Why can't Firefox playback half of YT videos?

[nic007]

I use Seamonkey 2.48 with Tahr605.

[a_salty_dogg]

@ nubc

There's also a (more recent?) "ffmpeg-3.2.2-32bit-static.pet", built by rockedge and available from him via the first post in this thread.

All needed dependencies are downloaded during the installation and it worked for me OOTB in both Tahr 6.0 and in Mikeslr's wonderful Tahr 6.06.

(Though of course, as Mike Walsh cautions above "Mind you, that's not to say it'll work for anybody else..." )

[nic007]

The answer to the user's problem is probably VP codec (html5/webm) related. Older youtube videos were encoded with VP8 codec whilst newer ones are encoded with VP9/10 codecs. Older ffmpeg packages did not include the VP9/10 codec so yes, updating the ffmpeg package will probably sort out the problem.
BTW - There is always an alternative way of doing things. Most (if not all) youtube videos are also encoded to the mp4 format. You can either stream or download a video using its mp4 download link.

[perdido]

Probably some issues are incorporated by google itself to sabotage firefox.
Toward the bottom of the article youtube and google are accused of sabotage.,

Former Mozilla exec: Google has sabotaged Firefox for years
"Not the first accusations

And Nightingale is not the first Firefox team member to come forward and make such accusations. In July 2018, Mozilla Program Manager Chris Peterson accused Google of intentionally slowing down YouTube performance on Firefox.

He revealed that both Firefox and Edge were superior when loading YouTube content when compared to Chrome, and in order to counteract this performance issue, Google switched to using a JavaScript library for YouTube that they knew wasn't supported by Firefox.

YouTube page load is 5x slower in Firefox and Edge than in Chrome because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome. You can restore YouTube's faster pre-Polymer design with this Firefox extension: https://t.co/F5uEn3iMLR
— Chris Peterson (@cpeterso) July 24, 2018

At this point, it's very hard not to believe or take Nightingale's comments seriously. Slowly but surely, Google is becoming the new Microsoft, and Chrome is slowly turning into the new IE, an opinion that more and more users are starting to share [1, 2, 3].

Reminds me of the time Microsoft used private APIs to make IE better. Google is the new Microsoft. The tables have turned :p
— Federico Ramirez (@gosukiwi) July 24, 2018"

And don't forget, google is your friend.

.

[nubc]

What video chip-set in the computer are you using? i915, radeon, etc. Pup Sys-Info will find name.
8Geee

Looks like 915G

I already have ffmpeg installed. Before I checked, I installed ffmpeg 3.2.2 32-bit static, but I don't know where it installed.

[s243a]

What video chip-set in the computer are you using? i915, radeon, etc. Pup Sys-Info will find name.
8Geee

Looks like 915G

I already have ffmpeg installed. Before I checked I installed ffmpeg 3.2 static, but I don't know where it installed.

If you installed it via the puppy package manager you can find the list of files for ffmpeg in /root/.packages

[nubc]

What video chip-set in the computer are you using? i915, radeon, etc. Pup Sys-Info will find name.
8Geee

Looks like 915G

I already have ffmpeg installed. Before I checked I installed ffmpeg 3.2 static, but I don't know where it installed.

If you installed it via the puppy package manager you can find the list of files for ffmpeg in /root/.packages

It's not clear which version you suggest is listed, but ffmpeg 3.2.2 32bit static is listed in /root/.packages. PPM shows ffmpeg 2.2.9 i686 as "found package." PPM also shows ffmpeg 3.2.2 as "installed package," and recommends not to do that.

[Mike Walsh]

@ nubc:-

Look in /usr/bin. You should find ffmpeg and its associated binaries in there.


Mike.

[nubc]

Properties of ffmpeg in usr/bin show 33 MB and this text

ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, from '4@%esi 4@%edi', stripped

I don't know what the associated binaries are, but I made the symlink to avconv. I tried a YT video and got the HTML5 error. Maybe I need to reboot. Or maybe I need to uninstall both ffmpeg, and reinstall 3.2.2

[s243a]

Properties of ffmpeg in usr/bin show 33 MB and this text

ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, from '4@%esi 4@%edi', stripped

I don't know what the associated binaries are, but I made the symlink to avconv. I tried a YT video and got the HTML5 error. Maybe I need to reboot. Or maybe I need to uninstall both ffmpeg, and reinstall 3.2.2

I found the following (but it's a 2016 thread)"

Code: Select all

Create a symbolic link libavcodec-ffmpeg.so.56 -> libavcodec.so.56 ?

