Seamonkey 2.35 - Twitter video playback failure under Win-XP

[webmoebius]

I recently updated my Seamonkey suite to version 2.35 and noticed that I'm not presently able to playback videos on Twitter posts which have videos. When the video window is scrolled to on such a Twitter page, the video window displays a message saying that the browser in use doesn't support videos. However, I can continue to play video posts on Tumblr pages. Has anyone else have the same problem with video posts on Twitter pages?

[therube]

videos on Twitter

URL?

[webmoebius]

videos on Twitter

URL?

It appears that all Twitter posts with video do not work. So any Twitter page with such videos do not work on my SM 2.35 installation. Here's a simple example:

https://twitter.com/AmericanAir/status/ ... 2459023362

Could it have anything to do with MIME type registration with the browser on a particular installation? I've never had this problem before.

[hardys]

The video plays fine for me with SM 2.35 on Windows 7 64

[therube]

Oh, you're on XP, & that might be the issue?
I'm seeing an mp4 video, just not sure if it is served by Flash or HTML5 - as I get no context menu?
(I do see plugincontainer.exe->Flash are loaded, but not sure offhand if from that clip or something else?)
(Won't be back to XP for a few days...)

[webmoebius]

Oh, you're on XP, & that might be the issue? I'm seeing an mp4 video, just not sure if it is served by Flash or HTML5 - as I get no context menu? (I do see plugincontainer.exe->Flash are loaded, but not sure offhand if from that clip or something else?) (Won't be back to XP for a few days...)

That is the difference from your OS environment yes, but I find it odd that it won't play under SM 2.35 as I never had this problem before ever. It must be how SM 2.35 handles it in different Windows OS environments. I have no problems playing raw MP4 video files on other sites, nor on Tumblr. If you right click the video while playing and there's no context menu, possibly it's not Flash. Though I noticed if I go on a Tumblr site with video the video format served is Flash (I have Flash player plug in installed).

The issue seems to be universal (if your hunch about Win XP is correct), because I retested the issue on an older release TOR 3.50 browser which is based on Firefox-ESR 31.6 release and the problem remains the same. I was hoping it was a web browser issue rather than an OS dependent issue, which in theory shouldn't be the case.

[webmoebius]

Anyone else currently running SM 2.35 or SM 2.38 and is on Windows XP able to verify this issue?

[patrickjdempsey]

More than likely Twitter started force-serving MP4 content for certain versions of Gecko browsers just like YouTube recently started doing, and like YouTube, forgot to exclude XP users.

[webmoebius]

More than likely Twitter started force-serving MP4 content for certain versions of Gecko browsers just like YouTube recently started doing, and like YouTube, forgot to exclude XP users.

Forgot to EXCLUDE XP users?

Actually, there are plenty of MP4 video sites I visit regularly that work on Seamonkey under Win-XP perfectly fine. However, I've recently gotten another clue that may point to the root of the problem. On quite a few of the sites / content that do not work, I frequently get this error message displayed in the video window saying that ""No video with supported format and MIME type found". I believe this is a coding issue on the site's side, but not sure what that message would imply is missing from the page's coding.

[patrickjdempsey]

Yes, exclude. As in not deliver content that it can't render... and deliver Flash instead. In Firefox's implementation of HTML5 video, MP4 content is rendered by OS codecs. XP doesn't have OS codecs so it fails. There are other cases where MP4 renders just fine, such as when delivered as a file or in an embed, in those cases they are read by WMP or Quicktime or whatever your video plugin is.

[webmoebius]

Yes, exclude. As in not deliver content that it can't render... and deliver Flash instead. In Firefox's implementation of HTML5 video, MP4 content is rendered by OS codecs. XP doesn't have OS codecs so it fails. There are other cases where MP4 renders just fine, such as when delivered as a file or in an embed, in those cases they are read by WMP or Quicktime or whatever your video plugin is.

Is there anyway to install MP4 codecs for Win-XP? Yes, other sites that serve MP4 uses embedding and it calls up my VLC-Player plugin within Seamonkey to play MP4 content successfully. I also checked the file extension association in the OS and MP4 extension is already associated with VLC-Player and I've played many downloaded MP4 files with VLC-Player without problems. I have also been able to point Seamonkey frequently to direct MP4 URLs on servers when MP4 content (by looking in the page's source code to find the MP4 content's direct URL) doesn't play and am able to play it within a SM browser window which calls up VLC-Player plug-in.

[patrickjdempsey]

Not in a way that Firefox will consider to be a native codec. And on sites that deliver WebM content, HTML5 video works just fine because Firefox ships with the WebM codecs. Just not h264/MP4.

[webmoebius]

Not in a way that Firefox will consider to be a native codec. And on sites that deliver WebM content, HTML5 video works just fine because Firefox ships with the WebM codecs. Just not h264/MP4.

Right, I regularly view WEBM content pages that work fine under all recent versions of SM browser running under Win-XP and am also able to save the raw MP4 file to disk for later playback with other players such as VLC-Player. Would another browser such as Google Chrome handle this MP4 situation differently to get around this problem? I would consider installing an alternate browser such as Chrome or Opera.

These threads are also interesting as it discusses the issue that may be relevant:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/943436
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/quest ... 509?page=2

[patrickjdempsey]

Chrome ships with the h264 codec because Google is a very rich company and they own a stake in MPEG. For legal reasons Firefox doesn't ship with it.

[therube]

Oh, you're on XP, & that might be the issue?

On XP now, & I get no video, only "This browser does not support video playback".