Linux WebM Labs, minor update

May 22, 2010 · by Ruari Ødegaard

When we initially announced WebM support some Linux users may have found that the builds provided did not work for them. However, we have subsequently made a small tweak to the Linux packages so that they should now work on a wider range of distros. If WebM support wasn't working for you before on Linux, then please re-download the package and try again.

As always the best way to test an experimental build is to run Opera 'in place'. To use a package in this way, from the terminal enter the following:

$ tar xf opera-10.54-21867-webm.i386.linux.tar.bz2 
$ opera-10.54-21867-webm.i386.linux/opera &

(This assumes a 32-bit system. Adjust accordingly if you have a 64-bit system).

If you want to install the Linux build alongside your main Opera Linux install, use the included install script and specify a suffix of webm, as follows:

$ opera-10.54-21867-webm.i386.linux/install --suffix webm

If you continue to have problems playing video, ensure that you have all the required video dependencies installed. See "Using video with Opera 10.50 on Linux/UNIX" for more information.

WARNING: This is an experimental Labs release. It may contain severe bugs and cause data loss. Or it may just provide great HTML5 video support.

Download

Readers' comments

Comments left by My Opera members under the original post: the first 44, as archived.

coolmyll22. May 2010, 10:00
"Or it may just provide great HTML5 video support."

lol
BS-Harou22. May 2010, 10:09
woo hoo =)
Patrick O'Reilly22. May 2010, 10:23
Thanks
MLx22. May 2010, 10:28
Is there an ETA for webm support coming to mainline builds?
kersurk22. May 2010, 10:28
I always wonder how do they get you working on weekends.

Anyway,the webm works quite great so far (even 720p) on Ubuntu 10.04.
Ruari Ødegaard22. May 2010, 11:03
Originally posted by MLx:

Is there an ETA for webm support coming to mainline builds?
WIR
Originally posted by kersurk:

I always wonder how do they get you working on weekends.
Opera is such a nice place to work that many of us don't have a problem doing a little extra on the weekends.
KHH22. May 2010, 11:40
This is strange, just downloaded and unpacked this, but it's not playing any WebM files, tried both with youtube and the testfiles on the dev-article. Youtube informed me that my current browser didn't support any of the video formats they offered, and the videos on the dev-article simply didn't load.

Running Kubuntu 10.04 64-bit.

edit: Ah, never mind. Turns out there was a problem with my installation of gstreamer.
hcym22. May 2010, 11:41
Thanks

64-bit:)
Шуйский Николай [krigstask, Ŝtérkrìg]22. May 2010, 11:41
Works fine on Gentoo Linux ~amd64!
Though 720p eats CPU, but runs quite smoothly. Great, waiting for WebM support in Opera or Gstreamer mainline! To heck with Flash (-<E
Joonas Lehtolahti22. May 2010, 11:58
Is the change related to used GLIBC version?
Ruari Ødegaard22. May 2010, 12:00
Originally posted by godjonez:

Is the change related to used GLIBC version?
yes
Joonas Lehtolahti22. May 2010, 12:09
OK, thanks. I already got into upgrading my OS installation to get the most recent libraries just to make WebM work and managed to break the whole system thanks to network connection failing in the middle of the upgrade (some packages were not yet reconfigured when it stalled). Now that I got it back up and running it's good to know that I would no longer *need* the new stuff since Opera should work again with the older libraries as well. Save the hassle from others
Sebastian Bremicker22. May 2010, 12:24
Which will be the minimum requirements regarding CPU/GPU when VP8/WebM is official? I have a 5 year old system (Athlon 2GhZ, nVidia FX 5200) and watching Google Developer Keynotes is not too smooth compared to Fl*sh. Or is it that WebM is a HD codec while watching the same video with Fl*sh is not HD, although both say 360p?
Cavan D. Mejias22. May 2010, 13:49
Thank you for the GNU/Linux build featuring WebM. Can't wait to see similar functionality in FreeBSD builds.
Daniele22. May 2010, 14:07
waiting for Opera 10.6 with this feature (i doubt that 10.54 will have it)!
Michail22. May 2010, 14:08
Please make also fix for Windows NT.
Abhinav22. May 2010, 14:10
Daniel Ziltener22. May 2010, 14:12
Originally posted by ruario:

Opera is such a nice place to work that many of us don't have a problem doing a little extra on the weekends.

Nice to hear I think there are very few companies whose employees can say that
Шуйский Николай [krigstask, Ŝtérkrìg]22. May 2010, 14:24
Michail, Windows NT (I suppose you mean 4.0) is vastly outdated. Don't expect modern software to take it into account. If you can run modern Opera, your box could run modern OSes. If you like fifteen year old OS, that's fine by me, but nobody will take your complains seriously (like me). With all due respect to you.
Kirilo8122. May 2010, 14:38
Works basically on OpenSuse 11.3 (32bit), KDE 4.4.3, but:
-I had to install additional gstreamer plugins (-good, -bad, -ugly, dunno which one did the trick) after own guess, Opera didn't tell me about the requirements
-the Youtube videos I tried have graphic fragments from time to time, and manipulating the progress bar does nothing, the video continues from its old position

BTW: I know, it has been discussed before, but it would have been cooler, if Opera in Linux could use Phonon, too.
Christopher22. May 2010, 15:39
In arch 32bits works good!
Ruari Ødegaard22. May 2010, 15:55
Originally posted by Kirilo81:

-I had to install additional gstreamer plugins (-good, -bad, -ugly, dunno which one did the trick) after own guess, Opera didn't tell me about the requirements
Indeed unlike the .rpm and .deb packages, the .tar packages do not handle the additional video dependencies for you. I have therefore updated the blog post with a link to provide more information.

