Following a recent update to Bookworm on a Pi5 both Firefox
and Chromium lost the ability to play videos. The video
starts loading, but never begins playing.

Anybody else seeing this behavior?

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

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Jesper <Vitsky.kasperski@gmail.com> wrote:

On 15.05.2025 06:02, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

Following a recent update to Bookworm on a Pi5 both Firefox
and Chromium lost the ability to play videos. The video
starts loading, but never begins playing.

Anybody else seeing this behavior?

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

Yes! Thanks for joining. Please see the thread "Video speed at a crawl".

Thanks, I didn't make the connection till you pointed it out.

There are some replies, but no solution. Druck suggests having a look at video codecs, if some are hit and some not. I do not know how to find
which codec a video s using, except that a mp4-video shot with my phone
is playing normal, but nearly every video shown in a browser will not
work (speed like 2-3 frames once in a while). For example if you go to https://tv.nrk.no/serie/fra-boelle-til-bestevenn, you will see a
teaser-video running fine, but if you click on the "Play" button, the
video starts, but at a crawl.

Far as I can tell, they don't even crawl....

I just found a 10 second ideo on this page which does at least play.
It's silent, however:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverfly

Could the absence of sound be significant? Has anybody tested whether
Wayland is the problem? Can't remember if I'm using Wayland or X11 at
the moment...

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

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bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

I just found a 10 second ideo on this page which does at least play.
It's silent, however:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverfly

Could the absence of sound be significant? Has anybody tested whether
Wayland is the problem? Can't remember if I'm using Wayland or X11 at
the moment...

That video: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Syrphidae_-_kanagawa_japan_-_2023_11_9.ogv source file: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Syrphidae_-_kanagawa_japan_-_2023_11_9.ogv

does not contain any sound:

$ mplayer Syrphidae_-_kanagawa_japan_-_2023_11_9.ogv
MPlayer 1.5+svn38446-1build5 (Debian)

Playing Syrphidae_-_kanagawa_japan_-_2023_11_9.ogv.
libavformat version 60.16.100 (external)
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] stream 0: video (theora), -vid 0
VIDEO: [theo] 1516x920 0bpp 25.000 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s) ========================================================================== Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
libavcodec version 60.31.102 (external)
Selected video codec: [fftheora] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg Theora) ==========================================================================
Load subtitles in ./
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
[snip]


These ones do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I-15bis.ogv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Big_Buck_Bunny_4K.webm
(note how it says 'audio/video file' rather than 'video file' on yours)

You can download the original file by clicking on the timestamp in the
history section, so you can test it in a video player instead of the
browser.

Theo

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Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

I just found a 10 second ideo on this page which does at least play.
It's silent, however:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverfly

Could the absence of sound be significant? Has anybody tested whether
Wayland is the problem? Can't remember if I'm using Wayland or X11 at
the moment...

That video: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Syrphidae_-_kanagawa_japan_-_2023_11_9.ogv source file: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Syrphidae_-_kanagawa_japan_-_2023_11_9.ogv

does not contain any sound:

I guessed as much. I was wondering if the _lack_ of audio in the
file might have something to do with why it played in chromium.
It was the first "no audio" file I encountered since the trouble
started.

These ones do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I-15bis.ogv

That one doesn't play, beyond opening an empty window.
The run timer stays on 0.0, but the progress arrow
momentarily starts, then retreats, when the play arrow
is clicked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Big_Buck_Bunny_4K.webm

Same empty window, no progress arrow at all.

Not sure what to make of these observations.

Is there a command to indicate whether the system is running
wayland or x11? I thought there might be some hint in the
dmesg output, but I don't see anything:
dmesg | grep -i wayland
yields no output,
dmesg | grep -i x11
reports
[ 2.297074] xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0: hcc params 0x0240fe6d hci version 0x110 quirks 0x0000808000000810
[ 2.429562] xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.1: hcc params 0x0240fe6d hci version 0x110 quirks 0x0000808000000810
[ 3223.945638] x11: fffffffffffe0000 x10: ffffd06fcfc583a0 x9 : ffffd06fce51cf30
[ 3223.945839] kthread+0x11c/0x128
which doesn't look relevant, at least to me.

IIRC, some earlier trouble emerged when using Wayland, which motivated
the use of x11. Now I don't remember which is in use.....

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

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On Thu, 15 May 2025 04:02:30 -0000 (UTC), bp wrote:

Following a recent update to Bookworm on a Pi5 both Firefox and Chromium
lost the ability to play videos. The video starts loading, but never
begins playing.

One really low-level test you can conduct is

1) Use “youtube-dl --print urls «video-page»” (feel free to use one of the
youtube-dl successors, like yt-dlp) to get the URLs of the direct video/
audio streams. Beware: they can look pretty gigantic.
2) Pass one of these to ffplay (part of the FFmpeg suite) to see if it can
play them. Or even VLC, if you prefer.

That just takes the browser completely out of the loop, to see if the
problem might lie elsewhere (or not).

