Opera 54.0.2952.41: Streaming videos don't work anymore

A Former User

Here's an idea for Opera's developers (who I btw adore - they are doing a GREAT job!):
Couldn't they at least warn people when they do an update which kills of features as e.g. ending support for video playback, so that we don't end up installing numerous codecs, re-installing flash, trail the internet for solutions, and sacrifice cats in order to make the function work again?
I expect videos to play back nicely soon (also with H.264-support) - they must make an update - but PLEASE make it part of the splash on a new update that you've chosen to limit the functionality temporarily!

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

Try 54.0.2952.46. There's a video fix in the changelog.

igormiguel777

igormiguel777 @tyrion-ua

@tyrion-ua Thank you so much!

A Former User

Ubuntu link to chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_67.0.3396.62

ubuntu repo for chromium

Notice that package is available since may 31 ...

bombacha

bombacha @adwil

@adwil I'm doing this with Linux since late 2016 or early 2017, so this is coming long time ago. I don't have the post right know but one of the Opera developers told that they can't provide stuff like this because of licensing or something like that. Either way I don't really care, Debian doesn't have chromium-codecs anymore, that thing is not updated or in sync with Opera releases but the link I provided is in perfect sync and up-to-date with Opera.

adwil

adwil @bombacha

@bombacha I didn't have that problem until version 54. On 53 every video worked without problems. Even if this is some kind of licensing problem then would it be so hard to add popup on fresh opera start and ask user if he/she wants to install additional codecs? It wouldn't. Look at proprietary intel/nvidia drivers on ubuntu - all you have to do is click button to install them.

edit:
Another funny thing is that I can't seem to find .deb packages for older opera releases. I looked for "Opera 53 deb" through first 2 pages of google results - every link that I found downloads the newest release.

A Former User

all stable branch should be here:
https://ftp.opera.com/ftp/pub/opera/desktop/

bombacha

bombacha @adwil

@adwil It's easy to track this issue back to Opera 45 and maybe older.
Again, I really don't care.
Since then YouTube, Facebook and other sites change their player from flash to HTML5, some of then offered both players until they drop flash support and all this started.

mklinuxuser

mklinuxuser @burnout426

@burnout426 said in Opera 54.0.2952.41: Streaming videos don't work anymore:

Try 54.0.2952.46. There's a video fix in the changelog.

After getting it all working I updated to that version - videos on Facebook broken again. Now there is an other release
(54.0.2952.51) available so will try that. If it is still broken I will try copying the same ffmpeg file again! What a palaver!

bombacha

bombacha @mklinuxuser

@mklinuxuser said in Opera 54.0.2952.41: Streaming videos don't work anymore:

@burnout426 said in Opera 54.0.2952.41: Streaming videos don't work anymore:

Try 54.0.2952.46. There's a video fix in the changelog.

After getting it all working I updated to that version - videos on Facebook broken again. Now there is an other release
(54.0.2952.51) available so will try that. If it is still broken I will try copying the same ffmpeg file again! What a palaver!

Yes, the libffmpeg get replaced in every update, here is what you can do.

Download the last libffmpeg from here and extract some place.
Do sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/chromium-browser
Copy the libffmpeg.so to that directory with sudo cp libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser
Just to make sure run sudo chmod 555 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so followed by sudo ldconfig

That will keep you safe for a while unless there is some huge change in the libffmpeg.

Opera look in to this places for libffmpeg by default:

cat /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/resources/ffmpeg_preload_config.json
[
  "lib_extra/libffmpeg.so",
  "/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so",
  "/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libs/libffmpeg.so",
]

Why use nwjs-ffmpeg instead of chromium-codecs package?
Because nwjs-ffmpeg comes complete (11 MB) and works with linux distribution, chromium-codecs is about 3 MB and even if you installed over Debian (my case) it doesn't work for some reason.

A Former User @Guest

@appdevsw I tried the fix, and it didn't work for me on Linux Mint 18.3, neither this version nor the new .51

Since it is still affecting the latest .51 version, while a replacement driver might be a fix for some people, it now sounds a lot less like a simple packaging error.

bombacha

bombacha

The current version is 54.0.2952.41, the new libffmpeg will not work with previous versions of Opera like 51.
Try to use the last version from here, I don't know how Linux Mint operates.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @bombacha

"/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/lib_extra" and the libffmpeg.so you put in it seems to survive an upgrade too.

lotharmat

lotharmat @burnout426

@burnout426 Thanks! I'll try that!

adwil

adwil @Guest

@s390g2 Thanks for old stable ftp link!

lotharmat

lotharmat

54.0.2952.54 - Still not working!

A Former User

I have the same problem on my Linux Mint 18.3. sighs

A Former User @Guest

@catha said in Opera 54.0.2952.41: Streaming videos don't work anymore:

I have the same problem on my Linux Mint 18.3. sighs

Oh I was too fast:
I tried the libffmpeg.so from here bombacha's post 5 days ago
and this burnout426's post 5 days ago

and that seems to work.

I tested it with the youtube video from opening post that did not work before with Opera 54.0.2952.54.

Thank you.

A Former User @Guest

That catha's post in "Opera 54.0.2952.41: Streaming videos don't work anymore"
solved my problem here catha's topic "error code 4 esp. on videos on vk.com" too.

avl

avl Opera @Guest

@fjuk We don't 'choose' to limit this functionality. Unfortunately there are complicated legal restrictions around distributing support for H264 video decoding, and it comes down to 'we can't give you this functionality ourselves'.

Therefore we rely on others to give it to you. On Windows and Mac, it's the operating system that provides libraries that do H264 decoding, and Opera uses those. On Linux it's a bit more complicated, but it comes down to 'we use what Chromium uses except we can't give it to you ourselves'.

Unfortunately this means that now and then, when the library Chromium uses changes, Opera needs a certain minimum version of the library to be able to work with it. The rule of thumb is that Opera can always use a library if it's the same version as the Chromium version Opera is based on (check opera://about to see which Chromium it's based on), and sometimes older versions, depending on when Chromium last changed the library. Since the library changed in Chromium 67 / Opera 54, we currently can't use older ones.

While we are waiting for the stable package to be updated in Ubuntu's repositories, if you want a more official, Ubuntu-supplied up-to-date version of the codecs package, there's a package available for Cosmic Beaver which is already at Chromium 67. You can find it here: https://packages.ubuntu.com/cosmic/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra .