I can second what Slackwarefanboy is talking about.

I am able to play videos on Youtube without problems when browsing on Seamonkey (2.49.4) or Firefox (60.7.0esr). These were included with a full install of Slackware 14.2 x64 and i keep the system updated regularly.

However, i do face problems quite a few times when browsing on Opera (60.0.3255.109) and Vivaldi (2.5.1525.46). These i installed recently by downloading the RPM's from the respective websites and using rpm2tgz before installation.

The error msg's on Youtube are "An error occurred. Please try again later." or "Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available."

When i open https://www.youtube.com/html5

On Opera, H.264 and MSE & H.264 are marked in red. The other browsers are all blue. HTML5 player is set as default.

My system config:

-Slackware 14.2 x64 (stable) with multilib (courtesy AlienBob)
-ffmpeg (courtesy AlienBob - restricted repo)

Pointers, suggestions to solve this will be appreciated!

Regards,
Sattva

You might try installing vivaldi-codecs-ffmpeg-extra (build script at slackbuilds.org) and see if that solves your problem.

Slackwarefanboy's issue seems to be different, though, since his issue is mozilla-related while vivaldi and opera are chrome-based. Don't use firefox myself, but I have no issues with youtube using palemoon or seamonkey. So, as many others have stated already, we need more information on versions/upgrades/architecture.

2 members found this post helpful.

Thank you kgha! Your suggestion solved the random playback issues of Youtube videos in Opera and Vivaldi.

All is well now :-)

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Installing ffmpeg solved some issues. Thanks.

Some, are you having other video issues?

Well it is solved issues in Firefox but not SeaMonkey - SO FAR all videos seem to work. I fail to see the logic in not including automatic HTML5 video codec adaptability in Firefox on Slackware from the get-go to avoid such errors. I mean its the 2020 and people watch videos and are engulfed in HTML5. There is no situation unto which I am grateful for the configuration against such - none that I could think of anyways.

ffmpeg isn't included in 14.2 as a standalone library, but it is included in -current.

However, there may be limitations in what Pat can enable with his ffmpeg packages due to legal requirements in some companies. I'm not sure how much, if any, those limitations prevent Firefox from playing that content. I pretty much always rebuild ffmpeg to enable most of the features, so I've never ran into limitations like this.

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Easy way is to install Alien Bob's restricted version of ffmpeg. No issues with Firefox and YouTube here.