Install libffmpeg.so for Vivaldi and Opera

install_libffmpeg_for_opera_and_vivaldi.md

Install libffmpeg.so for Vivaldi and Opera

Troubleshooting videos issues in chromium based browsers

WARNING

Be aware that this manipulation could cause your browser to not launch anymore or make your pages crash !
So be sure to have a backup of your datas before doing it.

Find the chromium version your browser is based on

Goto opera://about or vivaldi://about,
then Ctrl+F to find 'Chrome' in the user-agent,
version number is Chrome/XX.other_numbers .

Download libffmpeg.so

× METHOD 1 ( EASY )

Go here and get your file based on your chromium version.
(If link is dead check the first link in Resources below)

× METHOD 2 ( ALTERNATIVE )

1. Download .deb package

Go here and download the chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_XX where XX is your chromium version.
( i386 refers to 32bits & amd64 to 64bits version)

2. Extract data.tar.xz

cd <directory-where-you-download-.deb>
ar x <.deb-you-just-download> data.tar.xz

3. then Extract libffmpeg.so

tar -xJf data.tar.xz --strip-components=4 ./usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so

Copy libffmpeg.so in the browser folder

Find where the browser folder is ! Usually :

# Vivaldi
cp libffmpeg.so /opt/vivaldi/lib/

# Opera
cp libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera

Notes

On the browser's update, libffmpeg.so could become incompatible again, and make you repeat all the process 😮‍💨

Resources

⋅ OperaBrowser Wiki (Reddit) - you will find some great advices there, go checkout !
⋅ Original Gist - "Install libffmpeg.so in vivaldi"

Fix

# Ubuntu/Debian or based
# Install package chromium-codecs-ffmpeg

sudo apt install -y chromium-codecs-ffmpeg

## Make a link
sudo ln -sf /snap/chromium-ffmpeg/current/chromium-ffmpeg-103551/chromium-ffmpeg/libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/

Thx

If you have followed the recommendations of r/operabrowser and added a lib_extra/ folder,
don't forget to add it in the path when you move / copy the libffmpeg.so file.

cp libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/lib_extra

Don't know if the lib_extra/ folder method works in Vivaldi, be careful 🙂

On Arch based systems with the new Opera One:

sudo cp libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/opera/libffmpeg.so

This is great if you never update Opera though - however after an update I was wondering why it was no longer working again, and found that it broke because of the update. I would suggest this instead because it will hook into apt (or package manager that you use - it supports all the major ones) and do it as part of the update process so you don't have to remember to do it each time: https://github.com/Ld-Hagen/fix-opera-linux-ffmpeg-widevine

P.S. You can also check if it worked by going to: https://html5test.com/ and looking for H.264 support tick under video and AAC support under Audio, then looking for DRM support under streaming.

For my Chromium version 113 I've just copied discovered V. 112 it works, but Opera started some crash window