1633341 - [Flatpak] Firefox flatpak youtube avc video: An error occurred. Please try again later.

Status: NEW

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P5)

Description

[monteiro]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:75.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/75.0

Steps to reproduce:

Opened this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSIk1QvIM2E&list=PLFgquLnL59alCl_2TQvOiD5Vgm1hCaGSI&index=15

Actual results:

The video will stop playing with: an error occurred. Please try again later.
If it doesn't stop automatically then clicking on the progress bar of the video until it gives the error.

Expected results:

VIdeo played without error.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 2

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

Is a more detailed error provided in the web console (tools -> web developer -> web console) when playback fails?

Comment 3

[monteiro]

Attachment: webconsole.txt

Yes it does.

Comment 4

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

I suspect this is because of the ffmpeg extension used by the flatpack package, which I believe shims through to OpenH264. It looks like in this case it's failing to decode something. I'm not sure there's much we can do here, Firefox will use ffmpeg if it's already available, but we're limited in the underlying ffmpeg impl that's available.

Comment 5

[monteiro]

Is firefox using the system ffmpeg or a flatpak one? Should this bug be reported elsewhere?

Comment 6

[Mihai Tabara [:mtabara]⌚️GMT]

We're not currently using ffmpeg, but OpenH264. More details in bug 1628407, as :darkspirit mentioned.

Comment 7

[Jan Horak [:jhorak]]

There's also ffmpeg-full extension available: if you install the org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full//22.08 from flathub you will have the ffmpeg with acceleration available.

Comment 8

[monteiro]

I'm no longer experiencing this problem on latest firefox flatpak versions.

Comment 9

[do.siekierskipd]

I installed the latest org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264 and org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full
Unfortunately it still does not play h264

Comment 10

[Emerson Bernier]

By the latest do you mean org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full//22.08 ?

Comment 11

[do.siekierskipd]

(In reply to Emerson Bernier from comment #10)

By the latest do you mean org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full//22.08 ?

Yes. I tested all versions and not work. Interestingly, the problem disappeared after updating another flatpak.

Comment 12

[monteiro]

I'm correcting myself, I can still reproduce the problem.

Comment 13

[do.siekierskipd]

(In reply to monteiro from comment #12)

I'm correcting myself, I can still reproduce the problem.

What linux do you use? I have this problem on Fedora.
I have this problem for some time and some flatpak named fedora core (or something like that) repaired this bug.
Surely this was the problem because I had the same system on another device, before the update it did not work and after it did.

Comment 14

[monteiro]

I'm using fedora 38 workstation and the firefox flatpak from flathub.

Comment 15

[do.siekierskipd]

(In reply to monteiro from comment #14)

I'm using fedora 38 workstation and the firefox flatpak from flathub.

I also used flatpak from flathub but the error was also on the flatpak version from fedora. I looked at some other distributions and there firefox (flatpak ver) worked as expected.

If you want to stay with fedora then I suggest you check what flatpaks you have: flatpak list
uninstall that flatpak which contain fedora in their name: flatpak uninstall --delete-data ....

I'm not sure if this will help anything, probably after reinstallation it will be the same. But I'm 100 percent sure that it was the fault of the fedora flatpak that simulated the environment (not the main firefox flatpak) and that it didn't open videos that needed h264. At least in my case.

Comment 16

[monteiro]

I don't have any other firefox installed, nor the fedora flatpak or rpm, I only have the upstream one that Mozilla is responsible for on flathub.

Comment 17

[do.siekierskipd]

(In reply to monteiro from comment #16)

I don't have any other firefox installed, nor the fedora flatpak or rpm, I only have the upstream one that Mozilla is responsible for on flathub.

This is not what I mean. Every flatpak app needs an environment i.e. other flatpaks. Flatpak firefox is installed with other flatpaks. For example, the Freedesktop Platform (org.freedesktop.Platform) or the KDE Application Platform (org.kde.Platform). Just type "flatpak list" in the terminal and you have the whole list. That is, I mean the runtime for that application or additional dependencies like openh264 (org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264).

I have 13 app but 30 flatpaks:
flatpak list --app | wc -l
13
flatpak list | wc -l
30

So when I had firefox flatpak installed on fedora (from flathub) I also had the org.fedora.Platform runtime. You can check which runtime your firefox is using:
flatpak list --app --columns=application,runtime

"All Flatpaks in Fedora target the org.fedora.Platform runtime. " - https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/flatpak/runtimes/

Comment 18

[monteiro]

I know what you mean and have checked, I don't have any fedora runtime installed because I never installed a flatpak from fedora.

Comment 19

[do.siekierskipd]

(In reply to monteiro from comment #18)

I know what you mean and have checked, I don't have any fedora runtime installed because I never installed a flatpak from fedora.

Ok then, sorry. I have looked at several other distributions(debian, debian testing, ubuntu, opensuse TW, arch) and this problem does not occur there. After the org.fedora.Platform update, it started working. The update came after struggling with the problem for several days. I even asked on the fedora discord, nothing helped. So I was convinced that it was definitely the fault of org.fedora.Platform.