Video error in Slimjet browser (Solved)

[gillsman]

Hi,
My main browser is Brave but today I thought I would check out Slimjet, I'm running Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3
It looks like a very promising browser & on my system at least it appears to load pages faster than Brave which is impressive, the only issue I have come up against is with embedded video with an unsupported video H264 error message (Youtube video seems ok) on some sites (BBC for example) it simply says This content doesn't seem to be working, please try later.
I wonder does anyone know if there's a missing codec or something that needs installing or maybe some other fix.
It's a great browser but no good as my main browser if it can't play video.
Thanks all.

 

[Brickwizard]

Have you enabled play DRM content in the browser settings? are you using any add blockers? Have you agreed to cookies? If it worked with Brave, then you should not be having codec problems

edit unsupported video H264 error bbc uses mpeg4 you may need to add it to the browser

 

[gillsman]

Have you enabled play DRM content in the browser settings? are you using any add blockers? Have you agreed to cookies? If it worked with Brave, then you should not be having codec problems

edit unsupported video H264 error bbc uses mpeg4 you may need to add it to the browser

Hi Brickwizard
There doesn't seem to be an option to enable DRM in this browser, I am using an ad blocker but I've tried to disable it on affected sites, cookies also allowed.
I have done a bit more digging & I found some information from Flashpeak (the developers of Slimjet)
"It is not really about a patch. We don't put in support for the h.264 codec on Linux due to the patent and royalty issue. On Windows, we simply call the codecs shipped with the Windows system to get around that. However, so far, we didn't have the time to add the same kind of workaround on linux by delegating the decoding to external libraries".
Therefore I will be no longer using this browser & marking this thread as solved.
Many thanks for your input

 

[KGIII]

Hmmm... The h.264 codecs can be installed on some distros, easily in fact. Not all distros are that easy, as some are very much against patent-encumbered codecs/file formats.

They probably could have checked for those and failed gracefully if they weren't found - perhaps prompting the user.

 

[gillsman]

Hmmm... The h.264 codecs can be installed on some distros, easily in fact. Not all distros are that easy, as some are very much against patent-encumbered codecs/file formats.

They probably could have checked for those and failed gracefully if they weren't found - perhaps prompting the user.

Many thanks KGIII
I appreciate the info, I could go ahead & try this but I'm a little nervous in case I break my system & it's not like I have no choice as my main browser has no issues so it's not like I actually need Slimjet browser, I was just interested to try it. I have read the above link & it doesn't look too difficult, maybe I will give it a go at some time but for now I will stick with Brave browser but thanks for your advice.

 

[gillsman]

Just for the record I read about the Ubuntu restricted extras & upon looking in synaptic I found them there, so I installed them & then launched Slimjet again but embedded videos still don't play. Worth a try but not to be, never mind.

 

[Brickwizard]

but embedded videos still don't play

well you did say "they didnt have time to delegating the decoding to external libraries in Linux ", brave effort though