Hey there. I’ve started using the Firefox Flatpak on Xubuntu 18.04, but H264 videos perform really horribly. Youtube is fine because VP9 and Opus get used and they work fine, but Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch are pretty screwed, and that is probably just the start of the list. Anything I can do to get performant video back?
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maybe it’s worse with intel? with my AMDGPU it’s more fluid…
I have a hybrid laptop, so I have the ability to run Xorg on both Nvidia and Intel graphics stacks. Doesn’t matter which one I’m using, it’s jerky.
Are you using Wayland? XFCE doesn’t have a Wayland session, and even if it did, I couldn’t use it on Nvidia anyways. If h264 acceleration is restricted to only Wayland, then the Firefox flatpak isn’t viable for me.
EDIT: I tried installing org.freedesktop.platform.ffmpeg as suggested on the website for the unofficial Firefox flatpak builds but that didn’t help either. Darn, I was really hoping it would!
It is being worked on. Next builds will have ffmpeg-full enabled until openh264 update is sorted out.
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Awesome, thank you very much!
Hi there, is there any sort of ETA on this? I just got an update but it didn’t fix the stuttery videos on Twitter. I can deal with the stuttery videos if we’re talking a few days but if we’re talking weeks or when 76 hits, I’ll just go back to the regular binary builds until it’s sorted.
The fix has been committed: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D70830
Unfortunately, Mozilla provides only stable and beta flatpak at the moment, no nightly builds yet.
Maybe it will hit 76 beta, then you will be able to get it from flathub-beta sooner. In the worst case, you will have to wait for 77 beta.
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Since it’s about an extension, can that extension be installed manually and wired up somehow with an override?
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You can manually edit /var/lib/flatpak/app/org.mozilla.firefox/current/active/metadata to add
[Extension org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full]
directory=lib/ffmpeg
add-ld-path=.
version=19.08
Then run sudo mkdir /var/lib/flatpak/app/org.mozilla.firefox/current/active/files/lib/ffmpeg. (User installs use ~/.local/share/flatpak/) instead.
This will make Flatpak unhappy when new update is available and you will need to revert the metadata changes.
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Those changes work, thank you so much! Videos on twitter are nice and smooth!
I’m presuming Flatpak will throw an error message of some sort when the update hits to remind me? 
Probably depends on the version. 1.6.x will complain.
The last two Firefox updates did not include this fix, requiring me to manually redo them. I thought upstream was going to have this? Should I report to their bug tracker?
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It’s still under discussion. There’s a chance it will be included in the next stable release.
Okay. Is there a particular place discussion is happening that is publicly visible so I can see what the discourse is and maybe contribute my own two cents?
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Firefox 76 from Flathub runs really smooth on my Fedora Silverblue.
I have no issues with included codecs but the only issue I do have is higher RAM and CPU consumption than normal Firefox package…
Anybody else notices this or is it just me?
FYI, the ffmpeg-full extension is enabled now in flathub-beta and will be available in the next stable release. Autodownload is disabled so users who don’t have it installed already will need to do that manually.
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The new Firefox 77 flatpak is out and it’s working beautifully for me 
I tried around 10 different video streaming sites and no problems with codecs so far!
Confirming that the FF 77 flatpak plays media just fine out of the box. Awesome! Thank you!
This is an old thread but I would like to add that it is still not working for me as of Firefox 81. Video playback is choppy through h264 as opposed to native Pop!_OS package.
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@barthalion You wrote " FYI, the ffmpeg-full extension is enabled now in flathub-beta and will be available in the next stable release. Autodownload is disabled so users who don’t have it installed already will need to do that manually."
For new flatpak users its (at least in my humble opinion) totally unclear that the ffmpeg-full extension has to be installed for a good video playback. The only hints on this extension are given in some forums, some bugzilla firefox bugs and the metadata of the flatpak file. And these are places you can not expect novice users to check before installing firefox.
So is there a chance to implement a checkbox solution similar the one below for the firefox flatpak?
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