You can see what your system currently supports at say https://www.youtube.com/html5/

All check marks should be blue, however if two or three checks are red then you may not have packages like FFmpeg installed for the codecs needed as it may not be installed during a Linux OS install.

The LiveCD Linux distro you have may not have the packages like FFmpeg as part of LiveCD. You may be able to install the FFmpeg in the package manager during use of LiveCD Linux distro?.

With the various flavors of Ubuntu you may find the FFmpeg in Ubuntu Restricted Extras for example. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

A number of packages like FFmpeg may not be installed during the Linux OS install due to patent and copyright restrictions.

Firefox includes the HTML5 player and support for "Open" codecs like OGG/OGV and WebM, but it doesn't include patented codecs like H.264 in MPEG containers. As James mentioned, Firefox can use external libraries for those on most OSes.

Thank you.

Is there a method I could use to determine what Firefox is using? For example I have a Mac OS that doesn't have a problem running youtube live video. Can I compare the component to enable this or try to find that component for installation.

Again go to https://www.youtube.com/html5/ to see what your system is currently supporting. If 2 or 3 are red then you may be missing FFmpeg.

The youtube site identifies H.264 and MSE & H.264 with a red exclamation.

Firefox is not able to play live videos from youtube as an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUCekz5k9E4

Did you already make sure FFmpeg is installed and enabled on your distribution? On Linux, Firefox needs to find FFmpeg on the system to decode H.264/MP4 video. (I don't think Linux can run the MacOS media components.)

I have installed ffmpeg in Ubuntu using the command "sudo apt install ffmpeg" and after restarting Firefox it worked.

I always thought it was ffmpeg was installed by default on Linux.

Thanks

mace2 said

I always thought it was ffmpeg was installed by default on Linux.

As I mentioned in earlier reply, a number of packages like FFmpeg may not be installed during the Linux OS install due to patent and copyright restrictions.

Any workaround for windows? I don't have a linux machine at home. Many thanks.

johnmars888888 said

Any workaround for windows? I don't have a linux machine at home. Many thanks.

If you have the N edition of Windows 7 then that may explain your issues as you have your own thread on this with a reply about this at /questions/1249719