My laptop setup:

  • Ubuntu Jammy 22.04 Desktop
  • MSI Stealth 15M
    • 11th gen Intel Core i7
    • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660
  • Wayland windows server
  • Proprietary nvidia-driver-525
  • Secure boot enabled in BIOS

I disabled snapd and installed non-snap firefox from PPA instead.

Problem description

The first step to troubleshoot Firefox issue is to launch it from commandline:

  1. firefox -P
  2. Create a new profile so that about:config use all the default values
  3. Browse to the problematic URL and observe the log messages
  4. Use incognito tab if necessary to rule out interference from add-on

When firefox starts up, the following non-fatal error shows up.

[GFX1-]: No GPUs detected via PCI
[GFX1-]: glxtest: process failed (received signal 11)

  1. https://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html

     It does not appear your computer supports WebGL.
 Click here for more information.

 Status: WebGL creation failed: * WebglAllowWindowsNativeGl:false restricts context creation on this system. () * Exhausted GL driver options. (FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBGL_EXHAUSTED_DRIVERS)

  2. https://webglreport.com/

     This browser supports WebGL 1, but it is disabled or unavailable.

 This browser supports WebGL 2, but it is disabled or unavailable.

  3. Many youtube videos play just fine but not this one, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69CRnH3lbDE. And all Facebook, TikTok videos won’t play in firefox.

     An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: 1Svca1VMbs2Y016)

    Meanwhile, firefox logs these errors:

     [2023-01-04T09:54:36Z ERROR mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\0\0"
 [Child 52422, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7f733d432400 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for audio/mp4a-latm: file /build/firefox-5bxMr3/firefox-108.0.1+build1/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:151
 [2023-01-04T09:54:36Z ERROR mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\0\0"
 [Child 52422, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7f733d433000 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for audio/mp4a-latm: file /build/firefox-5bxMr3/firefox-108.0.1+build1/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:151
 [2023-01-04T09:54:36Z ERROR mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\0\0"
 [Child 52422, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7f733d433600 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for audio/mp4a-latm: file /build/firefox-5bxMr3/firefox-108.0.1+build1/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:151
 [Child 52422, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7f733f4b8700 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for video/avc: file /build/firefox-5bxMr3/firefox-108.0.1+build1/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:151
 [Child 52422, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7f733fa6d600 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder found for video/avc: file /build/firefox-5bxMr3/firefox-108.0.1+build1/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:151

Interestingly, Chrome browser happily chugs along without any video playback issue.

Solution

The first two issues are the same, probably due to a bug in Nvidia driver and can be resolved by forcing firefox to use webgl.

From https://support.biodigital.com/hc/en-us/articles/218322977-How-to-turn-on-WebGL-in-my-browser

  1. Go to about:config in your address bar.
  2. Search for webgl.force-enabled and make sure this preference is set to true. If it is currently set to false, click the toggle icon on the far right to change the value to true.
  3. Search for webgl.disabled and make sure this preference is set to false. If it is currently set to true, click the toggle icon on the far right to change the value to false.
  4. Restart Firefox to apply your new settings.

The third issue is due to missing decoder. Firefox apparently falls back on ffmpeg some streaming video formats.

sudo apt -y install ffmpeg