Can't play facebook videos or GIFS in Opera w/Linux Mint

A Former User @Guest

@melangecounselling
If Opera 55 is based on Chromium 68, you'll likely need chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra version 68. Can you check what version you have currently installed?

Tokera

Tokera

I have the same problem.
Version information
Version: 54.0.2952.60 - Opera is up to date
Update stream: Stable
System: Linux Mint 19 (x86_64; XFCE)

A Former User @Guest

@melangecounselling I have Opera-stable 53.0.2907.37 for the moment on (L)Ubuntu on one certain laptop (4.15.0-29-generic linux-image). The Ubuntu repositories call this the most recent Opera-release. No update possible to 55.0.2994.14 through terminal. Also, chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-ext 67.0.3396.99-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 in Synaptic Package Manager. No mention of version 68. Same recent problem with video rendering in e.g. facebook. Normal video rendering in other browsers.

A Former User @Guest

@skirual This is pretty strange. As far as I know, Opera repositories are maintained by Opera, not Ubuntu. Opera 53 was compatible with codecs 66, and Opera 54 is compatible with codecs 67 (both are in repositories for Ubuntu 16.04 now and work well). Probably Opera devs forgot to push a new version to the repo?

You can try downloading Opera 54 manually from here:
https://get.geo.opera.com/pub/opera/desktop/54.0.2952.64/linux/

A Former User

Videos and "gifs" on facebook and many other sites are actually h264 encoded mp4 clips, so please read all the other threads about opera's libffmpeg problems and you will find all the needed answers.

A Former User @Guest

@denisftw Nowadays youtube uses html5 video player in browsers that support it (including Opera).

Here is Opera's documentation about Adobe Flash Player:

http://www.opera.com/docs/linux/plugins/install/#flash

A Former User

99% of the sites out there use html5 for videos, etc nowadays, not just youtube. In fact, its is really hard to find a site that uses flash only.
And the documentation there refers to the old presto opera, which today is as obsolete as flash is. Or internet explorer
And that opera is not installable on today's distros due to its prehistoric dependencies (gstreamer 0.10 for html5 support omg)!

A Former User

I'm having similar problems with Windows 10 version of Opera. The videos play fine on Fb mobile site (m.facebook.com/) but just don't function on desktop site, no matter if I enable or disable my script and ad blocking extensions. Upon clicking on video it opens as a link, and does not play. Clicking on it again jut repeat the link-following behavior. It's been like this since I started using Opera. On Chrome the videos play fine with the same extensions enabled, although I do notice that the set of scripts differ between Chrome and Opera.

A Former User

Version information
Version: 54.0.2952.64 - New version 54.0.2952.71 is available
Update stream: Stable
System: Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS (x86_64; Unity)
Browser identification
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/67.0.3396.87 Safari/537.36 OPR/54.0.2952.64

Not working videos FB etc.

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer

Maybe this will be helpful: https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2018/08/opera-launches-snap-linux-users/ and https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2018/08/opera-54-0-2952-71-stable-update/

A Former User @Guest

@messweb You should check the version of chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra. Since you're using Opera 54, which is based on Chrome 67, you need to make sure that the codecs are also at version 67.

@leocg Interesting idea, but I'm not sure how packaging Opera snaps is going to help with codec issues. As far as I understand it's still Canonical who publishes codec snaps, and Opera still has no control when it happens.

leocg

leocg Moderator Volunteer @Guest

@denisftw See https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2018/08/opera-launches-snap-linux-users/#comment-4018305223

A Former User

@denisftw
Package: chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: web
Installed-Size: 4306
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Architecture: amd64
Source: chromium-browser
Version: 68.0.3440.75-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
Replaces: chromium-browser (<< 44), chromium-codecs-ffmpeg
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.0)
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.15.6)

I didnt't install it

@denisftw said in Can't play facebook videos or GIFS in Opera w/Linux Mint:

chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra

A Former User @leocg

@leocg said in Can't play facebook videos or GIFS in Opera w/Linux Mint:

@denisftw See https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2018/08/opera-launches-snap-linux-users/#comment-4018305223

So best solution is change this great browser to Firefox or Chrome. That was pleasure using Opera but now I have no choice. Bye.

A Former User

The best solution would be for opera devs to finally understand that the libffmpeg they bundle with opera is causing more harm (= complaings) than good (= html5 support). Every single time there is an upgrade to chromium codecs or opera itself, complaints start and the same things are said over and over.

