1830597 - Youtube Videos and other Videos not working/playing on Fedora Linux

Status: UNCONFIRMED

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

Description

[ewanmoakvevo]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/112.0
Firefox for Android

Steps to reproduce:

Play a Video in Youtube on Fedora Linux 38

Actual results:

Videos tend to not play or either crash the app.

Expected results:

Play the video and Audio

Comment 1

[Andrew Osmond [:aosmond] (he/him)]

Can you provide your about:support contents so we can see your codec support? Also, can you provide a link to a specific video that you are having trouble with so we can reproduce? Thanks!

Comment 2

[Andrew Osmond [:aosmond] (he/him)]

Also feel free to read the instructions in bug 1830627 comment 7 to collect some logs so that we can review them and see where we went wrong! If it is crashing, if you could go to about:crashes and submit/provide a link to the appropriate crash, that would be great! Thanks!

Comment 3

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

This may be related to media changes in Fedora 38 where ffmpeg-free is shipped and it contains fallback to OpenH264 plugin.
Run Firefox on terminal with MOZ_LOG="PlatformDecoderModule:5" env variable, play video on YT and attach the log here.
Thanks.

Comment 4

[Yani]

I think I'm seeing this in Rocky 9.2

About 30% of videos played from youTube, even from the same channel fail to play.

"An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: 1F05JXPZ_imwoElf) "

Same result using the stable release that came with Rocky as with the currently Nightly. Same result in safe mode.

I cannot "call" an error on this as I'm connecting via 4G with the inferior Australia network. I did look to see if there was changes I could make to video buffering for this slow connection.

It happens on other sites as well but a video can be downloaded using one of the video download tools.

It "feels" like the video stream isn't being separated into what should be played from other stuff in the stream.

Never seen an issue like this on Windows. It's very much linked to Linux or the FF Linux version.

Comment 5

[Yani]

Here's an example of a YT I couldn't play yesterday and can't play today despite a full reboot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn5J8yK2dBg

Other videos on that channel are no issue. Other videos on other channels done recently are no issue.

You can use that as a test example. If it can be played you are not seeing the problem.

Very odd, as I would have thought YT would use the same processing for every video.

Comment 6

[Yani]

Attachment: YT debug

Not sure if this is helpful... the debug from YT

Comment 7

[Yani]

Not sure if this is helpful... the debug from YT

{
"ns": "yt",
"el": "detailpage",
"cpn": "1KVgh_mOcbqm8cAT",
"ver": 2,
"cmt": "0",
"fmt": "160",
"fs": "0",
"rt": "519.059",
"euri": "",
"lact": 1,
"cl": "553018870",
"mos": 0,
"state": "8c9",
"volume": 100,
"subscribed": "1",
"cbr": "Firefox",
"cbrver": "102.0",
"c": "WEB",
"cver": "2.20230804.01.00",
"cplayer": "UNIPLAYER",
"cos": "X11",
"cplatform": "DESKTOP",
"hl": "en_US",
"cr": "AU",
"len": "1108.614",
"fexp": "23983296,23986019,24004644,24007246,24080738,24135310,24255165,24371398,24380264,24415864,24437577,24439361,24499534,24509769,24524098,24525414,24528726,24543669,24544702,24546872,24549629,24550458,24550952,24554040,24699899,51000316",
"feature": "related",
"afmt": "140",
"muted": "0",
"docid": "kn5J8yK2dBg",
"ei": "5kHQZP2VLey7rtoP2Ny72Ac",
"plid": "AAYCSsGUI4GVSFd1",
"referrer": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdTLj-xcqGM",
"sdetail": "rv:NdTLj-xcqGM",
"sourceid": "yw",
"of": "g0KcraaosRn3sr0AlQmBqA",
"vm": "CAEQARgEOjJBQWpSVTZtVjRkTGxFUE5SbFRLbmxKcjdubjdfN1RyWGpka08tMzRSTXUxd0hCTTJPZ2JYQVBta0tETEFFdTlvUWl5Y3E1b2diWi16ZGRWSzEwUUNMWXVEeFhkdmpGZExWWjY2NjduSUlEcExvS3h5aUJRdzR0bEZTbjFMc0NoSm4yRDRWUzJzdWJDNmgB",
"vct": "0.000",
"vd": "NaN",
"vpl": "",
"vbu": "",
"vpa": "1",
"vsk": "0",
"ven": "0",
"vpr": "1",
"vrs": "0",
"vns": "0",
"vec": "null",
"vemsg": "",
"vvol": "1",
"vdom": "1",
"vsrc": "0",
"vw": "1938",
"vh": "1090",
"debug_error": "{"errorCode":"fmt.decode","errorMessage":"An error occurred. Please try again later.","qM":"GENERIC_WITHOUT_LINK","ZI":"vct.0.000;vd.1108.614;vpl.;vbu.;vpa.0;vsk.0;ven.0;vpr.1;vrs.1;vns.1;vec.3;vemsg.NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - mozilla__MediaResult mozilla__FFmpegDataDecoder<59>_InitDecoder() Couldn't open avcodec;vvol.1;vdom.1;vsrc.1;vw.1938;vh.1090;mediaElem.1","DG":1,"cpn":"1KVgh_mOcbqm8cAT"}",
"ismb": 15210000,
"relative_loudness": "-5.480",
"optimal_format": "360p",
"user_qual": 360,
"release_version": "youtube.player.web_20230801_01_RC01",
"debug_videoId": "kn5J8yK2dBg",
"0sz": "false",
"op": "",
"yof": "false",
"dis": "",
"gpu": "Radeon_R9_200_Series",
"debug_playbackQuality": "tiny",
"debug_date": "Mon Aug 07 2023 11:07:58 GMT+1000 (Australian Eastern Standard Time)"
}

Comment 8

[Yani]

Here's my profile...

