Video problem on FaceBook and Twitter

namichel

namichel

Dear all

Small problem:
On multiple computers I have, Opera Browser do not run most of twitter and Facebook video.
The same video is OK on Firefox
Youtube video works on Opera.

I post as it doesn't seam to be a known limitation of opera.
After reading standard tricks, I created a new user with an empty dir, not logued on opera, I had the same problem so I suppose it's not a settings problem on my account or a corrupted pref file

Is there a missing codec or plugin ?

Many thanks

Nicolas

"Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS"
opera-stable 75.0.3969.93 amd64
#dpkg -l |grep ffmp
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra 1:85.0.4183.83-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 amd64
ffmpeg 7:4.2.4-1ubuntu0.1 amd64
gstreamer1.0-libav:amd64 1.16.2-2 amd64
gstreamer1.0-libav-dbg:amd64 1.16.2-2 amd64

A Former User @namichel

@namichel Care to share the link that doesn't work so we can try it?

namichel

namichel @Guest

@hyun-shik thanks, yes should be usefull
On FB, a lot of private group, can't share, I don't find a correct and public example right now. So sorry for this link ...

https://fb.watch/4_jPCUzkMM/

On twitter, for ex
https://twitter.com/arielbogle/status/1384376555711844352
https://twitter.com/TheDGstory/status/1382719510290034693
https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1384432299660480512

joklok

joklok @namichel

@namichel Sadly I have to disappoint you. It's an old problem on Opera for Linux, that it does not play back all videos.

I would advice you to play those videos in another browsers or use the mpv-player which can play back those videos with its links, too.

This topic was discussed already here:
Tada

The only solution for this is currently to have Google Chrome installed and replace Operas libffmpeg.so with the one from Chrome...
But you have to do this after every update by Opera.

So according from that linked post copy the libffmpeg.so from

/usr/lib/chromium-browser

to

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera

to replace it.

In Fedora 32, which I currently use, the path to Opera is:

/usr/lib64/opera

in case the mentioned path before should not exist on your system.

Also if you installed the 64-bit version of Chrome then the path would be:

/usr/lib64/chromium-browser

If those paths shouldn't exist too on your system, then try to search for libffmpeg with file searching programs like e.g. catfish.

Sorry that there is no other solution available...

At least from what I know

Addendum:

Thanks to @leocg who has stated that in another post:

Have also a looks into this here:

Tada

If you are curious why Opera doesn't playback all videos, also the solution there seems to be the same as I mentioned before.

namichel

namichel @joklok

@joklok

Nice, it works !

Bellow the bash used,
Lines 2 and 3 have to be changed depending the result of your first line.

$> sudo find / -name "*libffmpeg.so*" 2>/dev/null
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/libffmpeg.so
/snap/chromium/1557/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so
/snap/chromium/1558/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so

$> sudo mv /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/libffmpeg.so /tmp/
$> sudo cp /snap/chromium/1557/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/libffmpeg.so

l33t4opera

l33t4opera @namichel

Hi @namichel, a small notice, if you want this to "survive" further Opera's updates, do the following instead: first add a new subfolder "lib_extra" under ".../opera" directory, then copy the lib to it.

joklok

joklok @l33t4opera

@l33t4opera thanks, nice to know that with the lib_extra folder. Is that somewhere documented, because it seems to be somehow tricky hidden?

@namichel What I found also if you use the method from @l33t4opera, this will only work until Opera jumps to a new major version of Chromium, but seems to work longer then the previous solution

Source here

l33t4opera

l33t4opera @joklok

Hi @joklok, you're welcome ;-) It was mentioned long time ago by one of Opera's employees: "Opera recognizes the lib_extra directory specifically for this purpose (so that you can put a custom version of ffmpeg in there)." - the source link.

this will only work until Opera jumps to a new major version of Chromium

Regarding the above, this is kind of true, the older version of the lib may still work in some cases when you put it in place of Opera's one under ".../opera" folder. However, you should be aware this is not exactly the right way to use it.
When you keep the lib outdated, you can expose your OS to the security holes (not to mention the other bugs in the lib), which may be already fixed in newer versions. In other words, it is worth to keep this lib updated.

joklok

joklok @l33t4opera

@l33t4opera ah, thank you, I think it would be cause less of these kind of posts, when a moderator could make that one a sticky on this forum

And jip, you are right regarding security. I don't use the chrome lib, because I now got used to the fact, that some videos just don't play back in Opera.
And one advantage for me also is, that those autoplay videos on some website don't play anymore in the background, those are sometimes annoying
So I made peace with this function.

Also, when I want to watch a video which opera doesn't want to play, then I switch eiter to Firefox or mpv-player.