Anyone else using Mullvad Browser also unable to watch livestreams on YouTube?

Help
1

I have no idea if this is a NixOS packaging problem OR a Mullvad Browser problem (I remember once some similar issue happened with me on another distro for some time) but since I got no answers asking Mullvad I shall ask here.

Ever since update 15.0.1 YouTube has just been unable to play livestreams, every time I click on one it says “Your browser can’t play this video. Learn more” (and despite clicking on Learn more it says my browser should be able to play it lol) I thought at first it was because of 15.0.1 but as soon as we got 15.0.2 the issue still persists. Is anyone else going through this too? any way to make it work or just wait for it to be fixed on 15.0.3?

Also I’m curious if anyone else also happens to every time Mullvad Browser updates it creates a new user profile and sets it as default instead of the one you were using (nowadays I’m used to just deleting the profile and returning to my original one but, it is sometimes a mild annoyance but one I’ve learned to live with)

1 Like
2

a little update:

we are on 15.0.3 and it’s still not working, it is most likely an error with the codec in NixOS

I’ve tried Firefox on a nix-shell and it gives the same error, Chromimum browsers like Brave have no such error, have also tried Firefox/Mullvad on two VMs (one with Arch and another one with Fedora) and they have no problems either.

no clue if there is already some issue about this on github or not (did looked up on the nixpkgs repo) feel free to link if that’s the case

3

Have you tried opening the affected browsers in a terminal and looking at their logs? Or the JS console window?

If it is codecs, might be VAAPI config or a deliberate choice on Google’s end.

4

NixOS doesn’t include the proprietary codecs (like H.264) that YouTube needs for livestreams out of the box. Chromium-based browsers like Brave bundle their own, which is why they work for you.

nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  ffmpeg-full
  gst-plugins-base
  gst-plugins-good
  gst-plugins-bad
  gst-plugins-ugly
];

After saving the file, just run sudo nixos-rebuild switch and restart your browser. This should solve it.

1 Like
5

I decided to give this a go, opened up mullvad-browser on terminal and went to the youtube page and these are the following logs:

[Child 43635, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7ffa221fd500 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for audio/mp4a-latm: file /var/tmp/build/firefox-c7f2ad97dbe6/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:168
[Child 43635, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7ffa221fdb00 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for audio/mp4a-latm: file /var/tmp/build/firefox-c7f2ad97dbe6/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:168
[Child 43635, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7ffa221fe400 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for audio/mp4a-latm: file /var/tmp/build/firefox-c7f2ad97dbe6/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:168
[Child 43635, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7ffa2b5c8b00 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for audio/mp4a-latm: file /var/tmp/build/firefox-c7f2ad97dbe6/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:168

so yeah, it’s a codec/decoder problem, I will try adding the bellow on the conf file and see if it solves it but I find it weird that this has happened now since it has never happened before.

6

added the pkgs to the config and, no changes happened, still having the same error when playing livestreams.

7

update:

apparently it seems it really was an issue with ffmpeg, seems like ffmpeg will be set on version 7 for stuff to work (relevant github merge, livestreams still not working yet but I will just wait about a week and see)