Youtube updated and stopped working in firefox?

[DeltaBlast]

Youtube has rolled out a new update (the controls look bigger and I now have speed control and such), but videos don't load anymore. They work fine in all my other browsers. I tried safemode of course, but no effect. I just keep getting the loading/buffering circle...

Any suggestions on how to remedy this?

[xPreatorianx]

(Hopefully this isn't a double post)
I can get videos to work but they will only go to 720P no matter what. I've even tried videos that I know go to 1080P or even higher and still the only option I get is 720P! This really sucks to be honest considering 1080P is pretty much a standard now! So can we please get a temporary workaround? I've used firefox for YEARS. I absolutely love it! Infact I refuse to use any other browser because of the addons that I like on firefox that are only available for firefox. But unless this is fixed, I'll be forced to move to chrome. (WHICH I HATE!)

[Michael89]

Guys, i think you can't use flash player anymore.
This happened to me also today when i noticed i only have 720p and 360p options in my videos, when i right clicked the video, the options for flash didn't appear, but instead the options for html5 player. Youtube only uses html5 player now from what i can tell.
Here's some news about this, but i don't know if it is official or not.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/27/youtu ... y-default/

[DeltaBlast]

So... then html5 doesn't work in (my) firefox or what?

Videos that is. The player seems to work fine: mouseover a time and you see a mini preview of what is supposed to be there, the controls and everything are there... but the video just won't load. I've switched to chrome for the time being...

[Michael89]

I don't know, but i don't think you can use flash player anymore.

[xPreatorianx]

I found two fixes for you guys. Pick your poison! (Copy/paste as I'm kind of posting this all over my social media networks)
For those having problems with firefox/youtube and being able to use 1080P on videos. I have two options for you. The first is a simple tweak that keeps HTML5 while giving you all the options you had before the damn update plus more. You will even get 720P/1080P at 60FPS if the video supports that. But you will notice that some videos have odd options. Such as 360P and 720P instead of all options going up to 720P like before. This is again dependent on each individual video now. But as long as the video supports 720P/1080P you will have that option. (Plus 60FPS if it has that option as well)
http://www.ghacks.net/2014/07/30/play-1 ... e-firefox/

" Load about:config in the browser's address bar and hit enter.
Confirm that you are careful when the prompt is displayed.
Search for media.mediasource.enabled. The preference is set to false by default.
Double-click the preference name to set it to true and enable it.
You may need to restart the browser before the change takes effect."

The second option is an addon that forces firefox/youtube to use Adobe flash again. This option will again return all of your usual options on videos that your accustomed to. But you won't get the 60FPS options that HTML5 offers. This option is also for those who are having problems with HTML5 as I've noticed QUITE alot of people are having issues with it and it's rather resource intensive atm with multiple tabs running on firefox. I'm sure that will change but for the moment this is your best option. So if you have a crappy computer and can't use HTML5 - this option is for you. Otherwise, stick to the first option as it only requires a tweak to the firefox About:config page instead of a full addon that "bloats" your install a bit.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo ... sh-player/

[Michael89]

Thanks for the info praetorian.
But it would be nice to just use flash player normally with it's normal addon instead of having to install another addon to use the flash player addon.

I know flash doesn't exactly have a great reputation , but there will be users who won't be happy that they can't use it anymore.
Can't anybody confirm if that info is official or not ??

I mean surely we would have heard something about this, if youtube indeed stopped using flash and is now using html5.
Also, i find it very strange that on the whole google search i did, i only found 1 website with this info. I mean let's face it, the internet is a big place , no other website posted this info ? Pretty hard to believe that.

[DeltaBlast]

Setting media.mediasource.enabled to true worked for me, thanks!

[TheVisitor]

Thanks for the info praetorian.
But it would be nice to just use flash player normally with it's normal addon instead of having to install another addon to use the flash player addon.

I know flash doesn't exactly have a great reputation , but there will be users who won't be happy that they can't use it anymore.
Can't anybody confirm if that info is official or not ??