[SOLVED] Firefox 49, no H.264 support @ forums.gentoo.org
but you can probably apply the same principle if you know what version of ffmpeg firefox is looking for.

If you let us know which version of firefox you're using then maybe we can figure it out. However, I will point out that the version of ffmpeg your using must be compiled with H.264 support. As an alternative to the ffmpeg approach apparently this codecs can also be found in the plex media server but I would take the ffmpeg approach.

[nubc]

I ran ffmpeg from terminal and got version 3.2.2-static

I searched for libavcodec.so.56, libavcodec.so.57, libavcodec-ffmpeg.so.56, and libavcodec-ffmpeg.so.57 but apparently they do not exist on my system. I do find libavcodec.so.54

Code: Select all

root# ffmpeg
ffmpeg version 3.2.2-static http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/  Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 5.4.1 (Debian 5.4.1-3) 20161019
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-static --disable-debug --disable-ffplay --disable-indev=sndio --disable-outdev=sndio --cc=gcc-5 --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-gray --enable-libass --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-librtmp --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzimg
  libavutil      55. 34.100 / 55. 34.100
  libavcodec     57. 64.101 / 57. 64.101
  libavformat    57. 56.100 / 57. 56.100
  libavdevice    57.  1.100 / 57.  1.100
  libavfilter     6. 65.100 /  6. 65.100
  libswscale      4.  2.100 /  4.  2.100
  libswresample   2.  3.100 /  2.  3.100
  libpostproc    54.  1.100 / 54.  1.100
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...

Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man ffmpeg'
root# 

[s243a]

I ran ffmpeg from terminal and got version 3.2.2-static

I searched for libavcodec.so.56, libavcodec.so.57, libavcodec-ffmpeg.so.56, and libavcodec-ffmpeg.so.57 but apparently they do not exist on my system. I do find libavcodec.so.54

Maybe try a newer version of this lib (part of ffmpeg) such as libavcodec-extra58 or if using an earlier version make sure they are the "-extra" version. I found these libs by looking at the dependencies for firefox at https://packages.debian.org/sid/firefox

Edit 1 If you have libavcodec.so.57 on your system then my guess is the extra version from strech should be compatable with your system.
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/libavcodec-extra57

I can verify that all youtube html video formats work on dpup strech because I use firefox on dpup strech; so therefore this version should be new enough. The version of libavcodec.so.57 that you have on your system might not be compiled with all the html5 video codecs. Also note that I might be using an older version of firefox than you so I can't guarantee this verson of the codec is new enough.

Edit 2 To find even oder versions of libavcodec-extra look at the bottom right of the page where it says "similar packages"

Edit 3 I worry that if you have multiple versons of this file on your system that firefox might not find the right one. Consider removing all but the one from libavcodec-extra57 or altenativly either use LD_PRELOAD or a modified LD_LIBRARY_PATH at firefox startup to make sure it finds the right version.

[nubc]

@ s243a
As I said above, a search of my system files does not find libavcodec.so.57. How can I remove it if I can't even find it? Okay, what if I download extra57, what do I do with it?

@nic007
Do you imply that Seamonkey 2.48 can playback HTML5 videos?

@666philb & mikeslr
Why am I the guinea pig (again)? Shouldn't the developer of Tahrpup be the guinea pig? Although it's a community edition, the Ubuntu variant is a main branch of Puppy. I don't think it's expecting too much that a Puppy be able to play Youtube videos. Pale Moon is obsolete before it is published. How does that happen?

[nic007]

@ s243a
As I said above, a search of my system files does not find libavcodec.so.57. Okay, what if I download extra57, what do I do with it?

@nic007
Do you imply that Seamonkey 2.48 can playback HTML5 videos?

@666philb & mikeslr
Why am I the guinea pig (again)? Shouldn't the developer of Tahrpup be the guinea pig? Although it's a community edition, the Ubuntu variant is a main branch of Puppy. I don't think it's expecting too much that a Puppy be able to play Youtube videos. Pale Moon is obsolete before it is published. How does that happen?

