Mozilla Firefox 36 has problems playing my h264 MP4 files

Question

I try to convert videos with ffmpeg to mp4 format (h264) Profile: High Level: 3.1 (1280x720 with 30fps), Bitrate 1500k

The video plays very well in every browser except in Firefox.

http://5.79.72.89/trailer/trailer.mp4

At first it needs longer to load and when I seek inside the video most times the video don't stop to load and never plays again. I can see a lot of partial downloads in the developer console. A lot of them are for the initial play and the rest of the requests are during the video load when I seek to a later position.

When I play other h264 Videos (MP4 with similar settings) they play without problems on this server. And when I put my video on another webserver (apache) there are the same problems with Firefox.

For this reason I believe it has to do something with me my conversion.

My settings: Debian 7 (wheezy) Webserver: nginx (with 260k bandwidth limit)

I started converting videos with avconv and switched to ffmpeg because of this problems. But there was no success. Meanwhile I tried all options for encoding but there are always the same problems with Firefox. Other videos play well but not mines and I don't know why.

Command:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -tune zerolatency -x264opts bitrate=1500:vbv-maxrate=1500:vbv-bufsize=3000:nal-hrd=vbr -codec:v libx264 -profile:v high -level 3.1 -movflags +faststart -pix_fmt yuv420p  -s 1280x720 -r 30 -ac 2 -ar 48000 -codec:a aac -ab 64k -strict experimental -y trailer.mp4

ffmpeg 1.0.10
libavutil      51. 73.101 / 51. 73.101
libavcodec     54. 59.100 / 54. 59.100
libavformat    54. 29.104 / 54. 29.104
libavdevice    54.  2.101 / 54.  2.101
libavfilter     3. 17.100 /  3. 17.100
libswscale      2.  1.101 /  2.  1.101
libswresample   0. 15.100 /  0. 15.100
libpostproc    52.  0.100 / 52.  0.100

Mediainfo of the file: trailer.mp4

General
Complete name                            : trailer.mp4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media
Codec ID                                 : isom
File size                                : 115 MiB
Duration                                 : 10mn 34s
Overall bit rate                         : 1 516 Kbps
Movie name                               : Big Buck Bunny, Sunflower version
Performer                                : Blender Foundation 2008, Janus Bager Kristensen 2013
Composer                                 : Sacha Goedegebure
Genre                                    : Animation
Writing application                      : Lavf54.29.104
Comment                                  : Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 - http://bbb3d.renderfarming.net

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 10mn 34s
Bit rate                                 : 1 500 Kbps
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 30.000 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.024
Stream size                              : 109 MiB (95%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 132
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=50 / keyint_min=5 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=cbr / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1500 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=1500 / vbv_bufsize=3000 / nal_hrd=none / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                           : LC
Codec ID                                 : 40
Duration                                 : 10mn 34s
Duration_LastFrame                       : -11ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 64.2 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Delay relative to video                  : -2ms
Stream size                              : 4.85 MiB (4%)

I don't know what is wrong with my files.

Update 2015-03-12:

If I convert the video without audio stream there is no problem with firefox anymore.

I updated ffmpeg to 2.6. I used libfaac, aac and libfdk_aac for audio encoding with cbr and vbr but without success.

Answer 1

So it turns out this is an unknown bug in Firefox. Your video plays fine in Firefox Nightly.

See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1142455