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On Thu, 15 May 2025 22:39:06 -0000 (UTC), bp wrote:

IIRC, some earlier trouble emerged when using Wayland, which motivated
the use of x11. Now I don't remember which is in use.....

ldo@theon:~> set | grep -i wayl
QT_WAYLAND_RECONNECT=1
WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland

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Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 15 May 2025 04:02:30 -0000 (UTC), bp wrote:

Following a recent update to Bookworm on a Pi5 both Firefox and Chromium
lost the ability to play videos. The video starts loading, but never
begins playing.

One really low-level test you can conduct is

1) Use “youtube-dl --print urls «video-page»” (feel free to use one of the
youtube-dl successors, like yt-dlp) to get the URLs of the direct video/ audio streams. Beware: they can look pretty gigantic.
2) Pass one of these to ffplay (part of the FFmpeg suite) to see if it can play them. Or even VLC, if you prefer.

That just takes the browser completely out of the loop, to see if the
problem might lie elsewhere (or not).

I just tried copying an old mp4 file that used to play in Chromium via
http to my local Pi5. The video has incidental sound. Played locally
with VLC the video runs, but silently.

Played locally with chromium, it does not run at all. Progress bar stuck
at zero.

Not sure what to make of this behavior, but it does seem that chromium
fails worse than VLC.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

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On 16/05/2025 18:31, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

I just tried copying an old mp4 file that used to play in Chromium via
http to my local Pi5. The video has incidental sound. Played locally
with VLC the video runs, but silently.

Played locally with chromium, it does not run at all. Progress bar stuck
at zero.

Do you have any extensions installed which may affect video, such as
h264ify?

Not sure what to make of this behavior, but it does seem that chromium
fails worse than VLC.

Is Firefox any better?

---druck

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druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

On 16/05/2025 18:31, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

I just tried copying an old mp4 file that used to play in Chromium via
http to my local Pi5. The video has incidental sound. Played locally
with VLC the video runs, but silently.

Played locally with chromium, it does not run at all. Progress bar stuck
at zero.

Do you have any extensions installed which may affect video, such as
h264ify?

The only manually added extension is ublock.origin. It wasn't causing
problems before the OS update. Turning off ublock.origin and h264ify
and restarting chromium made no difference.

Not sure what to make of this behavior, but it does seem that chromium
fails worse than VLC.

Is Firefox any better?

Not really, it still doesn't play but does display the initial frame.
Turning off extensions (h264ify and ublock.origin) makes no difference.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

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The latest bunch of updates seem to have fixed video playback.
YouTube behaves normally, my mp4 file plays also.

Not sure what was broken, but it's fixed now

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska

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On 18/05/2025 02:30, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

The latest bunch of updates seem to have fixed video playback.
YouTube behaves normally, my mp4 file plays also.

Not sure what was broken, but it's fixed now

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska

OOI what were the latest list of updates?

It has to be something relatively PI /ARM specific.

--
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the
very definition of slavery.

Jonathan Swift

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On 18/05/2025 10:57, Jesper wrote:

On 18.05.2025 03:30, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

The latest bunch of updates seem to have fixed video playback.
YouTube behaves normally, my mp4 file plays also.

Not sure what was broken, but it's fixed now

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska

Still not fixed here.

3 hours ago there were no updates, but 20 minutes ago there was a huge upgrade available. I installed it, took a snapshot of the process,
rebooted, testet, no cure, took another reboot, still no cure. Youtube
not working, and not video from other sources. The videos run but
extremely slow. You can see a few new frames evry 2 to 5 seconds.

The upgrade ran with 300-350 lines. I saw nothing special, except this
almost at the end of the upgrade:

Setter opp openssh-server (1:9.2p1-2+deb12u6) ...
rescue-ssh.target is a disabled or a static unit not running, not
starting it.
ssh.socket is a disabled or a static unit not running, not starting it. Setter opp python3.11-dev (3.11.2-6+deb12u6) ...

Could this be because I am running from a NVME?

The whole process can be seen here (it is speaking norwegian:

Nothing in that upgrade appears to be video related at a cursory glance.

Have you tried a dist-upgrade?

Følgende pakker vil bli oppgradert:
  base-files bash busybox cpp-12 debian-archive-keyring distro-info-data
  g++-12 gcc-12 gcc-12-base imagemagick-6-common libabsl20220623 libasan8
  libatomic1 libcap2 libcap2-bin libcc1-0 libgcc-12-dev libgcc-s1 libgfortran5
  libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-bin libglib2.0-data libgomp1 libgssapi-krb5-2
  libhwasan0 libitm1 libk5crypto3 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 liblsan0
  libmagickcore-6.q16-6 libmagickcore-6.q16-6-extra libmagickwand-6.q16-6
  libpoppler-cpp0v5 libpoppler-glib8 libpoppler126 libpq5 libpython3.11
  libpython3.11-dev libpython3.11-minimal libpython3.11-stdlib
libqt5core5a
  libqt5dbus5 libqt5gui5 libqt5network5 libqt5printsupport5 libqt5sql5
  libqt5sql5-sqlite libqt5test5 libqt5widgets5 libqt5xml5 libstdc++-12-dev
  libstdc++6 libtsan2 libubsan1 login openssh-client openssh-server
  openssh-sftp-server passwd poppler-utils python3-h11 python3.11
  python3.11-dev python3.11-minimal python3.11-venv
qt5-gtk-platformtheme ssh
  wireless-regdb

--
"First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your oppressors."
- George Orwell

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On 18/05/2025 11:21, Jesper wrote:

On 18.05.2025 12:09, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Nothing in that upgrade appears to be video related at a cursory glance.