Operating System: Rocky Linux 9.2
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.105.0
Qt Version: 5.15.3
Kernel Version: 5.14.0-284.25.1.el9_2.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 64 × AMD EPYC 7551P 32-Core Processor
Memory: 125.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
Manufacturer: Supermicro
Product Name: Super Server
System Version: 0123456789

Comment 9

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

Please run Firefox on terminal with MOZ_LOG="PlatformDecoderModule:5" env variable, play video on YT and attach the log here.
Thanks.

Comment 10

[Yani]

Attachment: results summary

Results...

Comment 11

[Darkspirit]

(In reply to Yani from comment #4)

Same result using the stable release that came with Rocky as with the currently Nightly. Same result in safe mode.

(In reply to Yani from comment #7)

"cbrver": "102.0",

(In reply to Yani from comment #10)

[Child 82850, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fda8fec0500 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - MediaResult mozilla::FFmpegDataDecoder<59>::InitDecoder(): unable to find codec (openh264 disabled by pref): file /builds/worker/checkouts/gecko/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:166

Pref and check have been added in 115. Your problem seems to differ from comment 0.
Does Rocky have a mozilla-openh264 package like Fedora?

media.ffmpeg.allow-openh264 is only false for Nightly (bug 1755361 (115), bug 1827453), Firefox (bug 1832568, bug 1839617 (115)) should automatically download the GMP-OpenH264 plugin when Firefox is idle (IIUC): bug 1766638 (for example) hasn't been fixed, there was no immediate plugin download when I checked it last time.
One needs to go to "about:addons > Plugins > gear wheel > Check for Updates" to force the immediate download of the plugin.

Alternatively you could manually install ffmpeg, it contains the x264 decoder: https://computingforgeeks.com/install-use-ffmpeg-on-rocky-alma-9/?expand_article=1

---

comment 0: Fedora disables Firefox' built-in GMP-OpenH264 plugin downloader by default and loads its own GMP-OpenH264 plugin via MOZ_GMP_PATH environment variable that is set by Fedora's mozilla-openh264 package. In the past it has caused some crashes without crash report (IIRC).
You could try setting media.gmp-gmpopenh264.provider.enabled, media.gmp-gmpopenh264.autoupdate and media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled to true on about:config,
close Firefox,
start Firefox with this command: $ env --unset=MOZ_GMP_PATH firefox,
click on "about:addons > Plugins > gear wheel > Check for Updates"
and try to play an h264 video.

Comment 12

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

Or you may install ffmpeg and use VA-API to decode. See:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox_Hardware_acceleration

Comment 13

[Yani]

Messy for the #1 browser on Linux.

ABC iView nothing plays...
https://iview.abc.net.au

If this was the windows version there would be screaming going on. Should it be reported on Rocky as well to drive it up chain?

Comment 14

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

(In reply to Yani from comment #13)

Messy for the #1 browser on Linux.

ABC iView nothing plays...
https://iview.abc.net.au

If this was the windows version there would be screaming going on. Should it be reported on Rocky as well to drive it up chain?

You're mixing more things together. https://iview.abc.net.au uses DRM playback over Widevine drm plugin which is downloaded by Firefox directly. You may need to disable Selinux for it on Fedora based distros.

Comment 15

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm about DRM playback.

Comment 16

[Yani]

I have the DRM stuff sorted, the ABC site doesn't play and nor do at least some of their videos on youtube.

I'm on Rocky 9, downstream from Red Hat.

The "feels like" is that there is some variation in the video that isn't correctly processed. It's at the very start.

Why isn't there more reports? Is my situation somehow unique?

The only odd thing here is that access to the net is via a 4G phone and the area is overloaded.

On youtube I see the preview frame but the video immediately fails on play.

This one is a fail... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b47unuPjDLM

It's like there is some variation in the content file that the codex can't handle.

As far as I can tell I'm using the same codex as the Windows version. Linux perhaps but the same CISCO Systems codex.

Comment 17

[Yani]

Attachment: about:support

Comment 18

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

You should try to reproduce the issue with plain Mozilla binaries:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_debug_Firefox_problems#Testing_Mozilla_binaries
and you may also install system ffmpeg package to play h264 content (most distros packages ffmpeg).

If there's any distro related issue (missing ffmpeg, issued with Firefox provided by Rocky) you need to report it at https://bugs.rockylinux.org/my_view_page.php