User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:87.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/87.0

Steps to reproduce:

Video will not play with Firefox 87 on yahoo.com family of sites. Works fine with chrome on same computer and same OS. Videos work fine in Firefox from other sites like YouTube and rumble. Using latest updates of OpenSuse Tumbleweed which includes Firefox 87. Checked all video codecs and reinstalled Firefox with no add-ons to try to resolve.

Actual results:

Videos from yahoo.com still do not play.

I suspect that Youtube and rumble work because there is a difference in the way the video is decoded on their platform.

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Audio/Video: Playback' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Would you mind to provide a specific link to reproduce this issue? I couldn't reproduce that while browsing video on yahoo.com, the video could be played successfully.
Thank you.Would you mind to provide a specific link to reproduce this issue? I couldn't reproduce that while browsing video on yahoo.com, the video could be played successfully.

https://news.yahoo.com/japan-government-advisers-warn-birthrate-095511351.html

Video on this story will not play.

Wow! upgraded to Firefox 88 and still unable to play video. Video works fine in Chrome and applications so I know I have the right codecs installed. Just not in Firefox.

Chrome bundles certain codecs where Firefox relies on system packages, so it's possible to see differences due to this.

Can check if following videos play (you may need to click the play button on the video at the top of the page)?

1. First one
2. Second one

Edit: Could you also check the console (Tools -> Browser Tools -> Web Developer Tools -> Console) for any output when videos fail to play?

Hi, Tim,
I used both Chrome and Firefox on the link you provided in the comment4, and I didn't see any video on that page. I only saw one image and article below. Would you mind to provide other links that really contains a video in the page (and you can't play them)?
Thank you.

(In reply to Bryce Seager van Dyk (:bryce) from comment #6)

Chrome bundles certain codecs where Firefox relies on system packages, so it's possible to see differences due to this.

Can check if following videos play (you may need to click the play button on the video at the top of the page)?

1. First one
2. Second one

Edit: Could you also check the console (Tools -> Browser Tools -> Web Developer Tools -> Console) for any output when videos fail to play?

First one will not play. Second one plays fine.

Then it's possible that your computer lacks of libavcodec that Firefox uses to play H264 video. Because H264 is a proprietary codec, Firefox relies on the external libavcodec (eg. from FFmpeg) to decode H264. As Bryce mentioned in comment6, Chrome bundles that inside already because they paid the license fee. So you would need to install that first in order to play H264 video on Linux.

(In reply to Tim Coffey from comment #5)

Wow! upgraded to Firefox 88 and still unable to play video.

However, Firefox should show an info bar on the top to tell users about that they have to install libavcodec. (If your issue is lacking of libavcodec) If the info bar didn't show, then we might need to investigate that again.

NI for comment7 & 9.

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #10)

NI for comment7 & 9.

https://shaka-player-demo.appspot.com/demo/#audiolang=en-US;textlang=en-US;uilang=en-US;asset=https://storage.googleapis.com/shaka-demo-assets/sintel-mp4-only/dash.mpd;panel=ALL_CONTENT;panelData=MP4;build=uncompiled

Hi, actually I didn't mean that url that Bryce gave you, I mean other yahoo news article. (anyway, now we do not need that)
As you can't play that H264 video on Shaka, your issue is lacking of libavcodec installed on your linux machine (like what I mentioned in comment9) So you have to install that in order to play H264 video on Linux.

Wow! upgraded to Firefox 88 and still unable to play video.

But I'm curious that, when you tried to play video on Shaka player, did you see an info bar showing on the top of browser that shows you might need to install required video codec?

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #12)

Hi, actually I didn't mean that url that Bryce gave you, I mean other yahoo news article. (anyway, now we do not need that)
As you can't play that H264 video on Shaka, your issue is lacking of libavcodec installed on your linux machine (like what I mentioned in comment9) So you have to install that in order to play H264 video on Linux.

Wow! upgraded to Firefox 88 and still unable to play video.

But I'm curious that, when you tried to play video on Shaka player, did you see an info bar showing on the top of browser that shows you might need to install required video codec?

see mt screenshot. libavcodec packman is installed.

Interesting, Bryce, any idea about comment13? So probably we failed to link those libs in this situation?

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #15)

Interesting, Bryce, any idea about comment13? So probably we failed to link those libs in this situation?

Sounds like that may be the case.

Reporter, do you see any errors in the console (see comment 6 for instructions) when the video fails to play?

What is the output from running ldconfig -p | grep libavcodec?

larry:~ # ldconfig -p | grep libavcodec
libavcodec.so.58.134 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib64/libavcodec.so.58.134
libavcodec.so.58.91 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib64/libavcodec.so.58.91
libavcodec.so.57 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib64/libavcodec.so.57
libavcodec.so.56 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib64/libavcodec.so.56

no errors in console.

There's a couple of things to check here, https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Firefox_MP4/H.264_Video_Support + bug 1659209 provide some background.

• Some of OpenSuse's libavcodec packages do not have support for proprietary codecs. Could you check your versions against those mentioned in https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Firefox_MP4/H.264_Video_Support to see if they're one of the versions that's expected to provide support.
• Some of OpenSuse's libavcodec packages use a different naming scheme than expected by the linker. Bug 1659209 discusses this. I notice some of the above libs have a similar naming convention to the ones causing issue in that bug. Using a different package may resolve this, or symlinking your existing libs as in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1659209#c9 (assuming the existing libs do support the codecs).

Hi, I wonder if the way Bryce mentioned in comment18 helps?
The codecs installed in your computer have multiple version numbers, so it looks like the same issue as Bug 16589209?

After discussed with Bryce, we think they are same issue.