Currently, Opera on Linux (for example, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE distributions) cannot play h264 videos by default.

For example, consider this YouTube video, which happens to be served with the h264 codec:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g754dlVxdQU

This is really a big downside - for many users, YouTube is a heavily used service, and everybody plays videos on websites every once in a while. There should be a relatively smooth method of making this work.

I understand that not including the proper ffmpeg libraries in the distribution is a result of licensing issues, but could you please include clear, up-to-date instructions (for each release) on the Opera website about:

• Where to download ffmpeg libraries.
• How to install them so that they work with Opera.
• Anything else that is needed to make this work.

A multitude of different how-tos exists on the web, but most of it is outdated, or does not work.

Note that you need the correct version; most distros will list several versions which you must choose from based on the version of Chromium that Opera uses.That is the hard part.

You put thelibffmpeg.so you download at "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/lib_extra/libffmpeg.so". If you haven't created the "lib_extra" folder yet, you'll need to create it first. You're not supposed to replace thelibffmpeg.so that's included with Opera. Leave that one alone and let Opera update it when it needs to.

For what one you download, you have to goto the URLopera://about and take note of the Chromium major version. Then, you can search for and find alibffmpeg.so that's built for that major version of Chromium. Don't install any packages or anything, which might interfere with other programs. Find the file in a tar.gz file for example, extract it and put it in the lib_extra folder.

Then, you'll be good to go until Opera jumps to a new major version of Chromium. When that happens, you repeat the steps and replace thelibfmpeg.so in the lib_extra folder with the new one.

As for where to find the right ffmpeg, tryhttps://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/ There are Vivaldi and Opera ones for Chromium 71 and Opera ones for Chromium 72. I think these get updated. You might also tryhttp://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/chromium-browser/.

As for widevine installation, I'm not sure.

Thank you for the instructions!

From what I can tell, I seem to have Chromium version 70:

Browser identification
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.102 Safari/537.36 OPR/57.0.3098.116

I tried extracting both thelibffmpeg.so file from version 69 and from the version 71 (extracted from the Ubuntu repos with deb files):

chromium-codecs-ffmpeg_69.0.3497.100-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg_71.0.3578.98-0ubuntu0.18.04.1_amd64.deb

I copied both the the said path:

$ sudo ls -la /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/lib_extra/
Mo 21 Jan 2019 19:48:47 CET
total 1980
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 21 19:48 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jan 20 17:32 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2015256 Jan 21 19:48libffmpeg.so

Neither of those 2 versions of seems to work (Opera was restarted, and I checked the process list after turning Opera off and on).

Edit: I also triedhttps://repo.herecura.eu/herecura/x86_64/opera-beta-ffmpeg-codecs-71.0.3578.98-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Edit: I also triedhttps://launchpad.net/ubuntu/cosmic/amd64/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra/70.0.3538.110-0ubuntu0.18.10.1

Apparently, these help:

https://github.com/iteufel/nwjs-ffmpeg-prebuilt/releases/tag/0.31.5

Thank you for your instructions again.

I still find it strange that I'd have to download a randomso file from some guy's GitHub repo, and sudo-copy that into myusr folders.
Which version oflibffmpeg.so do the Opera developers use when they build and test their software?
Do they download it from somewhere, or build it from source?
Why couldn't we (the Opera users) do the same after installing Opera?

@alexprokopec said inFFMPEG installation instructions:

From what I can tell, I seem to have Chromium version 70

Then you'd need one for 70. Surprised the one you downloaded for 70 didn't work.

Apparently, these help:
https://github.com/iteufel/nwjs-ffmpeg-prebuilt/releases/tag/0.31.5

Awesome.

@alexprokopec said inFFMPEG installation instructions:

Which version oflibffmpeg.so do the Opera developers use when they build and test their software?
Do they download it from somewhere, or build it from source?

They build ffmpeg included in the Chromium source with proprietary codecs disabled for legal reasons. You just have to download a libffmpeg that supports everything to make the extra, proprietary codecs work.

I suppose the best way (but probably a pain) would be to fetch the latest Chromium source of the major version you need, build it with proprietary codecs enabled and then grab the producedlibffmpeg.so from it. Not sure how much of Chromium you can avoid building just to produce libffmpeg, but that's something to investigate. But, finding thelibffmpeg.so from an official chromum ffmpeg extra package might be easier.

Thanks for your answers!

It sounds like it might be useful to have some instructions on the Opera website about (or an automated script that does this, assuming that this does not breach the legal restrictions), since it's a frequent issue (and it's pushing away some Opera users). It looks like the Python script in this repo seems to be doing exactly that:https://github.com/iteufel/nwjs-ffmpeg-prebuilt

As far as I'm personally concerned, the solution of running the script from iteufel's repo seems to work for me.

I see that the script makes use ofhttps://nwjs.io/versions.json to figure out what version of the Chromium source to work with.

Sorry for digging an old thread, but I just stumbled upon this issue while trying to watch a video fromhttps://lbry.tv on Linux Mint 19.2 with Opera 68 Stable.

Finding the correctlibffmpeg.so fixed it. Many thanks.

I had video issue updating Linux Mint from 19.3 to 20.
Upgrade process discarted Opera Dev, I reinstalled v.71.0.3742.0 but I got in trouble with video reproduction.
https://github.com/iteufel/nwjs-ffmpeg-prebuilt/releases/tag/0.31.5
solved for me.
Thanx

I create a script that install the broken library and fix the opera bug.

https://github.com/nicolas-meilan/fix-opera-linux-ffmpeg

# Ubuntu/Debian or based# Install package chromium-codecs-ffmpegsudo apt install -y chromium-codecs-ffmpeg## Make a linksudo ln -sf /snap/chromium-ffmpeg/current/chromium-ffmpeg-103551/chromium-ffmpeg/libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/

@burnout426 this really solved my problem, I hope there won't be a problem abt it anymore. I can now open youtube live videos or videos in other sites that I couldn't open it before. Really Thanks

@asandikci For future reference, the info is athttps://www.reddit.com/r/operabrowser/wiki/opera/linux_libffmpeg_config.

@rungekutta Great!!!

@burnout426 Thank you!
You saved my mind. New Opera One is a new piece of shit only.

@rungekutta fix my problem, now opera runs like charm!

1. Try t o downloadhttps://github.com/nwjs-ffmpeg-prebuilt/nwjs-ffmpeg-prebuilt/releases/download/0.85.0/0.85.0-linux-x64.zip or the latest build from this repository

2. extract the .zip file for ubuntu

3. than use the command

mv libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera

4. restart opera

@rungekutta Funciona!!..

@devtiagofranca said inFFMPEG installation instructions:

# Ubuntu/Debian or based# Install package chromium-codecs-ffmpegsudo apt install -y chromium-codecs-ffmpeg## Make a linksudo ln -sf /snap/chromium-ffmpeg/current/chromium-ffmpeg-103551/chromium-ffmpeg/libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/

!!Warning!!

I tried this and it broke my installation, so be careful if you try it. Initially, it just broke YouTube, which I was using for testing, but when I tried restarting the browser it would no longer launch. Foolishly, I didn't back up the originallibffmpeg.so file in the opera folder, so I had to reinstall the whole package. Always take backups, folks!