Firefox videos fail to play

Since installing Leap 15 / Firefox Quantum 60.0.2 none of the videos on the BBC web site play: “This content doesn’t seem to be working. Try again.”. The accompanying error message says
“2.19.11.1853247.r
unknown bitrate | dash (mf_limelight_dash_https)
p06b71vv | unknown dimensions
Error:4999
AdsPluginHTML.3.24.1
ContinuousPlayPluginHTML.1.23.4”

Can anyone confirm this behaviour? Which video component may be missing? It makes no differenece if Shockwave Flash (29.0.0.171) is activated or not.

You may need to get codecs from packman. Have you done the switch to the packman repo?

Show zypper lr -d for detailed instructions

#  | Alias                           | Name                                    | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh | Priority | Type   | URI                                                                      | Service
---+---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+--------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------
 1 | download.opensuse.org-non-oss   | Main Repository (NON-OSS)               | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/15.0/repo/non-oss/        |        
 2 | download.opensuse.org-non-oss_1 | Update Repository (Non-Oss)             | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/15.0/non-oss/                   |        
 3 | download.opensuse.org-oss       | Main Repository (OSS)                   | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/15.0/repo/oss/            |        
 4 | download.opensuse.org-oss_1     | Main Update Repository                  | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/15.0/oss                        |        
 5 | openSUSE-Leap-15.0-1            | openSUSE-Leap-15.0-1                    | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | cd:///?devices=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-HL-DT-STDVD+-RW_GSA-H21N              |        
 6 | packman.inode.at-suse           | Packman Repository                      | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://packman.inode.at/suse/openSUSE_Leap_15.0/                         |        
 7 | repo-debug                      | openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Debug                | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/leap/15.0/repo/oss/      |        
 8 | repo-debug-non-oss              | openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Debug-Non-Oss        | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/leap/15.0/repo/non-oss/  |        
 9 | repo-debug-update               | openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update-Debug         | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/leap/15.0/oss/                 |        
10 | repo-debug-update-non-oss       | openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update-Debug-Non-Oss | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/leap/15.0/non-oss/             |        
11 | repo-source                     | openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Source               | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/leap/15.0/repo/oss/     |        
12 | repo-source-non-oss             | openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Source-Non-Oss       | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/leap/15.0/repo/non-oss/ | 

Packman is activated.

Yes, but an active repo does only mean you can install from it. But that does not happen by miracle. So did you do the vendor switch? Either from YaST > Software > Software Management or with

zypper dup --from 'Packman Repository'

And to be sure you can repeat this and then try again your videos and report back.

Thanks gogalthorp and Henk, that was what was needed. Video now works.Unpleasant side-effect is that video seems to drive my cpu to the limit, requiring max cooling.

Cheers
Harvey

what’s your graphic card and driver?

sudo lspci | grep VGA

on a side note bbc still uses flash on some of it’s video’s so you might want to install the flash-player

zypper in flash-player
VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos [Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450 / R5 230 OEM]


flash-player is/was installed, so I guess it now uses some of the packman libraries in place of the ‘standard’ ones.

Cheers
Harvey

I have no experience with amd devices afaik the radeon opensource driver should be installed and it’s pretty good at hardware accelerated decoding
you can read thru the radeon wiki to see some info about testing the radeon driver
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Radeon
you could try running vainfo to check and see if your card supports hardware accelerated h264 (mp4) deciding
vainfo is part of the vaapi-tools package and usually it’s not installed by default

zypper in vaapi-tools
vainfo

Excuse me if I do not follow up on the graphics drivers. On my desktop all works fine with packman codecs.

However, I also have a Laptop where problem persists although I have switched to packman.

sudo lspci | grep VGA
...
...
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)

So I have to use packman libraries for that as well. Is the problem with the OpenSUSE set related to license issues?

yes because of patent laws opensuse does not ship with any patented codecs like h264 aac etc which are among the most common video and audio used on the web
check and see if the switch to packman was successful see where ffmpeg and it’s libraries are from

zypper se -si ffmpeg
zypper se -si libav*

if the above are not from packman do another switch to packman
intel graphics are handled by the kernel itself they don’t need an extra driver package but some newer intel’s need an upgraded kernel as I’m not an intel graphics user I can’t say more

harvey@linux-zeln:~> zypper se -si ffmpeg
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S  | Name   | Type    | Version         | Arch   | Repository        
---+--------+---------+-----------------+--------+-------------------
i+ | ffmpeg | package | 3.4.2-lp150.3.1 | x86_64 | Packman Repository
harvey@linux-zeln:~> zypper se -si libav*
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S  | Name                   | Type    | Version          | Arch   | Repository           
---+------------------------+---------+------------------+--------+----------------------
i+ | libavahi-client3       | package | 0.6.32-lp150.3.2 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavahi-client3-32bit | package | 0.6.32-lp150.3.2 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavahi-common3       | package | 0.6.32-lp150.3.2 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavahi-common3-32bit | package | 0.6.32-lp150.3.2 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavahi-core7         | package | 0.6.32-lp150.3.2 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavahi-glib1         | package | 0.6.32-lp150.3.2 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavahi-gobject0      | package | 0.6.32-lp150.3.2 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavahi-ui-gtk3-0     | package | 0.6.32-lp150.3.2 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavc1394-0           | package | 0.5.4-lp150.1.12 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libavcodec57           | package | 3.4.2-lp150.3.1  | x86_64 | Packman Repository   
i+ | libavdevice57          | package | 3.4.2-lp150.3.1  | x86_64 | Packman Repository   
i+ | libavfilter6           | package | 3.4.2-lp150.3.1  | x86_64 | Packman Repository   
i+ | libavformat57          | package | 3.4.2-lp150.3.1  | x86_64 | Packman Repository   
i+ | libavresample3         | package | 3.4.2-lp150.3.1  | x86_64 | Packman Repository   
i+ | libavutil55            | package | 3.4.2-lp150.3.1  | x86_64 | Packman Repository   
harvey@linux-zeln:~>

All good, I believe…?

it all looks fine
does this happen with only with Firefox or with Chromium too
I use Firefox release not ESR from the Mozilla repo but afaik for the moment both ESR and release are the same
if you are using a chromium based browser like vivaldi or opera you’d need the chromium-ffmpeg-extra package from packman
have you tried another browser?

maybe it’s an add-on issue or a bad profile
try running firefox in safe mode or with a fresh profile and see if it helps
does Firefox play youtube videos as google defaults to vp9 for Linux users on youtube and vp9 is an open format that opensuse supports out of the box