Firefox video issues

Rocky Linux General
1

Video playback issues on Firefox.

I’m struggling to understand why the universe is screaming about this issue. Usually that means I have a localised issue but in this case I don’t think so.

https://www.prolux-solutions.com/media/content/videos/home/STORAC_Animation_VRFB_mit_Sprecher_mit_Vorschaubild_DE.mp4#t=0.1

That’s a video on a website. No YouTube, just an MP4 and highly unlikely to be anything but ordinary.

I can download and play the video, I can’t play it on Firefox.

There was some “buck passing” on Bugzillia with the recommendation that I use a different decoder and a claim this issue stems from Redhat.

Can someone try the above video using Firefox and any other browser?

I’d like to get to the following…

  1. the problem is here or the problem is universal
  2. is the problem owned by Firefox or is it deeper in the system

I’m happy to follow up on Bugzilla. I’d just like some proof that the issue isn’t just on this computer.

2

You are likely missing codecs/libraries for firefox.

dnf install epel-release rpmfusion-free-release -y
crb enable
dnf install compat-ffmpeg4 ffmpeg gstreamer1-plugin-openh264 mozilla-openh264 gstreamer1-plugins-ugly -y

You can search for others via dnf search gstreamer if needed after.

1 Like
3

Been through your suggestions N and added other items that I likely will never need.

This test page

It is the MP4 videos that fail.

Checked…

dnf install gstreamer1-plugin-openh264.x86_64
Last metadata expiration check: 1:24:38 ago on Tue 10 Oct 2023 22:01:26.
Package gstreamer1-plugin-openh264-1.18.2-1.el9.x86_64 is already installed.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!

And I rebooted just to be sure.

And I loaded Opera and get the same results.

4

System: AlmaLinux 9

Plain Firefox could replay all but the mp4 from that test page.

EPEL has now a side channel (epel-cisco-openh264) with four packages. I did install three of them:
dnf install gstreamer1-plugin-openh264 mozilla-openh264 openh264

The mp4 did remain dead, so I did add ugly from RPM Fusion:
dnf install gstreamer1-plugins-ugly

The mp4 did remain dead, so I did add ffmpeg from RPM Fusion (which did pull 50 other packages):
dnf install ffmpeg

Now Firefox plays that mp4 for me.

5

dnf install ffmpeg
Last metadata expiration check: 2:44:37 ago on Tue 10 Oct 2023 22:01:26.
Error:
Problem: problem with installed package ffmpeg-free-5.1.3-1.el9.x86_64

  • package ffmpeg-5.1.3-1.el9.x86_64 conflicts with ffmpeg-free provided by ffmpeg-free-5.1.3-1.el9.x86_64
  • conflicting requests
    (try to add ‘–allowerasing’ to command line to replace conflicting packages or ‘–skip-broken’ to skip uninstallable packages or ‘–nobest’ to use not only best candidate packages)

dnf install ffmpeg --allowerasing

Still no luck…

And the following changes, Firefoox – about:config

media.cache_readahead_limit 120
media.cache_readahead_limit.cellular 90
media.decoder-doctor.decode-errors-allowed true
media.decoder-doctor.decode-warnings-allowed true
media.decoder-doctor.verbose true
media.decoder.recycle.enabled true
media.eme.enabled true
media.ffmpeg.allow-openh264 true
media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled true

Seems to work but will need more testing.

Thanks!

6

ffmpeg-free and ffmpeg cannot be installed together. You should use dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg instead. Else, dnf remove and then install.

1 Like
7

Firefox for Linux includes a complete video player (gstreamer was given up years ago). It is backed by a stripped-down version of libavcodec.so.* for patent reasons. But it can instead dlopen a full-featured libavcodec.so.* installed in the system if it finds one. All you need to say is

 # yum install ffmpeg-libs

if you have rpmfusion enabled and that’s it. Of course, rpmfusion has many packages that depend on ffmpeg-libs …

8

I did get this working. Sorry if I didn’t reply, I no I reported success but might have done so in Bugzillia.

dnf install ffmpeg-libs

That would have been the solution.