How to enable HTML5 MP4 (H.264/AAC) video and MP3 audio in Vivaldi for Linux, via an alternative FFMpeg library

h264-vivaldi-linux.md

How to enable HTML5 MP4 (H.264/AAC) video and MP3 audio in Vivaldi for Linux, via an alternative FFMpeg library

Intro

The following is a quick guide to get this working on various Linux distros. As a side note, if you have Chrome installed alongside Vivaldi, Netflix should also work after making these changes. Alternatively, use my latest-widevine.sh to fetch and extract Chrome's copy of Widevine, so that it can be used by Vivaldi.

If you don't have working Flash video and need that in addition, please refer to these instructions.

Ubuntu

Install oxideqt-codecs-extra

sudo apt update && sudo apt install oxideqt-codecs-extra

You will now need to restart Vivaldi. You can then test support on this page.

Arch

Install from the AUR

If you want to use the latest stable, install vivaldi and vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs.

If you want to use the latest snapshot, install vivaldi-snapshot and vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs.

Install from the unofficial herecura repo

Alternatively, you can also get both of these packages from from the unofficial [herecura] repo.

After installing from the AUR or the linked unofficial repository, will now need to restart Vivaldi. You can then test support on this page.

Other distros

If your distro does not provide a package with a suitable library or one is not detected, you can run the script ./latest-proprietary-media.sh (included with this gist) as your normal user (not root) to fetch and install the Ubuntu file. Once installed, simply restart Vivaldi. You can then test support on this page.

Building your own replacement libffmpeg.so

If you want to build your own replacement libffmpeg use the Arch vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs PKGBUILD as a guide.

If you are a maintainer and intend to repackage Vivaldi browser for your distro, you might want to consider making vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs or vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs packages containing a replacement libffmpeg.so library. It is suggested that you place this library in the directory /opt/vivaldi/ or /opt/vivaldi-snapshot/ directories respectively. You will need to update these packages from time to time as Vivaldi ups its Chromium version. If your libffmeg.so is compiled from a Chromium that is too old, it could prevent Vivaldi from displaying any videos and/or cause crashes.

latest-proprietary-media.sh

#!/bin/sh

# Discourage Ubuntu users from using this script, since they can (and should) install oxideqt-codecs-extra directly
if [ -r /etc/os-release ] && grep -qx 'ID=ubuntu' /etc/os-release; then
  echo "You should not use this script on Ubuntu, install oxideqt-codecs-extra via apt instead." >&2
  read -p "Do you wish to continue anyway? [y/N]: " YN
  case "$YN" in
    [Yy]*) : ;;
    [Nn]*) echo "Exiting." ; exit ;;
        *) echo 'Answer not recognised, assuming "No". Exiting.'; exit ;;
  esac
fi

# Make sure the user is not runing as superuser
if [ "$UID" = "0" ]; then
  echo 'Do not run this script as root or via sudo. Run it as your normal user.' >&2
  exit 1
fi

available () {
  command -v $1 >/dev/null 2>&1
}

# Make sure we have wget or curl
if available wget; then
  SILENT_DL="wget -qO-"
  LOUD_DL="wget"
elif available curl; then
  SILENT_DL="curl -sL"
  LOUD_DL="curl -O"
else
  echo "Install Wget or cURL" >&2
  exit 1
fi

# Set temp dir
TMP=${TMP:-/tmp}

# Set staging dir
STAGINGDIR=$TMP/oxideqt-codecs-extra-staging

# Setup Arch
case $(uname -m) in
  x86_64) ARCH=x86_64; DEB_ARCH=amd64 ;;
    i?86) ARCH=i386; DEB_ARCH=i386 ;;
esac

# Work out the VERSION
UBUNTU_PACKAGE=$(${SILENT_DL} http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/oxide-qt/ | sed -rn "s/.*(oxideqt-codecs-extra_([0-9]+\.){2}[0-9]+-[0-9]ubuntu[0-9]\.([0-9]{2}\.){2}[0-9\.]*_$DEB_ARCH.deb).*/\1/p" | sort | tail -n 1)
VERSION=$(echo "${UBUNTU_PACKAGE}" | sed -rn "s/.*_(([0-9]+\.){2}[0-9]+)-.*/\1/p")

# Error out if $VERISON is unset, e.g. because previous command failed
if [ -z "$VERSION" ]; then
  echo "Could not work out the latest version; exiting" >&2
  exit 1
fi

# Don't start repackaging if the same version is already installed
if [ -r "$HOME/.local/lib/vivaldi/oxideqt-codecs-extra-version.txt" ]; then
  . "$HOME/.local/lib/vivaldi/oxideqt-codecs-extra-version.txt"
  if [ "$INSTALLED_VERSION" = "$VERSION" ]; then
    echo "The latest oxideqt-codecs-extra ($VERSION) is already installed"
    exit 0
  fi
fi

# Now we could screw things up so exit on first error
set -e

# If the staging directory is already present from the past, clear it down
# and re-create it.
if [ -d "$STAGINGDIR" ]; then
  rm -fr "$STAGINGDIR"
fi

mkdir "$STAGINGDIR"
cd "$STAGINGDIR"

# Now get the deb package
$LOUD_DL "http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/oxide-qt/${UBUNTU_PACKAGE}"

# Extract the contents of the oxideqt-codecs-extra package
if available bsdtar; then
  DEB_EXTRACT_COMMAND='bsdtar xOf'
elif available ar; then
  DEB_EXTRACT_COMMAND='ar p'
else
  echo 'You must install BSD tar or GNU binutils to use this script.' >&2
  exit 1
fi
$DEB_EXTRACT_COMMAND ${UBUNTU_PACKAGE} data.tar.xz | tar xJf - ./usr/lib/$ARCH-linux-gnu/oxide-qt/libffmpeg.so --strip 5
echo "INSTALLED_VERSION=$VERSION" > oxideqt-codecs-extra-version.txt

# Install the files
install -Dm644 libffmpeg.so "$HOME/.local/lib/vivaldi/libffmpeg.so"
install -Dm644 oxideqt-codecs-extra-version.txt "$HOME/.local/lib/vivaldi/oxideqt-codecs-extra-version.txt"

# Tell the user we are done
cat <<EOF

The following files were installed onto your system:

  $HOME/.local/lib/vivaldi/libffmpeg.so
  $HOME/.local/lib/vivaldi/oxideqt-codecs-extra-version.txt

Restart Vivaldi and test H.264/MP4 support via this page:

  http://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html

EOF