Problems streaming videos on OpenSuSE 42.3

A Former User

Hello,

I read on SuSE's help pages that the distro does not come packed with all the codecs due to patent issues:

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Firefox_MP4/H.264_Video_Support

So in accordance with the instructions I added Packman as a repository and updated some of the libraries. Before I did that, neither Opera or Firefox played the videos that didn't work. Here's an example:

https://www.dr.dk/tv/se/tv-avisen/tv-avisen-21/tv-avisen-2018-05-04-20-59

After the procedure, Firefox plays it, but Opera still doesn't. The information on Opera's help pages seems pretty much outdated (no such categories in the menu etc.):

https://www.opera.com/docs/linux/plugins/install/

So what should I do to enable Opera to find the plugins and stream the videos?

A Former User

Please have a look at what I said about opera and codecs at the url on my signature.

A Former User

Hi! Thanks for the answer!

"These distros provide the relevant html5 multimedia support for chromium (and any chromium based browser) via 3 seperate ffmpeg libs: libavcodec, libavformat and libavutil. The problem is opera can neither detect them, nor use them, so you are out of luck."
-- why is that, and why don't they (Opera or the distro, whoever is responsible for that respectively) fix it?

"Use another browser for those sites."
-- well, if I liked the slow, sluggish and constantly freezing Firefox, I wouldn't be using Opera, and using both at the same time makes even less sense... Maybe I should look for some other browser instead, but so far I'm very happy with my Opera (except that it doesn't seem cool it's not open source, but I'm using it since it looks great, works well and synchronises perfectly between my Windows and Linux... except that it has this problem on my SuSE now)

A Former User

Although I do not think it is important, is it plain suse or opensuse that you are using?

The following applies to any app that is built from chromium's source, not only opera.
After doing some research, I found out that it all boils down to this build flag in chromium's source

USE_SYSTEM_FFMPEG=true or false

Setting this flag to "false", which is the default value if ommited, will result in building the relevant libffmpeg library and use that for its multimedia needs. Setting it to "true" forces whatever is build from that source to use the system's libraries for its multimedia needs (the 3 libav* ones I mention in the other thread.)

As it seems, because this flag can only be either true or false, the resulting binary is either compatible with its own libffmpeg or the system's libav* libs, not both. Opera, being a closed source app, decided to follow the path that uses "false", ship its own libffmpeg and... you know the rest, I mention them in the other thread. If it was open source, I assume someone would have forked it and made it use the libav* libs. But it's not

As for the why it chose this path, I think it is obvious. Ubuntu (and its derivatives) users outnumber the users of any other distro, so they are keeping that majority happy with a working browser. You, me and the rest of us that are not on ubuntu are just a minority and building a different version of the same browser would be a waste of resources, time, money etc.(I think I said the same about dropping 32 bit support...)
Many other devs of closed source apps do the same, ignoring the same minorities, but that is how closed source works.

To sum up, if you dislike firefox and opera does not work on some sites, you can use chromium for those sites, provided that your distro packages it...