When you click on a youtube link in your browser a new youtube page opens with their embedded html5 player playing the video via streaming. My understanding is that this is independant from which encoders (if any) may be installed on your machine as long as your browser is new enough. When you are not using their embedded player you need the codecs. I may be totally wrong though.

[nubc]

Installing libavcodec-extra57 may have fixed it. I haven't encountered the error so far.

[s243a]

@666philb & mikeslr
Why am I the guinea pig (again)? Shouldn't the developer of Tahrpup be the guinea pig? Although it's a community edition, the Ubuntu variant is a main branch of Puppy. I don't think it's expecting too much that a Puppy be able to play Youtube videos. Pale Moon is obsolete before it is published. How does that happen?

This is because it is a new issue. At the time of Tahrpup's last release this wasn't a problem. Since then youtube has added a new video formats. We can try PM'ing 666philb or reporting the issue in his bug report thread:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=96177 (noting the fix).

However, I don't know if 666philb is supporting this version anymore. I believe his focus is on newer releases of puppy.

P.S. If your using a 32bit system I recommend dpup stretch. However, if you have an older 64bit computer that doesn't run well with newer puppies than maybe tahrpup64 is still the best option.

[nubc]

I encountered the first video of today that gave the HTML5 error, and I refreshed the page making it inoperable. When I reported the video here, I had to revisit it again, but it played okay. Go figure.

Firefox is doing something very annoying. I normally keep 3 instances of FF on the task bar, and no more, but there may be several windows of FF in each instance of FF. When there are 8 or more windows for an instance of FF, Firefox will often generate another instance (the 4th) to represent a window that I click on. Of course, I cannot have more than 3 instances of FF, because the computer crashes. Three is maximum number of instances of FF that my computer can handle.

[Mike Walsh]

P.S. If your using a 32bit system I recommend dpup stretch. However, if you have an older 64bit computer that doesn't run well with newer puppies than maybe tahrpup64 is still the best option.

Hah.

Kinda depends on what your definition of 'older' is, I guess. For many folks, 6-7 yrs back counts as 'past it'.....

My two-penn'orth (FWIW). This Compaq Presario desktop of mine must count as one of the 'first-generation' of mass-market 64-bit computing. It uses the very processor that introduced the 'amd64' denomination to the tech world.....the AMD Athlon 64. (Admittedly, a dual-core X2 - but still first released almost 15 years ago, in Autumn 2004.)

(Nobody in their right minds will count the Intel Itaniums; they were a lost cause from the word go, 'cos they were simply too 'different'.....and Intel knew it in their heart of hearts, despite struggling on with them up until just over 18 months ago, with the final build, 'Kittson', for enterprise customers. Certainly, they didn't even make a dent in the desktop market....no developers were prepared to port the mass of existing x86 code across for them, 'cos they scheduled in an utterly different, almost 'alien' way.)

The 'integrated' graphics chip dates from the same time-frame. https://techreport.com/review/7588/ati- ... 00-chipset The ATI Radeon XPress 200 was released all the way back in 2004, yet still gives a lovely clear, crisp image.

My point being this; despite her age, she'll happily run Bionicpup64. No doubt upgrading the factory-supplied 1 GB RAM to 3GB of the max allowable 4GB helped enormously; DDR1 here, you realise, so 4GB was the maximum any DDR1 mobo could handle.

She originally came with a 2 GHz single-core Athlon64 3200+, but I snagged the X2 on eBay for a very reasonable GBP £6.73p; I went out of my way to find a 3800+ X2, which was essentially a pair of the 3200+ single cores on the same silicon. I knew that configuration worked, so I thought I'd stick with the same. Besides which, the slightly faster 2.2 and 2.4 GHz 4200+ and 4800+ variants had mostly all been snapped up by the overclock brigade years earlier, and doubtless thrashed to within an inch of their lives.....and the few still floating around the marketplace were going for ludicrous money; £60-70 plus. For the small increase in speed, no way was it worth it.

The dual-core transformed Puppy, making her easily capable of multitasking at long last. My point being, despite being not far short of 16 yrs old, this box will still handle the newest Pups with ease.

Here endeth the lesson.....


Mike.

[nubc]

won't play
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHalEROIhlE

[Mike Walsh]

I've just watched that using Fred's portable FF-Quantum, here in UPup 'Raring'. 'Louise di Tullio - Topic' - I.Allegro (moderato)? I honestly don't understand why you can't.....


Mike.