Uh Oh
I read through more threads and tried different search query's. Decided to check that Adobe Flash Player was up to date and installed with opera. There were lots of warnings about Flash gumming up the works and crashing browsers and lots of anti Flash comments.
I have not had ANY problems with Opera since starting since switching a week or so ago from Safari/Firefox devotee.
Install Flash, started a video, Opera CRASHED!
But the video came on with autoplay, no extra link clicking etc. If Flash makes Opera act like Safari and Firefox (that both use Flash) I will deal with the extra click to get videos to run and ditch Flash.
ANNOYED!