Thanks for reminding me of this. This may have also been KHH's problem.
Ruari Ødegaard22. May 2010, 15:59
Originally posted by KerenSkyy:

Can't wait to see similar functionality in FreeBSD builds.
This time we didn't actually attempt to compile builds for FreeBSD but there should be no problems doing so, hence you will see WebM support for FreeBSD Opera in the future. My apologies that it was left out this time around.
Christopher22. May 2010, 16:56
this video works well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLxQiI8c1Bs&html5=True (html5 enabled) fantastic
vasstr22. May 2010, 18:12
1
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100520/googles-royalty-free-webm-video-may-not-be-royalty-free-for-long/
2
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/20/google_confident_on_vp8_and_patents/
Kertesz Laszlo22. May 2010, 20:32
It works, but it uses more CPU (~70% vs the flash ~50% on my Athlon 3200+) than the Flash videos.
Why?
Шуйский Николай [krigstask, Ŝtérkrìg]22. May 2010, 20:49
Because it's new and not much optimized. Yet.
dekumu22. May 2010, 21:15
Display error on the following website www.taringa.net , hope you can solve this problem
Шуйский Николай [krigstask, Ŝtérkrìg]22. May 2010, 21:46
Originally posted by dekumu:

Display error on the following website www.taringa.net , hope you can solve this problem

Hope you can file proper bug instead of spamming blog comments.
Witold Baryluk22. May 2010, 22:44
When i used build for Ubuntu on Debian i had problem that vp8 codec for gst was compiled for very recent GLIBC version. I was needing to make chroot with ubuntu installation to run it, but still doesn't worked.
Roman22. May 2010, 22:49
thanks for the update!
just compiled a ffmpeg version producing webm videos
(http://lardbucket.org/blog/archives/2010/05/19/vp8-webm-and-ffmpeg/)
works like a charm
Ruari Ødegaard23. May 2010, 00:53
@movax: Have you since re-downloaded the package and tried it in Debian directly? Does it not work? If not, what version of Debian are you running?
pieRr0Ur23. May 2010, 02:05
Originally posted by dekumu:

Display error on the following website www.taringa.net

Hmm a lot of reports on that site have been posted on facebook. Try reporting the site problem.
Witold Baryluk23. May 2010, 03:39
Originally posted by ruario:

@movax: Have you since re-downloaded the package and tried it in Debian directly? Does it not work? If not, what version of Debian are you running?

Now works. Sorry for bothering. No problems at Debian Unstable i386. Thanks you.

I see that seeking is ultra fast but sometimes isn't working visually good.
1. Go to http://devfiles.myopera.com/articles/1891/sunflower-webm.html
2. Jump immidieitly to any point in range 0:03-0:20. You will see something like this:

So very noisy picture. What is more even if you wait whole period 0:03-0:20 picture will not stabilize very well. Only at about 0:15 noise will slightly decress and be slighly better temporarly corelated, but still very noisy.

It is supprising, as there are B and goldframes from time to time (but this movie is pretty static) so it should recover from bad skip. And webm should allow knowing exactly where to skip (using Range HTTP request) so there is no need to any recovery (it should jump to exactly byte at which B frame begins which is slightly before given skip target).

In other movies than sunflower it is working well.

Youtube with HTML5+webm works so good that I can now start using it again (i was using youtube-dl script do download or stream youtube movies to mplayer, becuase i don't have flash instaled, and even with flash it was slow).
Witold Baryluk23. May 2010, 04:09
Interesting. Dragonfly in this build opens instantly (less than a half a second). In my normal installation it take about 5 seconds.
Ruari Ødegaard23. May 2010, 04:12
@movax: Yep we have seen the skipping problem you describe. This is already being worked on.

P.S. Glad you seem to like this very early release.
Witold Baryluk23. May 2010, 04:13
Are you using SIMD (SSE) optimised decoder here for x86? As i know ffmpeg patches have (optional) SIMD for both 32 and 64 bit, and both for encoder and decoder in strategic places (hot loops). Are you building this for us? Do you detect CPU capabilities on the fly?

What is status of pushing this into gst upstream? UPDATE: Oh, I see http://sourcecode.opera.com/gstreamer/ and http://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gst-plugins-good/log/gst/matroska/webm-mux.c and http://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gst-plugins-good/diff/gst/matroska/matroska-mux.c?id=e5e90f6035ee3859b206b86c52dbe8a28a2f702f upstream, so I guess it is already started merging.
Ruari Ødegaard23. May 2010, 04:19
@movax: For technical details you might want to post your questions on Philip Jägenstedt's Blog. He leads the HTML5 video effort at Opera.

Edit: Looking at the most recent comment I'm wondering if "Witek" is you and you already found it.
Witold Baryluk23. May 2010, 04:23
Originally posted by ruario:

Looking at the most recent comment I'm wondering if "Witek" is you and you already found it.

Yes, its me. Thanks. It is end of all my question for now.
Rafał Miłecki23. May 2010, 07:41
It... works! Opera eats 100% of my CPU while playing 720p on YouTube, but it's smooth. Weird?
Kai Ockendorf23. May 2010, 07:53
Will there be a 64-bit version for Windows too?? I know this is off-topic, so answer it or feel free to delete it

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to say PLEASE
s14shyam23. May 2010, 15:03
Hey guys. Sorry for the interruption, but this is the first software that I've compiled from source since I started using Linux in early April. I'm loving this !!!
Witold Baryluk23. May 2010, 15:11
Originally posted by s14shyam:

Hey guys. Sorry for the interruption, but this is the first software that I've compiled from source since I started using Linux in early April. I'm loving this !!!

You are wrong. It is impossible that you have compiled any source since source code of Opera is known only to Opera Software. .tar.gz contains binary version of Opera, so no compilation needed or possible at all.
d4rkn1ght23. May 2010, 20:22