Chrome does not play MP4

Question

I get several emails everyday to my Gmail account, from my security camera system. Such mail contains links to video clips (aprox 20 sec each) from cameras in MP4 format. Strange is that on Mageia based PC after clicking on such link the clip is open and playback in new separate browser card. And it is correct situation for me. But on Ubuntu based PC, Chrome always download video clip to HDD instead playback one. I dont know is it Linux distribution related problem but both installations use Chrome ver 38. How can I change/setup to have MP4 files always be playback instead downloaded ?

Answer 1

Are you using Google Chrome or Chromium on Ubuntu, as a matter of interest? Either way the issue may be that MP4 support has not been enabled.

To enable it you need to install the support for mp4 codec:

sudo apt-get install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg

The reason for this is that some codecs are not fully open source, because they may be subject to patents for example, and hence they can't be included in a fully open source release.

See some discussion and references:

• https://github.com/videojs/video.js/issues/675
• https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+package/chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra