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

h264-vivaldi-linux.md

This page is no longer maintained, go to https://help.vivaldi.com/article/html5-proprietary-media-on-linux/ for help

Thanks for this solution for all :) I have one question. Why we need use custom libffmpeg? We cant use default ffmpeg?

Chromium patches FFMpeg. The default FFMpeg provided on distros does not include these patches and hence it is incompatible. There is also the issue that the system version is often a different version (older or newer) so would probably be incompatible anyway, in addition to the patches issue.

@ruario What do you think about this conversation with Opera developers?

Seems like Chromium can be patched to use system ffmpeg/libav.

On my Debian machine I had to install several dev-packages before being able to build the ffmpeg lib:
sudo apt-get install libcups2-dev libatk1.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libxtst-dev libexif-dev libxss-dev libpci-dev libdbus-1-dev libgconf2-dev libgnome-keyring-dev

For pulseaudio support:
sudo apt-get install libpulse-dev

The herecura links needs to be updated:
http://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/i686/vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs-48.0.2564.109-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
http://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs-48.0.2564.109-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
http://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/i686/vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-48.0.2564.109-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
http://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-48.0.2564.109-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

@matsbtegner they are being updated from time to time so the herecura links are mostly only usefull for Arch Linux users

@matsbtegner Thanks, indeed I have not maintained this page as well as I would hope. Though it is up to date as I write this

@ruario do you have any web page to validate the installation ?

just a dumb question: if there are sources and can be installed right in place, why is the support not included in the snapshots and the beta by default? just tried the herecura repos from Fedora 23 using the latest vivaldi snapshot and it works fine

@titilambert I linked to a suitable page several times in the instructions, (see my statements: "You can then test support on this page"). Use the first video labelled H.264/MP4. If is plays, all is good. ;)

P.S. If you just want to test audio support, this page is also handy.

@JuanCAlpizar Not a dumb question. If you are unsure, it is always best to ask.

HTML5 media (audio and video) allows for the use of several different codecs. The most common ones (H.264, MP3 and AAC) are what I would call "proprietary" media codecs because they are patented and hence require various licenses to distribute software that can decode them. Each user costs the person distributing the software money. To an extent, these costs reduce as you gain more users (e.g. the licensor for H.264 gives discounts over certain numbers of users and you eventually hit a cap where these is no additional cost) but at our current size it is not viable for us to pay for a license for all our users and still fund the development of the browser.

The repositories I have linked to (that include binaries capable of decoding these codecs) are not associated with us. In addition, I am not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice but if I was to guess as to how they are able to distribute, I would assume that in the case of the Ubuntu repositories, they either paid for the licenses or they have some reason why they believe that they do need to pay for licenses. In the case of the herecura repo, it is maintained by a single individual in Europe, where software patents are not valid (to the best of my knowledge), so again I guess he should be fine.

I needed to install the sysroot (Debian Wheezy) with
./build/linux/sysroot_scripts/install-sysroot.py --arch=amd64
prior to ./build/gyp_chromium, after that, things seemed to work fine - thanks.

The herecura repo now also contains ffmpeg-codecs for vivaldi-stable:
http://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/i686/vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs-49.0.2623.110-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
http://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs-49.0.2623.110-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

ffmpeg-codecs for vivaldi-stable (v1.1) [herecura repo]:
http://repo.herecura.eu/pool/vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs-50.0.2661.89-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
http://repo.herecura.eu/pool/vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs-50.0.2661.89-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

With some x86 Linux it happend that Vivaldi on my Netbook MSI WInd U110 wont play MPEG4/H265 videos, even after installing package chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra or adding libffmpeg.so from herecura.

I opened vivaldi://gpu and discovered that GPU section is all shown as Software, but then CPU should render the videos. But that did not work. Video was Black or White, only with sound.

I could workaround the problem by starting vivaldi from shell as vivaldi --disable-gpu

Vivaldi will not open once the stable releases have been installed to /opt/vivaldi/lib/libffmpeg.so. Have to install the default libffmpeg.so to get it to launch again.

Anybody else getting this to work for stable Vivaldi?

EDIT: Nevermind, I was using the wrong bit version...

links are outdated.

Vivaldi-stable 1.2:
http://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/i686/vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs-51.0.2704.65-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz
http://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs-51.0.2704.65-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

On Fedora 23, I have Chromium installed as well from the "Russian Fedora" repository. If you have that then you can just create a symlink pointing to /usr/lib64/chromium/lib/libffmpeg.so.

Some systems will not do hardware video decoding unless you route things via a suitable VDPAU driver, I have put together instructions for Debian jessie with an integrated Intel GPU which may help others.

Thanks jimdigriz. However, the directory in your instructions does not exist.

Everything worked fine in Vivaldi on Ubuntu until the latest snapshop. None of the other suggestions above work either. The flash recommended by https://help.vivaldi.com/article/install-flash-player-for-vivaldi/ can be installed but is disabled without any means to enable it. The suggestion at https://vivaldi.net/en-US/forum/vivaldi-browser-for-linux/14100-ubuntu-flash#71518 does not work either so its back to using Firefox unless I want to use Chrome itself or the chrome clone Opera. ... sign Oh well, maybe in the future if Vivaldi grows, licensing will not be an issue. Regardless, thanks for all the suggestions posted above.

@matsbtegner @xchronox0 Thanks I finally updated the links

@DesertOutlaw for Flash use this. For H264 the document is now updated and Vivaldi has been made more robust in accepting a wider range of library versions.

Thanks for all, btw just some advice. The AUR version seems to be having some problems when compiling so use the herecura one ;)

For my debian system tracking the testing distribution, the easiest of all to run h264 videos on vivaldi was to add a ubuntu repository and a preferences file to exclude all ubuntu packages other than chrome-ffmpeg-codecs-extra. This will also allow new versions of chromium-ffmpeg-codecs-extra to be found and installed in the normal manner used for all other packages.

/etc/apt/sources.list: added an ubuntu repository:

# chrome-ffmpeg-extra-codecs from ubuntu to play H264 videos:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu devel-proposed universe

/etc/apt/preferences.d: added a preference file to exclude all of ubuntu except for chrome-ffmpeg-codecs-extra:
Explanation: block all ubuntu packages
Package: *
Pin: origin "archive.ubuntu.com"
Pin-Priority: -1

Explanation: do not block ffmpeg-extra but lower priority than debian
Package: chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
Pin: origin "archive.ubuntu.com"
Pin-Priority: 476

After installing chrome-ffmpeg-codecs-extra, videos from the test page http://www.quirksmode.org/html5/tests/video.html as well as videos from movies.yahoo.com, netflix and amazon all run well!

=> apt-cache policy chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra:
Installed: 55.0.2883.87-0ubuntu2.1328
Candidate: 55.0.2883.87-0ubuntu2.1328
Version table:
*** 55.0.2883.87-0ubuntu2.1328 476
-1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu devel-proposed/universe i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
55.0.2883.87-0ubuntu1.16.10.1330 400 ## package downloaded by the script and kept in local repository ##
400 copy:/usr3/Installs/DEB ./ Packages

Hi! I tried to install ffmpeg library to latest stable (Vivaldi 1.8) but it is not working. I tried to use more recent chromium (57.0.2987.99 to be exact) but it failed on this error during gyp phase:

$ touch chrome/test/data/webui/i18n_process_css_test.html
$ ./build/gyp_chromium --depth . -Dcomponent=shared_library -Dffmpeg_branding=ChromeOS -Dclang=0
gyp: usage: gyp_chromium [options ...] [build_file ...]                                                                               
                                                                                                                                      
gyp_chromium: error: no build_file

Any ideas what is going on?
Thanks

I would avoid against compiling your own replacement libffmpeg.so unless you are a package maintainer on a distro and want to offer a supporting package for your users. It is a lot of effort for little reward. Far better to run the attached script, which will fetch a suitable libffmpeg for you from Ubuntu and place it in a location Vivaldi will find it.

I have re-written most of the script. You no longer need root/sudo/superuser privileges to run it as the file is places in a user owned location.

The script worked great for me on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with Vivaldi 1.8. Thanks!

@tphecca great. Nice to hear it

Wow, just thank you :)

Works on Solus !

on opensuse leap, you can also install vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs (though I did have to create a symlink /usr/lib64/vivaldi/lib/libffmpeg.so pointing to /opt/vivaldi/lib/libffmpeg.so)

i also tested the latest-proprietary-media.sh script now on opensuse leap 42.2. works flawlessly (netflix also tested). ruario, you rock :)

Worked for me in Fedora 25 today; thanks!

Works on Ubuntu 16.04, thanks!

Hey, thanks a lot! This fix works on Solus OS, as well.

Woot! Worked on Fedora 25. Last hurdle to switch to vivaldi from firefox.

Works on Debian 10

EDIT:
I had to delete its files from $HOME/.local/lib/vivaldi/ and rerun the script after reinstalling my OS.

With the slow death of Unity it seems like the chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra is now (once again) the most likely source of this lib to be updated (for a while there it was oxideqt-codecs-extra), so I have updated this gist accordingly. If you were having issues, try again!

May worth to change this line to:

LOUD_DL="wget --config=/dev/null"

in case someone has dir_prefix = ~/download/ in ~/.wgetrc.

I am a little bit uncomfortable with doing that @powerman as they might have other options in their ~/.wgetrc that they would be suprised to have ignored (e.g. logging). The types of people who make these changes are likely to be the ones who could debug such a problem. You are the first person ever to mention such an issue on any one of my scripts and indeed, you have the solution, which kind of proves the point I feel. ;)

I added ARM support to the latest-proprietary-media.sh script

I just runed the sh file.
Works on opensuse Tumbleweed. Thank you.

Thank you. Well done.

Any chance you can add a username to the path for STAGINGDIR? With multiple system users I have to manually wipe that directory before I can run the script for another user, something like this,

$ diff -u latest-proprietary-media.sh latest-proprietary-media.new.sh 
--- latest-proprietary-media.sh	2018-02-12 09:43:17.654358020 -0500
+++ latest-proprietary-media.new.sh	2018-02-12 09:43:12.829289893 -0500
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
 TMP=${TMP:-/tmp}
 
 # Set staging dir
-STAGINGDIR=$TMP/$LOGNAME/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra-staging
+STAGINGDIR=$TMP/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra-staging
 
 # Setup Arch
 case $(uname -m) in

I should have mentioned this a while back but the Arch method of building your own libffmpeg.so is really slow, overcomplicated, and requires downloading the huge Chromium source tarball. Everything you need is in the FFmpeg sources, you just have to build it in a certain way. I wrote a patch for this, which was rejected by FFmpeg upstream, but we use it in Gentoo. Include the new Makefile in the top-level Makefile and do this:

./configure --disable-shared --enable-static --enable-pic --extra-cflags="-DFF_API_CONVERGENCE_DURATION=0"
make libffmpeg
sudo make install-libffmpeg

@blackjackshellac why don't you just define $TMP to be somewhere else locally?

@chewi I will investigate, thanks

@chewi, i am a gentoo user and i tryed to use the generated libffmpeg.so with ffmpeg sources but the current vivaldi-snapshot does not detect the generated lib. And if i force the library, replacing the original in vivaldi-snapshot, it just broke the video reproduction.

@feilee Thanks for confirmation. I was just about to try myself. This makes sense to me as ffmpeg within Chromium is heavily patched, i.e. AFAIK this could not be a true statement

Everything you need is in the FFmpeg sources

So I was suprised anyone claimed it worked

The script works with fedora 28 too. Thanks!

Just a quick thanks for the script...been banging my head on the wall with this one trying everything else I can think of. Works like a charm in bunsenlabs with vivaldi stable.

ATTN: Linux Mint 17 64 (Qiana, based on Ubuntu 14.04) users:

I downloaded chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_69.0.3497.81-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb, clearly this is the chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra file for Ubuntu 16.04.

wget http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_69.0.3497.81-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb

I manually extracted the libffmpeg.so file from the .deb file (using Archive Manager) and placed it in: /home/USER_DIR/.local/lib/vivaldi/libffmpeg.so

After restarting Vivaldi all videos played perfectly.

I wrote a patch for this, which was rejected by FFmpeg upstream, but we use it in Gentoo. Include the new Makefile in the top-level Makefile and do this:

The patch doesn't work. https://bugs.gentoo.org/653448