# videos/audio will not play in firefox, works in chrome



## hoobastank69 (Jul 12, 2020)

I normally use firefox 78.0.1 (64-bit)for youtube becuse chrome stutters, but as of late, firefox will not play any videos nor their audio on youtube.
I am using freebsd 12.1 with plasma 5, and I have tried reinstalling firefox, removing .mozilla, all extensions, etc.
I think it might be having trouble finding the audio device.. just a guess, but chrome and iridium work OK

I tried other streaming sites, most were the same although some would play the video, but not the audio.
I tried re-setting the default audio device as well, no change. firefox was ran with debug enabled and I will post the log it made, although I do not think it contains anything useful

Edit- I never did totally solve this issue, changing to sndio semi solved it but caused several more issues. I have switched browsers now for good and I consider the issue closed


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## George (Jul 12, 2020)

I would consider clearing the cache.


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## hoobastank69 (Jul 13, 2020)

Elazar said:


> I would consider clearing the cache.



which cache would that be? i have tried removing .mozilla as a whole


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## Márcio Rezende (Aug 23, 2020)

Same problem here. Firefox cannot play sound while Falkon is playing same site normally.


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## T-Daemon (Aug 24, 2020)

Márcio Rezende said:


> Same problem here. Firefox cannot play sound while Falkon is playing same site normally.



Is it www/firefox version 80.0_2,1? Check if you have `media.cubeb.backend` in your firefox `about:config`.





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						[ports] Revision 545611
					






					svnweb.freebsd.org
				








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						248847 – www/firefox no audio playback after update to 80.0_2,1
					






					bugs.freebsd.org


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## scottro (Aug 24, 2020)

I know that in Linux, firefox now requires pulseaudio, in another good effort to drive people to use chrome or chromium.  (I think you can work around it by building from source, but I'm not sure. Lots of people thought it a bad idea, but mozilla just ignored them.)  I don't think that's the case with FreeBSD, but as something else pulled in pulse as a dependency on my system, I'm not sure. Is it at all possible this is the cause?

EDIT:  On a fresh install, I have firefox without pulseaudio, so I doubt that's the reason. Sorry for the noise, but I'll leave the post in case others thoughtt the same as I did. (Hrrm, reminds me of the line, Perhaps the purpose of your life is to be an example to others.)


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## Alain De Vos (Aug 24, 2020)

Some humor. Resistance is futile, though will be assimilated by systemd and pulseaudio.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 24, 2020)

Crazy idea here.

I think the FreeBSD community should develop it’s own web browser. It’s frustrating when stuff like this doesn’t work due to hard Linux dependencies. Unless Firefox/chromium can be linked to OSS/sndio during the porting process. Id rather not have potterware on my machine, at all.


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## Márcio Rezende (Aug 24, 2020)

T-Daemon said:


> Is it www/firefox version 80.0_2,1? Check if you have `media.cubeb.backend` in your firefox `about:config`.



Nope. My Firefox is 79.0. And my FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE r354233 GENERIC.

I'm using pkg install.

My problem with ports is that firefox have a fast upgrade cycle and I can't be involve in recompiling each time.

And I tried that backend.cubeb.backend=oss

It not worked here. Thanks for suggestion.



```
root@btrix:/var/local/bench # pkg info | grep alsa
alsa-lib-1.1.2_2               ALSA compatibility library
alsa-plugins-1.1.1_6           ALSA compatibility library plugins

root@btrix:/var/local/bench # pkg info -r '*alsa*'
alsa-lib-1.1.2_2:
        kmix-20.04.2
        qt5-multimedia-5.14.2
        firefox-79.0,1
        thunderbird-68.11.0
        vscode-1.46.1
        qt5-webengine-5.14.2_1
        py27-gimp-2.10.20_1
        gimp-app-2.10.20_1,1
        alsa-plugins-1.1.1_6
alsa-plugins-1.1.1_6:
        firefox-79.0,1
        thunderbird-68.11.0
        vscode-1.46.1
        qt5-webengine-5.14.2_1

root@btrix:/var/local/bench # pkg info '*pulse*'
pulseaudio-13.0
pulseaudio-qt-1.2_1
```


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## Márcio Rezende (Aug 24, 2020)

Beastie7 said:


> Crazy idea here.



That is why I am using the Falkon browser which is supposed to integrate better with KDE.

Firefox is my main browser and I collect my bookmarks and sites logins there... I can survive without it and I can wait for some fix appear or try to fix with try-and-error aproach. The bright side is: trying new browser and learn to deal with FreeBSD tweaks. (I'm noob...)

I know KDE is bloated but we are in the 21st century and I have a reasonably new CPU with good graphics capabilities and a decent amount of memory. It doesn't seem sensible to keep saving and underutilizing it.

Not a server (I have a freenas for that) but a desktop that got tired of using the windows booger.


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## ekvz (Aug 24, 2020)

Beastie7 said:


> Crazy idea here.



Sadly it is. At least in a litteral sense. I'd totally love for something like netsurf to become a universally usable browser but seeing it fall behind further with every passing year i don't think it's realistic to expect it ever becoming reality. And that is probably how every other completely independent browser project would do too. Modern browsers are insanely complex and something that can't just be built by a couple of guys with a vision.

On the other hand building around one of the existing major rendering engines seems doable. I just don't know how far that would get you concerning api choices and such without patching the engine left and right but i can see how a lightweight portable browser with nice extension support (i.e. not WebExtensions or stubbornly clinging to XUL) might have a niche.



Márcio Rezende said:


> I know KDE is bloated but we are in the 21st century and I have a reasonably new CPU with good graphics capabilities and a decent amount of memory.



Not only is it the 21st century but we are also living in age of GTK3. There was a time when i would hear KDE/Qt and just roll my eyes but given the mess that GTK3 is and how little widespread alternatives there are outside of Qt it starts looking more and more reasonable to me with every application dropping GTK2 for GTK3.


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## scottro (Aug 24, 2020)

That would be nice.  A browser that just browses, rather than trying to be everything as it seems both mozilla and chrome (and chromium) seem to be doing. But, just browses also means it has to handle the various garbage that designers throw at it.


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## Márcio Rezende (Aug 26, 2020)

scottro said:


> That would be nice.  A browser that just browses, rather than trying to be everything as it seems



Too much "ducktyping" there... 

If it browses like windows, crash like windows, colorful like windows, buzz-buzz-buzz like windows... It must be garbage!

The same dirty thing is in OSes, music/video players, games...: follow leader, copy leader, swallow leader... And become a new leader!

I'm trying hard to adapt my habits to this new KDE/Plasma... Including recompiling all the system after reading suggestions above.

Since yesterday, afer  using "synth" (It's almost done only 4 fails). 

My Plasma crashed 4 times... My fault because I was insisting in compile something using kdevelop.... Yep systems stays up. Incredible, but I could recover it without rebooting. I just switch a Konsole  - alt-F2 keep woking - and restart it with plasmashell &. 

Well untill now firefox cannot play a bit of sound and a I learned a lot of new tweakings... I'm shooted but still and going.

In a sense that is only for my leisure and growing. It's good.


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## scottro (Aug 26, 2020)

Best of luck with it.  As long as you feel you're getting some fun out of it, I think that's all that matters.


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## Alain De Vos (Aug 26, 2020)

I use firefox-esr instead of firefox.
Also the media.cubeb.backend setting is an important setting.


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## Márcio Rezende (Aug 27, 2020)

Alain De Vos said:


> I use firefox-esr instead of firefox.
> Also the media.cubeb.backend setting is an important setting.


Hmmm ... It's an interesting suggestion. I used ESR once when I was adjusting my old debian ... As far as I can remember, I think it solved some problems that time, but it came up with some new ones: synchronize with the new password "wallet" and mess up my organization. favorites. These are mainly my concerns. If I could use ESR everywhere, there would be no problem. (del.icio.us ... missing it!)


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## sidetone (Aug 27, 2020)

Beastie7 said:


> Id rather not have potterware on my machine, at all.


It's pottyware.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 27, 2020)

Alain De Vos said:


> I use firefox-esr instead of firefox.
> Also the media.cubeb.backend setting is an important setting.


esr is not a choice for me, as esr crashed immediately on my system.
the latest firefox version worked fine, though. but yesterday it's stopped working and I typed these things in chromium now.

another interesting thing is if you choose to set firefox as the default browser when it asked it will crash and core dump immediately. that's weirded.


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## facedebouc (Aug 27, 2020)

I am using www/firefox 80.0_3,1 on my desktop machine. I built it with ports-mgmt/poudriere. I have to force media.cubeb.backend=oss because audio/pulseaudio is installed on my system. I had to install it to get sound in guest OS running on my customized build of emulators/virtualbox-ose.
Sound is working well with firefox on the host as well as in guest OSs (Linux Debian 10, Windows 8.1) in virtualbox.
I am a happy guy ;-)


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## Márcio Rezende (Aug 27, 2020)

Ok! Today  I finished to rebuild my desktop machine! About 19 hours of compiling using ports-mgmt/synth and after adjust media.cubeb.backend is finally working.

I'm surprised (without any benchmarking)  but it seems FF is running faster than before.

Despite of two restarts, because of my insistance in using computer during the compilations (to read docs and try some ide's), it payed in stability and fast reboots.

Now is time to be used with compiling and managing upgrades.

Thanks for many helps here.



facedebouc said:


> I am a happy guy ;-)



Now I'm a happy guy too!


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## Márcio Rezende (Aug 27, 2020)

Now it's time to get used to compiling and managing updates.


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