Have you tried a dist-upgrade?

Thanks for checking the upgrade process. Concerning the "dist-upgrade" I
did a search and found this:

"A dist-upgrade is a process in Linux systems that upgrades the entire operating system to a newer version, including all installed packages.
It typically involves using commands like apt-get dist-upgrade to ensure
that all dependencies are properly handled during the upgrade."

So I am quite ready to do a "sudo apt-get dist upgrade", and will do it "after lunch". After all,  am ready to go for a mini PC to replace this
RP5 if it is not fixed.

Again: Thank you very much for the tip.

Yeah. sometimes updates get 'held back' especially newer kernels. I do
this if I see anything 'held back'.

Cant do any harm though I doubt it will do much good.
Remember to reboot after.

--
“People believe certain stories because everyone important tells them,
and people tell those stories because everyone important believes them.
Indeed, when a conventional wisdom is at its fullest strength, one’s agreement with that conventional wisdom becomes almost a litmus test of
one’s suitability to be taken seriously.”

Paul Krugman

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On Sun, 18 May 2025 12:20:57 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

So I am quite ready to do a "sudo apt-get dist upgrade", and will do it
"after lunch". After all,á am ready to go for a mini PC to replace this
RP5 if it is not fixed.

Again: Thank you very much for the tip.

Yeah. sometimes updates get 'held back' especially newer kernels. I do
this if I see anything 'held back'.

Cant do any harm though I doubt it will do much good.
Remember to reboot after.

Did the dist-upgrade, and it did nothing. It ran, but "0 to change"
etc. And the same problem persists after a few reboots.

At least it is not hardware related, as when booting from an old SD
card, video and sound works perfect. I have a backup on a SSD but it
won't boot. I changed boot order in Raspi-config, connected the SSD to
USB, rebooted and got the menu where you can change boot to USB, bot
it timed out.
Right now the install on SD is updating. Just curious to see if video
the again is gone bad :-)

Best regards

--
Jesper Kaas - jesperk@neindanke.online.no

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On 18/05/2025 17:24, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

OOI what were the latest list of updates?

It has to be something relatively PI /ARM specific.

A good question. The GUI updater offers no hint of a
history function. Anybody know the answer?

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

Try journalctl | grep "apt install"

--
Chris

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On 18/05/2025 17:50, Chris Townley wrote:

On 18/05/2025 17:24, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

OOI what were the latest list of updates?

It has to be something relatively PI /ARM specific.

A good question. The GUI updater offers no hint of a
history function. Anybody know the answer?

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

Try journalctl  | grep "apt install"

Or look at /var/log/apt/history.log and it's archived versions

--
Chris

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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

OOI what were the latest list of updates?

It has to be something relatively PI /ARM specific.

A good question. The GUI updater offers no hint of a
history function. Anybody know the answer?

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

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On 18/05/2025 14:48, Jesper Kaas wrote:

On Sun, 18 May 2025 12:20:57 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

So I am quite ready to do a "sudo apt-get dist upgrade", and will do it
"after lunch". After all,  am ready to go for a mini PC to replace this >>> RP5 if it is not fixed.

Again: Thank you very much for the tip.

Yeah. sometimes updates get 'held back' especially newer kernels. I do
this if I see anything 'held back'.

Cant do any harm though I doubt it will do much good.
Remember to reboot after.

Did the dist-upgrade, and it did nothing. It ran, but "0 to change"
etc. And the same problem persists after a few reboots.

Lucky you. I upgraded and now my DNS server no longer works. Grrr.

At least it is not hardware related, as when booting from an old SD
card, video and sound works perfect. I have a backup on a SSD but it
won't boot. I changed boot order in Raspi-config, connected the SSD to
USB, rebooted and got the menu where you can change boot to USB, bot
it timed out.

I doidnt think it was. there were a lod of firmware upgrades iun my
latest upgrade...

Right now the install on SD is updating. Just curious to see if video
the again is gone bad :-)

Best regards

--
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. Mark Twain

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Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/05/2025 17:50, Chris Townley wrote:

On 18/05/2025 17:24, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

OOI what were the latest list of updates?

It has to be something relatively PI /ARM specific.

A good question. The GUI updater offers no hint of a
history function. Anybody know the answer?

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

Try journalctl  | grep "apt install"

That seems to report only installs done by hand, not by
the automatic update system putting up the "updates available
icon" in the top menu bar.

Or look at /var/log/apt/history.log and it's archived versions

That's it.

Thank you!

bob prohaska

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