May I suggest a solution? Do NOT bundle a libffmpeg lib with opera and build it so as it uses the system's ffmpeg libraries (libav*) for that precious html5 support.
It is this little flag here in chromium's source code that makes all the difference

flags = [ "USE_SYSTEM_FFMPEG=true" ]

This is how most major distros like debian, arch, mageia and fedora do it for their chromium builds and their chromiums' html5 support is flawless.

Here is the debian patch
https://sources.debian.org/patches/chromium-browser/68.0.3440.75-2/system/ffmpeg.patch/

And the arch one
https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/chromium-ffmpeg-r1.patch?h=packages/chromium

(I could not find the similar patch in fedora and mageia)

Do you know which major distro does not do that? Ubuntu!
Ubuntu builds chromium with that flag switched to false, thus making a libffmpeg for the sole purpose to be used by chromium. And opera devs do the same...
And that makes us opera users look for beter versions of libffmpeg, with questionable origins sometimes.

A Former User

Guess what?

Opera was upgraded to v55 earlier today, which means it is based on chromium 68, which in turn means it's time for all ubuntu users to remove that chromium ffmpeg codecs 67 they installed manually or remove the hold they put on apt for it and ket apt update it from as usual.

See you next month with the more whining

A Former User @Guest

@jimunderscorep Yeah, I checked that today and updated both the codecs and the browser. Works perfectly. It seems that putting chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra and opera-stable on hold until both updates are definitely in sync is the most surefire way to never break video support.

Very interesting info on other distributions! Could you also explain why other Chromium-based browsers are different? As far as I know, Vivaldi is also based on Chromium and uses Chromium codecs, but its support for HTML5 video rarely breaks.

A Former User

Although you are right about putting both of them on hold until they "sync", I see no reason in putting opera on hold and missing all those minor upgrades, e.g. from 54.x to 54.x+1, because they will probably contain security updates and bug fixes. Thus, I think that putting only chromium ffmpeg codecs on hold is enough for the average user who uses opera but not chromium.

Most chromium based browsers are closed source, e.g. chrome, vivaldi, opera, yandex etc. This means that distros do not decide how to built each one, like they do for chromium. As I said some months ago its the situation of "I do it that way, you either take it or gtfo "
On top of that, there is no way to check if the forementioned flag was set to true or false in a closed source app, because you can not see its source code, the patches applied to it etc. All you can do is assume like so

does it have chromium ffmpeg codecs or something similar as a direct or suggested dependency? then it was built with that flag set to false and it will have its own libffmpeg
does it have ffmpeg's libav* libs as dependencies? then it was built with that flag set to true and it will use those.

and you will be right in 99% of the cases.

One last thing about h264. H264 is not an open format, it needs a licence to be used anywhere. Opera does not have one, and... you know the rest.
Do you know how the other browsers, regardless of operating system, fulfill their h264 needs?
Google has a licence to use it in chrome and so does microsoft for internet explorer and edge. Mozilla on the other hand does not have one, so it uses cisco's openh264 library for firefox. So, please take this into consideration before posting another "this site works on firefox and chrome but not in opera, so opera is shit and I am leaving it".
But why use h264 instead of webm which is an open format someone might say? Two words: hardware acceleration. H264 is hardware accelerated, webm isn't. It's 2018 and I (= the average user) do not want to waste my cpu cycles, which translates to biger battery consumption, for videos bigger than 720p so I let my gpu do all the hard work.
In fact, I demand that since 7+ years ago that I first discovered hardware accelerated video playback.

p.s. I am not an opera dev and I have nothing to do with its development in general.

A Former User @Guest

@jimunderscorep Thanks! I just looked at Vivaldi's dependencies. They also include chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra as a recommended dependency, just as opera-stable does. However, the version from the repository plays Twitter videos without problems. According to its "About" window, the browser is based on ancient Chrome 65 and yet it somehow manages to use the latest (68) codecs. What's the trick? )

A Former User

Try removing chromium ffmpeg codecs and then check how good or bad vivaldi can perform on h264 content. I am 110% sure, like opera, it won't play a thing. And no idea why it works with newer versions of it

I would do the above for you, but I do not use ubuntu, thus no chromium ffmpeg codecs at all, and I do not use electron based crap like vivaldi (or skypeforlinux, vs code, atom etc).

On the other hand, how hard can it be for someone to make a small script that (in this specific order)

checks the installed version of opera
"calculates" the proper chromium version it is based on
downloads the correct chromium ffmpeg codecs package from that ubuntu ppa
extracts the libffmpeg from it
places it in the directory opera's libffmpeg is, replacing the original one

I do not do scripting, I am bad at it, but I am sure someone can do it. And the same thing for widevine, except it would download google chrome...