I mean surely we would have heard something about this, if youtube indeed stopped using flash and is now using html5.
Also, i find it very strange that on the whole google search i did, i only found 1 website with this info. I mean let's face it, the internet is a big place , no other website posted this info ? Pretty hard to believe that.

Here is the 'Official announcement': http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01 ... l5_27.html

[Michael89]

Thanks for that link, Visitor.
At least now we finally now it's official and not just another bug or error from youtube.
I kind of feel sorry to flash go, i mean it has caused me problems , but still, it did it's job up until the end and that's what's important. Maybe in the future, flash will release newer more perfected versions and we will be able to use it again.

This might be a bad ideea, i don't know, but maybe someone should merge the 2 topics, the one i made and this one, that way perhaps it will pe easier for everyone who are having these issues, to find this.

Delta, i see the solution posted by Praetorian worked in your case. Can you please tell me, if you right click a video on youtube, do you have the flash player options or the html5 player options ?

[Scarlettrunner20]

Youtube was NOT defaulting to HTML5 until today on Fx 31.4 ESR on Windows 8 Pro. On Fx 35 Portable I get a blank black page and no error message, no way to play a video at youtube. Pale Moon also only gives me a blank black page now at youtube.

On Opera 12.17 and SeaMonkey 2.32 youtube defaults to Flash Player and I play in 1080i and Ultra HD videos in higher resolution using Flash. Fx 31.4 ESR uses HTML5 now and it will NOT play videos at higher resolutions. It was yesterday using Flash.

That youtube announcement meant nothing as Flash continued to be the default player for me on ALL browsers until today. IE 10 got totally hung at youtube a few minutes ago .....so badly I am going to have to reboot the computer now. So, youtube is doing something different today from past days since that announcement in January.

Setting media.mediasource.enabled to true did nothing on Fx35. It's late here so I haven't tried it on Fx 31.4 ESR or Pale Moon.

If youtube is going to force HTML5 which greatly inferior to Flash and forces ads first that Flash does not then I will use SeaMonkey or Opera if I MUST see a video there. I will basically write off youtube if it will not let me use Flash.

[Michael89]

Scarlettrunner20, we are all using the latest version of firefox (35.0.1) i think. I don't know how flash acts on 31.4 ESR, but i assure you, flash is not working on youtube, on version 35.0.1 of firefox.
Yes, i also noticed that the anouncement, even though it was made on the 27th of january, youtube kept using flash until today. I think today youtube just finally dropped flash and went with html5 for good.

It would be nice like i said, in the future, if flash would release new perfected versions and we can again choose to use it, but until then i don't think we can do anything else.

[LIMPET235]

Hi all,
I'm not sure if this extension will work for you to view/use Flash in version 35, but it cain't hurt to try it.
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... er/?src=ss
Open it's options & in Player > General > Player Type, there's a drop down to select either, Default, Flash or HTML5.

[Michael89]

Hi Limpet, long time no see. What's up bro ?
Thanks for the addon link, however i know that one, it's been said to have some nasty issues like memory leaks and high memory consumption. But anyway, maybe it will help other users.

[individuallywrapped]

Thanks xPreatorianx...

but unlike for DeltaBlast, setting "media.mediasource.enabled" to "true" didn't work for me. I tried it on two computers but nothing. The "YouTube Flash Player" add-on worked though (for now?), on both computers. And when I right-click, I get the normal flash player options.

Everything was fine for me up until the early a.m. I was hoping the first method worked just so I could see if it worked well and to see which method I'd prefer. I kind of want the additional options of the HTML5 player but most definitely would rather have the flash player screen resolution options. Also didn't want to install another add-on if I didn't need to either. Ughhh...

EDIT: Actually, the first method did work. But it's SUPER limited on videos you'll find. I tried about nine or ten videos and it didn't seem to work but I finally found a few that did. I guess I'll have to alternate disabling/enabling the add-on.