[Bug] HTML5 h.264 codec videos no longer working on Opera - 54.0.2952.41 / Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (x86_64; XFCE)

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by A Former User

Version information

• Version: 54.0.2952.41 - Opera is up to date
• Update stream: Stable
• System: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (x86_64; XFCE)

Issue Details

I've been struggling to find out why videos hadn't been working lately and after some checking I've found the actual browser itself no longer supports the codec after visiting https://html5test.com.

I've also checked that chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra apt package is already installed and up-to-date.

$ sudo apt install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra is already the newest version (66.0.3359.181-0ubuntu0.18.04.1).
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.

I've checked About Opera page and found the update checker was throwing errors even when I started Opera through the terminal so I've done a full purge by sudo apt purge opera-stable and deleted my ./cache/opera and ./config/opera folders.

I've installed Opera again and the update checker is behaving fine but the videos still failing to load.

I don't think I'm missing any dependences far as I'm aware and I've got the latest FFMPEG installed too.

---

I apologise for the double post. It seems there is another conversation here about the same issue on the same OS and version. There's a temporary solution found on here. The release version 0.31.4-linux-x64.zip worked fine for me.

[burnout426]

burnout426 Volunteer last edited by

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

[lotharmat]

lotharmat last edited by

Alas the fixx does not work!

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by A Former User

I also find that the fix doesn't work. So, anyone with the chromium-codecs-extra installed, do this:
ln -sf /usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so libffmpeg.so,
-run in opera install dir.

btw, v68 of the lib works as well as v67.

[lotharmat]

lotharmat @Guest last edited by

@s390g2 I believe v69 also works!

[bombacha]

bombacha last edited by

Try this:
https://forums.opera.com/topic/27375/opera-54-0-2952-41-streaming-videos-don-t-work-anymore/21#

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

It seems like after about 3 updates. The Opera developers hadn't fixed the issue at all. Every time they push an update, I've got to keep overwriting the libffmpeg.so file with the GitHub version. I'm getting worried about this. H.264 is a very common codec to use for today's browser and everyone watches videos with it on YouTube. They need to make this a top priority or people are going to switch to FireFox or Chrome.

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@lotharmat said in [Bug] HTML5 h.264 codec videos no longer working on Opera - 54.0.2952.41 / Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (x86_64; XFCE):

Alas the fixx does not work!

Did you extract the file from the zip and insert it in the correct directory? If there's already a file with same name there, overwrite it. If you're running a 32 bit machine you may have installed the wrong version and possibly in the wrong directory. I'm not sure where the 32 bit version of Opera installs.

[leocg]

leocg Moderator Volunteer @Guest last edited by

@nova It's a legal issue, they can't do much.

See https://forums.opera.com/post/150324

[A Former User]

A Former User @leocg last edited by

@leocg I wasn't aware of this. Thanks for pointing this out.

[bombacha]

bombacha @Guest last edited by

@nova If you follow that post to the end, you'll see that you'll have to do that only once.

[nesze97]

nesze97 last edited by

I created a script to simplify the process of patching Opera after each update. You can get it HERE.

[A Former User]

A Former User @nesze97 last edited by

@nesze97 said in [Bug] HTML5 h.264 codec videos no longer working on Opera - 54.0.2952.41 / Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (x86_64; XFCE):

I created a script to simplify the process of patching Opera after each update. You can get it HERE.

Since debian does not package chromium ffmpeg codecs in general (see my other posts why), I think it would be fair to change this bit

This script can be used to patch Opera on Debian based platforms, to make it able to play H.264 videos (eg. on Twitter)

to

This script can be used to patch Opera on Ubuntu based platforms, to make it able to play H.264 videos (eg. on Twitter)

[A Former User]

A Former User @Guest last edited by

@nova Download Opera BETA version it works perfect with h.264 codec. I reported the bug to Opera support. Don't worry for the beta tag it's pretty stable.

[nesze97]

nesze97 @Guest last edited by

@jimunderscorep Thanks for the heads up, I changed it as you suggested!

[A Former User]

A Former User @Guest last edited by

@s390g2 said in [Bug] HTML5 h.264 codec videos no longer working on Opera - 54.0.2952.41 / Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (x86_64; XFCE):

I also find that the fix doesn't work. So, anyone with the chromium-codecs-extra installed, do this:
ln -sf /usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so libffmpeg.so,
-run in opera install dir.

btw, v68 of the lib works as well as v67.

thanks

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by A Former User This post is deleted!