MP4 videos won't work since FF 57 (Linux)
Hello,
as per the subject: MP4 videos won't play for me since FF 57. They used to work fine up until then (and still do if I switch back to FF 56).
I'm on Linux (LFS). I tried getting some help over at my distro's mailing list but to no avail: http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/2017-November/079645.html
As per that thread above, the other video formats (webm, ogg) still work fine.
I found this guy over here at Mozilla support: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1190048 with the exact same problem who seems to have fixed his problem by installing VLC or something (he hasn't left too many details, sadly). I tried upgrading VLC just to be sure (even though I'm well aware that it's ffmpeg that FF uses for MP4 video playback) but unsurprisingly that didn't change a thing either.
My ffmpeg is up to date, too, I'd like to think:
ffmpeg -version ffmpeg version 3.4.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 6.2.0 (GCC) configuration: --prefix=/usr --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --disable-static --enable-shared --disable-debug --enable-libass --enable-libfdk-aac --enable-libfreetype --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --docdir=/usr/share/doc/ffmpeg-3.4.1 libavutil 55. 78.100 / 55. 78.100 libavcodec 57.107.100 / 57.107.100 libavformat 57. 83.100 / 57. 83.100 libavdevice 57. 10.100 / 57. 10.100 libavfilter 6.107.100 / 6.107.100 libswscale 4. 8.100 / 4. 8.100 libswresample 2. 9.100 / 2. 9.100 libpostproc 54. 7.100 / 54. 7.100
Could anyone perhaps shed some light on what the issue might possibly be?
Thanks.
Wšykne wótegrona (10)
So what is the video onsite or from your computer that causes this problem? If onsite what about a link so those with linux and FF can see if they can reproduce the problem as well?
WestEnd said
So what is the video onsite or from your computer that causes this problem? If onsite what about a link so those with linux and FF can see if they can reproduce the problem as well?
No MP4 video seems to work for me in FF57. You can use that site I mentioned in my distro's mailing list post for testing: https://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html - the top video fails to load, the other two work.
I'm pretty sure it's going to work for most people, issue seems rather specific for some reason.
Site is not useful enough.
Please : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/export-firefox-bookmarks-to-backup-or-transfer and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles then https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings TEST.......
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/html5-audio-and-video-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-video-audio-problems-firefox-windows https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-common-audio-and-video-issues
Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
Yes VLC should play anything, any video type. Only had 1 issue of not a year ago with it. I do not find it does music well but does play it, sound is not really controllable enough for me. https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html Maybe other versions for Linux, no idea. Have a look.
Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
The OP is referring to not being able to fully use the HTML5 player, not to .mp4 videos saved to disk as VLC would be used for. The more useful link for Linux is at https://www.videolan.org/vlc/#download
vaclavmasin said
No MP4 video seems to work for me in FF57. You can use that site I mentioned in my distro's mailing list post for testing: https://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html - the top video fails to load, the other two work. I'm pretty sure it's going to work for most people, issue seems rather specific for some reason.
FFmpeg is used to get help get all checks as blue on https://www.youtube.com/html5/ as otherwise you may only get four blue checks. However you say you have it installed.
Do you have any Extensions installed in Firefox?
Type about:config in the Location (address) bar and make sure none of these are user set to false media.mediasource.enabled media.mediasource.mp4.enabled media.mp4.enabled media.ogg.enabled media.webm.enabled
Pkshadow said
Site is not useful enough. Please : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/export-firefox-bookmarks-to-backup-or-transfer and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles then https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings TEST....... https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/html5-audio-and-video-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-video-audio-problems-firefox-windows https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-common-audio-and-video-issues Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
I forgot to mention it in my OP but I had tried running FF in Safe Mode (--safe-mode on the command line) and then testing - wouldn't that equal to the same thing?
I also had gone through the other three links and none of them seemed to help. Please also bear in mind that I'm running on Linux (the middle link is for Windows only).
Pkshadow said
Yes VLC should play anything, any video type. Only had 1 issue of not a year ago with it. I do not find it does music well but does play it, sound is not really controllable enough for me. https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html Maybe other versions for Linux, no idea. Have a look. Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
I don't have a problem playing MP4 videos locally or in previous versions of FF. It's only FF57 that won't, for some reason.
James said
vaclavmasin saidNo MP4 video seems to work for me in FF57. You can use that site I mentioned in my distro's mailing list post for testing: https://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html - the top video fails to load, the other two work. I'm pretty sure it's going to work for most people, issue seems rather specific for some reason.FFmpeg is used to get help get all checks as blue on https://www.youtube.com/html5/ as otherwise you may only get four blue checks. However you say you have it installed.
Do you have any Extensions installed in Firefox?
Type about:config in the Location (address) bar and make sure none of these are user set to false media.mediasource.enabled media.mediasource.mp4.enabled media.mp4.enabled media.ogg.enabled media.webm.enabled
Yeah, that youtube site shows the problem as well most likely - the middle (H264) column has the red exclamation marks in it in both fields. But again only in FF57, if I switch back to FF56 they're all blue with the check sign in all of them.
No extensions are installed, I've also tried in Safe Mode but it didn't help either.
All of the "about:config" settings are set to true.
Thanks to all of you for trying to help.
Alright, so in the end the problem turned out to be that for some reason FF57 couldn't see some of the libraries located in /opt/x/lib on my system. Once I created symlinks to them from /usr/lib, the problem disappeared.
Why it had always worked with previous FF versions and suddenly broke with v57 remains a mystery, but I guess I'm going to have to leave it at that.