Update Proprietary Media Codec for Vivaldi on Manjaro

I noticed that the Vivaldi package on Manjaro stopped updating the proprietary media codec after installing or updating. It appears that some Linux distributions have gotten spooked. And maintainers have started to withdraw support for proprietary codecs in general.

On my system, hardware acceleration is provided by a proprietary Nvidia driver. So, I just need the codec to restore video performance.

You can update the Vivaldi codec yourself by running the update script like the package used to.

Update Codec

Vivaldi ships with a script which updates the proprietary media codec it uses. Here is a shell session where I update my codec and poke around the file system a bit.

> cd /opt/vivaldi

> ./update-ffmpeg
You may need to be root (or rerun this command with sudo)
rm: cannot remove '/var/opt/vivaldi/media-codecs-ba918b1de5d2d2525de9b6ee1cd8434
ad90bebc107f927c1e23069fbf00ef8b6/libffmpeg.so': Permission denied

> sudo ./update-ffmpeg
[sudo] password for michael: 
--2022-12-07 14:59:38--  https://launchpadlibrarian.net/628079667/chromium-codec
s-ffmpeg-extra_108.0.5327.0-0ubuntu9.18.04_amd64.deb
Loaded CA certificate '/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt'
Resolving launchpadlibrarian.net (launchpadlibrarian.net)... 2620:2d:4000:1001::
8007, 2620:2d:4000:1001::8008, 185.125.189.228, ...
Connecting to launchpadlibrarian.net (launchpadlibrarian.net)|2620:2d:4000:1001:
:8007|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1213456 (1.2M) [application/x-debian-package]
Saving to: ‘STDOUT’

-                   100%[===================>]   1.16M  2.08MB/s    in 0.6s    

2022-12-07 14:59:39 (2.08 MB/s) - written to stdout [1213456/1213456]

Proprietary media codecs (108.0.5327.0) has been installed (PLEASE RESTART VIVAL
DI)

> cd /var/opt/vivaldi

> Get-ChildItem | Format-Table -AutoSize

   Directory: /var/opt/vivaldi

UnixMode   User Group   LastWriteTime Size Name
--------   ---- -----   ------------- ---- ----
drwxr-xr-x root root  12/7/2022 14:59 4096 media-codecs-61e498d3770eb4d4fd1f37f
                                           3eafce82433d8de0f51229c53bdfb3e7eb0e
                                           6a3ca

> cd ./media-codecs-61e498d3770eb4d4fd1f37f3eafce82433d8de0f51229c53bdfb3e7eb0e6
a3ca/

> Get-ChildItem | Format-Table -AutoSize

   Directory: /var/opt/vivaldi/media-codecs-61e498d3770eb4d4fd1f37f3eafce82433d
8de0f51229c53bdfb3e7eb0e6a3ca

UnixMode   User Group   LastWriteTime    Size Name
--------   ---- -----   -------------    ---- ----
-rw-r--r-- root root  12/7/2022 14:59 3338296 libffmpeg.so

Looking inside the script, I noticed it checks for a --user flag. So, it seems like you could update the codec just for yourself as an unprivileged user. I haven't tried it but it would look something like this:

> cd /opt/vivaldi

> ./update-ffmpeg --user

References

Vivaldi Commit | Manjaro GitLab

Codec Discussion | Testing Update | Manjaro Discourse

News Article | LWN

Created: Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Updated: Wednesday, December 7, 2022