeg.so.6.1 /opt/vivaldi-snapshot

Note: The above will require you to have Zstandard to decompress the tar.zst package.

¹ If you do not know if you have a new enough glibc you can check this with ldd --version | head -n1.

[Ruarí]

To be clear, it is not a bug per se. Rather the issue here is that third parties supply the lib Vivaldi usually uses for these types of videos. However these third parties have yet to offer a 114 compatible file. With no file (yet) we cannot play these types of videos. Once a file is available…we can. It is that simple.

Additionally others may be permitted to distribute a file without running into legal difficulties as I explained here:

@Ruarí said in Upgrade to Chromium 114 – Vivaldi Browser snapshot 3023.3:

There is nothing special about Arch that means that this is more likely to work or is easier on Arch. It is just lucky circumstances because we have a situation where a Vivaldi fan is also a Tusted User both for Arch and our community ( @BlackIkeEagle is also a soprano) and he offers a package. He can do that because he is based on Europe, with a server in Europe. So software patents thus do not apply.

Anyone else could similarly make and offer a file, so long as they are also Europe based and serve from Europe and most importantly our community trusts them (since it is not good to just load binary software form a random source).

I would offer the file I have here, which would work on all distros but… I am am obviously too closely associated with Vivaldi. IANAL but I would assume that this would be considered roughly the same as Vivaldi sharing it directly.

Also as to why the snapshot goes out even though there is no file. Remember snapshots are not a recommended or supported installation stream. There is only one such stream and that is stable.

Snapshots only exist to gather feedback to ensure that the forthcoming stable will work (they are not intended as an alternative to Vivaldi stable even if people choose to use them as such).

So the snapshot goes out so that we can still test the (other) fixes, which is exactly as it should be. Issues like this will not hold up this or future snapshots if we want other things tested.

[edwardp]

@Ruarí I missed that comment initially.

I can certainly wait for the fix to be available in Snapshot.

[Ruarí]

@edwardp I would do this if I were you. It is easy and should work in your case

curl -O https://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

tar --one-top-level -xf vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

sudo cp vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg/opt/vivaldi-snapshot/libffmpeg.so.6.1 /opt/vivaldi-snapshot

[ingolftopf]

@Ruarí
👍👍

[edwardp]

@Ruarí I tried this on Fedora Rawhide, has a higher version of glibc. The second command didn't work.

$ curl -O https://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 1648k  100 1648k    0     0  1224k      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:-- 1224k

$ tar --one-top-level -xf vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
tar (child): zstd: Cannot exec: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

$ ls -all
total 1652
drwxr-xr-x. 1 epp epp     130 May 24 11:43 .
drwx------. 1 epp epp     352 May 24 11:12 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 epp epp 1687565 May 24 11:43 vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

So I used Ark to extract the individual file. Copied into /opt/vialdi-snapshot and can confirm that under Fedora Rawhide, it works. Thank you.

Will this file be overwritten once a future Vivaldi has the fix included?

[npro]

@edwardp said in Snapshot unable to play videos on some web sites (fix pending):

zstd: Cannot exec: No such file or directory

@Ruarí said in Snapshot unable to play videos on some web sites (fix pending):

Note: The above will require you to have Zstandard to decompress the tar.zst package.

🟰

for Debian sid:

$ sudo apt install zstd

for Fedora:

$ sudo dnf install zstd 

[Ruarí]

@edwardp said in Snapshot unable to play videos on some web sites (fix pending):

Will this file be overwritten once a future Vivaldi has the fix included?

You do not need a fix. It will just work with this. Arguably this is a fix.

[Ruarí]

The following should enable proprietary media for all linux users (even with old glibc) and does not require you to compile anything:

wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/668361902/chromium-ffmpeg_0.1_amd64.snap

tail -c+97 chromium-ffmpeg_0.1_amd64.snap | xz -d | tail -c+96268745 | head -c24552363 > libffmpeg.so.6.1

sudo cp libffmpeg.so.6.1 /opt/vivaldi-snapshot

Now restart Vivaldi and test that it works on this page
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/media/html5-proprietary-media-on-linux/

[DoctorG]

@Ruarí Thanks

[edwardp]

@Ruarí said in Snapshot unable to play videos on some web sites (fix pending):

@edwardp I would do this if I were you. It is easy and should work in your case

curl -O https://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

tar --one-top-level -xf vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

sudo cp vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-114.0.5735.26-1-x86_64.pkg/opt/vivaldi-snapshot/libffmpeg.so.6.1 /opt/vivaldi-snapshot

This method seemed the easiest of the two. I can confirm that this works in Snapshot on both Debian Testing and Sid.

EDIT: Also works in Kubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Thank you.

[Ruarí]

@edwardp Well… the newer method will also work on distros with older glibc and does not require ZStandard to be installed. So it will work for more people out of the box. 😉

[edwardp]

@Ruarí Good to know. Thanks.