Firefox not playing YouTube videos in Virtualbox on Xubuntu

[BertN45]

In Xubuntu Firefox does not play videos of e.g. YouTube or the Dutch TV Viewer. It works in all other Virtualbox VMs with e.g. Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 16.04 or Windows 10 Pro. The problem is related to the buffering (stats for nerds). It build up the buffer and when the buffer reaches its value, it plays the content of the buffer in a few milli seconds. Afterwards it starts again with the same process.

I have reinstalled firefox, but the problems remains (apt --reinstall install firefox)

The problem is independent on the selection of the hw acceleration in the firefox preferences.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: firefox 81.0+build2-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-48.52-generic 5.4.60
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-48-generic x86_64
AddonCompatCheckDisabled: False
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.9
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: bertadmin 1398 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: bertadmin 1398 F...m pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/timer: bertadmin 1398 f.... pulseaudio
BuildID: 20200917005511
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
Channel: Unavailable
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Mon Oct 5 23:12:41 2020
Extensions: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
ForcedLayersAccel: False
IfupdownConfig:
 # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
IncompatibleExtensions: Unavailable (corrupt or non-existant compatibility.ini or extensions.sqlite)
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-03-11 (940 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Alpha amd64 (20180310)
IpRoute:
 default via 192.168.1.1 dev enp0s3 proto dhcp metric 100
 169.254.0.0/16 dev enp0s3 scope link metric 1000
 192.168.1.0/24 dev enp0s3 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.111 metric 100
Locales: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
PrefErrors: Unexpected character ',' before close parenthesis @ /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja:greprefs.js:733
PrefSources: prefs.js
Profiles: Profile0 (Default) - LastVersion=81.0/20200917005511 (In use)
RunningIncompatibleAddons: False
SourcePackage: firefox
Themes: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-03-04 (215 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 12/01/2006
dmi.bios.vendor: innotek GmbH
dmi.bios.version: VirtualBox
dmi.board.name: VirtualBox
dmi.board.vendor: Oracle Corporation
dmi.board.version: 1.2
dmi.chassis.type: 1
dmi.chassis.vendor: Oracle Corporation
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvninnotekGmbH:bvrVirtualBox:bd12/01/2006:svninnotekGmbH:pnVirtualBox:pvr1.2:rvnOracleCorporation:rnVirtualBox:rvr1.2:cvnOracleCorporation:ct1:cvr:
dmi.product.family: Virtual Machine
dmi.product.name: VirtualBox
dmi.product.version: 1.2
dmi.sys.vendor: innotek GmbH

[BertN45 (lammert-nijhof)]

Chromium snap works fine.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Thanks for the report, and sorry for the late reply. Is this still happening with the latest firefox update?

If I understand correctly, this is not a problem of missing codecs, as the videos would play if enough buffering was done, right?

[BertN45 (lammert-nijhof)]

The problem is still there, but don't worry, I moved to Chrome :)

Yes, the codecs are all there and in the past it all worked fine. The problem is; it plays all frames in the buffer in milli seconds instead of one per 33 msecs (30 Hz).

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

If you have some time to spare, could you test whether the upstream builds (which can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/download/thanks) are similarly affected, and if so, file an upstream bug report at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi#h=dupes%7CFirefox ?

[BertN45 (lammert-nijhof)]

Have tried the development edition and had the same problem.
I did not report the problem to bugzilla, because after I tried to
access bugzilla, Github threatened to withdraw my access next month for
some vague reasons, unless I changed my password.

On Tue, 2020-11-24 at 16:07 +0000, Olivier Tilloy wrote:
> If you have some time to spare, could you test whether the upstream
> builds (which can be downloaded from
> https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/download/thanks) are similarly
> affected,
> and if so, file an upstream bug report at
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi#h=dupes%7CFirefox ?
>
> ** Changed in: firefox (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => New
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you share an url of webpage you are having the issue on?

[BertN45 (lammert-nijhof)]

All YouTube videos

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you try if the snap (which is an upstream build) has the same issue?

[BertN45 (lammert-nijhof)]

The snap with Firefox 84 has the same problem.

I tried Ubuntu Studio 20.04, that also uses XFCE and that worked fine and so do the Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu Mate 20.04 and Xubuntu 21.04 Dev.Ed.

However e.g Ubuntu 18.04 and Xubuntu 18.04 do have the same problem.

To be a little more precise. If you select the YouTube video by clicking on its thumbnail, it has that strange behaviour, if you click in e.g. the middle of the progress bar, the same problem repeats itself. The buffer builds up in both cases to say 60 seconds, while the screen remain static on say that first frame and then empties itself in a few milliseconds and that repeats itself many many times :)

However if you press the halt button in the left-down corner of the video and afterwards the play button, everything is working as expected. The same happens if you click in the middle of the screen twice as a start and stop action.

It only starts correctly, if you start it manually. The automatic start fails and so does the auto repositioning by clicking in the progress bar. I hope this helps.

There is probably some "timing issue" in the auto start, maybe forgetting that it should be displaying, because of a multi-threading/locking issue. In my experience this type of seemingly timing issues are often related to not locking shared data/buffers or locking it incorrectly.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

That sounds like a possible upstream issue, so it would be useful to report it there.