Videos not playing in Firefox 116.0.1 (64-bit)

ARM Technical Assistance
1

In the past, problems with non-playing of video content in Firefox have been reported, with suggested fixes. I am running Manjaro in KDE Plasma on a Raspberry Pi 4B, and the latest upgrade results in Firefox not playing video content. Chromium seems to have no problem.

The fixes suggested previously involved editing items in Firefox’s Setting, but they don’t appear to apply to Firefox 116.0.1 (64-bit), so I’m at a bit of a loss to see how to proceed. Any advice would be welcome, as Firefox is my preferred browser.

2

I am on 117.0.1-1 but when I was using 116.0.1 the only issue I had with video on my pi400 was trying to play h264 .mp4 which could be fixed:

Edit – Settings → Performance and uncheck Use recommended performance settings and Use hardware acceleration when available then reboot.

I never had the issue of not being able to play any video.

3

Thanks for the reply, Darksky. Those were the settings which were selected, but I still can’t play video material in Firefox. It’s particularly annoying when I’m browsing the bbc.co.uk web site, and can’t play the video material in the articles there. I don’t think it’s a hardware problem, because with the same Pi running Raspberry Pi OS I never had this problem, and I don’t think it can be an overall system problem because I can view the BBC video materials with Chromium.

4

Maybe the settings folder is corrupted.
Rescue the following files from .mozilla in your home folder:

cert9.db = certificates
key4.db = has to do with passwords, I don’t remember exactly, but worth backing up
logins.json = saved passwords
places.sqlite = bookmarks
prefs.js = self explanatory
search.json.mozlz4 = Search engines, including custom

Then close Firefox, delete .mozilla, and restart Firefox.

5

Thanks for the response, Keruskerfuerst. I’ve been away for some days, hence this belated response. I’ve just implemented the October upgrade, and Firefox still fails to play BBC videos. In your reply, you suggested “Rescue the following files from .mozilla in your home folder”. I’m a little puzzled by that, as you then say, "Then close Firefox, delete .mozilla and restart Firefox. This sequence presumably results in the creation of a new .mozilla folder which one would expect to create a new .mozilla folder with appropriate contents. If I’m right in that, why would I need to ‘rescue’ the original files? Or do you intend that I should save the original files and then reinstate/replace in the new .mozilla folder? Incidentally, I note that my .mozilla folder doesn’t contain logins.jason. Is this significant? I would welcome further general guidance.

6

I have now solved this problem. Using solution No 4 given on the web page How to Fix Videos not Playing in Firefox? I found that the failure to play videos was despite the default selection under ‘Autoplay’ on the Permissions tab already being set as ‘Allow audio and video’. I unselected the ‘Use default’ check box and then selected ‘Allow audio and video’, after which Firefox successfully played video clips. The odd thing is, that now when I check the Autoplay entry, Firefox has reinstated the ‘Use Default’ option, but playing of video content is still working. It thus seems that there may be a bug in the way Firefox is dealing with the default setting.

7

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.