Video Streaming issue and resolution for BitChute and Vid.me Topic is solved

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yubby

Video Streaming issue and resolution for BitChute and Vid.me

Unread post by yubby » 2017-10-02, 23:23

I had noticed that though Youtube videos streamed without issue using Pale Moon 27.4.2 on Linux (Centos 7.3 x86_64), those streamed from BitChute and Vid.me did not have 'audio'.

Today, I rebuilt a system using Pale Moon 27.5.0 and Centos 7.4 x86_64, and found that BitChute and Vid.me didn't provide 'video' either (with Bitchute stating that no compatible 'mime' extension was found).

The 'changelog' for the 27.5.0 release stated that gstreamer was no longer used/included with the distribution, and the chatroom moderator mentioned that an 'external' installation of ffmpeg libraries may be necessary.

I had recently gone through a similiar process to get "VLC" functioning on CentOS, so I researched 'that' procedure, ending up with the following steps, which resulted in all 3 video websites functioning as expected:


First, get the 'repo' configurations for the EPEL and RPM-Fusion sites (save them somewhere that's accessible to the target Linux system):

https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el ... noarch.rpm
http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora-epel/e ... noarch.rpm

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sudo yum install  epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm  rpmfusion-free-release-7.noarch.rpm
(edit /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo to ensure that it is 'enabled', and do a 'sudo yum clean all' to ensure that the new repos/settings are implemented on the next 'yum' command)

NOTE: The "Linux-kickstart-distribution" repo represents the original CentOS 7.4 ISO 'unpacked' and activated as a YUMmy repository...

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sudo yum install ffmpeg-libs

Installed:
  ffmpeg-libs.x86_64 0:2.8.13-1.el7

Dependency Installed:
  fribidi.x86_64 0:0.19.4-6.el7  lame-libs.x86_64 0:3.99.5-8.el7    libass.x86_64 0:0.13.4-1.el7
  libva.x86_64 0:1.2.1-3.el7     opencore-amr.x86_64 0:0.1.3-3.el7  schroedinger.x86_64 0:1.0.11-4.el7
  soxr.x86_64 0:0.1.2-1.el7      vo-amrwbenc.x86_64 0:0.1.3-1.el7   x264-libs.x86_64 0:0.148-11.20160614gita5e06b9.el7
  x265-libs.x86_64 0:1.9-4.el7   xvidcore.x86_64 0:1.3.4-2.el7

========================================================================================================================
 Package              Arch           Version                                 Repository                            Size
========================================================================================================================
Installing:
 ffmpeg-libs          x86_64         2.8.13-1.el7                            rpmfusion-free-updates               5.5 M
Installing for dependencies:
 fribidi              x86_64         0.19.4-6.el7                            Linux-kickstart-distribution          63 k
 lame-libs            x86_64         3.99.5-8.el7                            epel                                 343 k
 libass               x86_64         0.13.4-1.el7                            epel                                  92 k
 libva                x86_64         1.2.1-3.el7                             epel                                  68 k
 opencore-amr         x86_64         0.1.3-3.el7                             rpmfusion-free-updates               173 k
 schroedinger         x86_64         1.0.11-4.el7                            epel                                 291 k
 soxr                 x86_64         0.1.2-1.el7                             epel                                  77 k
 vo-amrwbenc          x86_64         0.1.3-1.el7                             rpmfusion-free-updates                71 k
 x264-libs            x86_64         0.148-11.20160614gita5e06b9.el7         rpmfusion-free-updates               556 k
 x265-libs            x86_64         1.9-4.el7                               rpmfusion-free-updates               1.5 M
 xvidcore             x86_64         1.3.4-2.el7                             rpmfusion-free-updates               263 k


EnglishMohican

Re: Video Streaming issue and resolution for BitChute and Vid.me

Unread post by EnglishMohican » 2017-10-03, 20:46

I have the same or a similar problem. Youtube.com/html5 has 4 of the 6 boxes ticked but not the H.264 one or the MSE & H.264 one. Most Youtube videos work but some on other sites do not. Following the clues above, I tried BitChute (noisy screen & error message) and Vid.me (just a black box with controls), so it sounds like my problem is very much the same as yubby's.

Pale Moon is version 27.5.0 and I have done the restart with all defaults option and currently have no add-ons added. My OS is openSUSE Leap 42.3, recently installed from scratch. Desktop is XFCE. I have adjusted the MSE options to get all 4 ticks in place.

I have been reading the forums and I can confirm that I have gstreamer 0.1 and gstreamer 1 installed, plus ffmpeg together with all dependencies identified by openSUSE. I added gstreamer-ffmpeg as I found that mentioned as needed in a forum post. I have also been through the list above and tried to identify equivalents to the dependencies CentOS identifies but package names are very different. I have installed some of the extra ones that I hoped might do the trick but they do not seem to, or I guessed wrongly about the names. Mostly, they seemed to be encoders which seem unlikely to be needed so a bit of a wild hope in any case.

The main discrepancy I have found is that my ffmepg is 3.3.4 while yubby's is 2.8. and somewhere on the forums it says Pale Moon will not work with versions >2.X. However, so much has clearly been happening on this front (gstreamer not needed I believe??) that the ffmpeg version requirement may also be out of date.

Please, could somebody who knows, provide some definitive answers as to what are the current requirements for H264 to work. General rules would be fine, gstreamer needed or not, 0.1 or 1.0, ffmpeg version fussy or not would give me a good start.

Thanks in advance for any comments, suggestions or assistance.

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trava90
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Re: Video Streaming issue and resolution for BitChute and Vid.me

Unread post by trava90 » 2017-10-04, 00:01

GStreamer has not been supported by Pale Moon for quite some time now. You will need to have FFmpeg installed (specifically libavcodec) in order to play H.264 video. Pale Moon does support both FFmpeg 2.x and 3.x.

EDIT: based on a quick package search on OpenSUSE's site, you need to install the libavcodec57 package on your system. That should allow Pale Moon to play H.264 video.

EnglishMohican

Re: Video Streaming issue and resolution for BitChute and Vid.me

Unread post by EnglishMohican » 2017-10-04, 07:48

Thank you. Problem solved.

Specifically, your comment led me to find that although I had libavcodec57 installed, the one supplied by openSUSE contains a restricted number of codecs (probably for licensing reasons) and does not include the vital ones. I installed libavcodec57 from Pacman (together with Pacman's dependencies for libavcodec57) and it all just worked. I now have video from Bitchute and Vid.me plus others.

I also have sound from sites that yesterday only gave me video.

I should have thought of openSUSE's licensing worries, it has been a problem before but you cut through the chaff and directed me straight to what I needed to worry about and made it easy to spot.

Thanks again.

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stevenpusser
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Re: Video Streaming issue and resolution for BitChute and Vid.me

Unread post by stevenpusser » 2017-10-05, 19:59

For anyone else,

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ffmpeg -codecs
lets you know what is supported for your ffmpeg in terms of decoding and encoding.

yubby

Re: Video Streaming issue and resolution for BitChute and Vid.me

Unread post by yubby » 2017-10-06, 20:10

And, just an update for Fedora/RHEL/CentOS installations...

I re-ran the package installation, using a 'non-KDE Desktop' installation (vanilla O/S) which identified the need for the "mesa-filesystem" package as well, which includes (obviously important) and is included in the 'base' CentOS ISO image:

mesa-filesystem /usr/lib64/dri
mesa-filesystem /usr/lib64/vdpau

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 mesa-filesystem    x86_64    17.0.1-6.20170307.el7              Linux-kickstart-distribution     15 k
 

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