Youtube Video Plugin-Container Crashes

[lacene]

Hello, I am using Firefox v. 52.2.0 (32 bit) for Windows XP HE (v. 2002 SP3). More and more when I try to play videos on Youtube, the videos slow or stop completely, and often times freezes my PC to where I have to force-stop the process from task manager. I also often get the script process failed or crashed error msg, where I have choices to either debug, ignore, or stop the script. When these happens, in task manager the plugin container blows up on usage almost as high as Firefox itself. And no matter what I choose on the script fail error msgs, they keep popping back up.

I know that XP is a very old OS, and Firefox is scheduled to stop supporting it in September. What is frustrating is, many of these youtube videos are videos that are 3-4-5 years old, and 3-4-5 years ago when I watched them, I had no problems watching or playing the videos then and they all ran smoothly with Firefox. Now they are regularly crashing my browser if not entire PC: I can't imagine that the video formats of these older videos have changed drastically over the years. It seems only that my web browser is not able to play them like it used to before.

are there any updates for the plugin-container exe. or a way that I can isolate any unsound plugins within it that may be the culprit for the crashing? Perhaps where there may be updates that are more secure or help with better youtube playback? Anytime I get the "unresponsive program" error msgs when I hard-stop the plugin-container exe. process from task manager, I select the mail a report to Mozilla option, but then always get the message that the report failed to send, for some reason. Any help would be appreciated.

Also, I often see, on other embedded video players in websites for online news sources or sports sites, where often I get an error message that my Adobe Flash is outdated and needs to be updated. But every time I go to Adobe's site they say mine is up-to-date. Does that mean it's just up-to-date for my old XP OS, but still outdated for everyone else?

Thanks for any help, as I am quite noobish with this.....

[DanRaisch]

Moving to Firefox Support.

What version of Flash do you currently have installed?

[therube]

Youtube should be using (by default) HTML5, not Flash.
If it were doing so, there would be no plugincontainer.exe, consequently no crashes (at least) related to that.

[dickvl]

On Windows XP you do not have native OS support to play MP4 files, so that is probably why YouTube is using a Shockwave Flash plugin based media player.

There is a way to use the OpenH264 plugin to play MP4 files on Windows XP with the Firefox 52 (or 45) ESR version.

You can try if the solution posted here works for you.
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/175591- ... out-flash/

This involves modifying some preferences on the about:config page
media.gmp-eme-adobe.enabled = true
media.gmp-eme-adobe.forceSupported = true (FF 49.0+)
media.gmp-eme-adobe.forcevisible = true (FF 45-48, no longer used in 49.0+)
media.gmp-eme-adobe.visible = true (FF 49.0+)
media.gmp.decoder.enabled = true
media.eme.enabled = true

Modify media.gmp-manager.url : change %VERSION% to 51.0 (use 46.0 for Firefox 45 ESR)

Firefox 52.xx ESR users need to remove the Primetime plugin if it is currently loaded.
You can delete the gmp and gmp-gmpopenh264 folders in the profile folder.
Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory: Windows: Show Folder

If necessary toggle DRM off/on to make Firefox reload DRM components.
Options -> Content: Play DRM
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm

[James]

I know that XP is a very old OS, and Firefox is scheduled to stop supporting it in September. What is frustrating is, many of these youtube videos are videos that are 3-4-5 years old, and 3-4-5 years ago when I watched them, I had no problems watching or playing the videos then and they all ran smoothly with Firefox. Now they are regularly crashing my browser if not entire PC: I can't imagine that the video formats of these older videos have changed drastically over the years. It seems only that my web browser is not able to play them like it used to before.

Actually WinXP/Vista users will be able to use Firefox 52 ESR until 52.8.0esr out on May 1st, 2018 when Fx 60 is also released. The Sumo article you are going by is outdated (last updated Dec 2016) as the person who wrote that Sept 2017 part at time was going by a vague comment in one bug. The same person who posted the vague comment posted a newer bug after stating WinXP/Vista support will be until 52 ESR ends. The articles on the old Kitsune platform Mozilla went back to using temporary while they fix the Lithium platform is not really being updated. Though apparently moving to Lithium may not be the case anymore as of recent.

It would not make sense to end support for WinXP/Vista in September as there is no reason why 52.5.0 to 52.8.0esr will not work on WinXP/Vista as the updates are just for security and allowed stability fixes.

Any videos that still works on Youtube is using the Flash Player Plugin as a fallback since WinXP does not have the needed codecs that Vista and newer has from Microsoft to use the HTML5 player.

https://www.youtube.com/html5/

[therube]

On Windows XP you do not have native OS support to play MP4 files, so that is probably why YouTube is using a Shockwave Flash plugin based media player.

Though Youtube will still use HTML5 player, with webm (vp9), which does work on XP (even multiple clips, simultaneously ).

[lacene]

Moving to Firefox Support.

What version of Flash do you currently have installed?

Version 26.0.0.131....

[lacene]

On Windows XP you do not have native OS support to play MP4 files, so that is probably why YouTube is using a Shockwave Flash plugin based media player.

There is a way to use the OpenH264 plugin to play MP4 files on Windows XP with the Firefox 52 (or 45) ESR version.

You can try if the solution posted here works for you.
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/175591- ... out-flash/

This involves modifying some preferences on the about:config page
media.gmp-eme-adobe.enabled = true
media.gmp-eme-adobe.forceSupported = true (FF 49.0+)
media.gmp-eme-adobe.forcevisible = true (FF 45-48, no longer used in 49.0+)
media.gmp-eme-adobe.visible = true (FF 49.0+)
media.gmp.decoder.enabled = true
media.eme.enabled = true

Modify media.gmp-manager.url : change %VERSION% to 51.0 (use 46.0 for Firefox 45 ESR)

Firefox 52.xx ESR users need to remove the Primetime plugin if it is currently loaded.
You can delete the gmp and gmp-gmpopenh264 folders in the profile folder.
Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory: Windows: Show Folder

If necessary toggle DRM off/on to make Firefox reload DRM components.
Options -> Content: Play DRM
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm

Thanks for the info and link. I will read up on it and try what you suggest, and report back on the results...

[lacene]

I know that XP is a very old OS, and Firefox is scheduled to stop supporting it in September. What is frustrating is, many of these youtube videos are videos that are 3-4-5 years old, and 3-4-5 years ago when I watched them, I had no problems watching or playing the videos then and they all ran smoothly with Firefox. Now they are regularly crashing my browser if not entire PC: I can't imagine that the video formats of these older videos have changed drastically over the years. It seems only that my web browser is not able to play them like it used to before.

Actually WinXP/Vista users will be able to use Firefox 52 ESR until 52.8.0esr out on May 1st, 2018 when Fx 60 is also released. The Sumo article you are going by is outdated (last updated Dec 2016) as the person who wrote that Sept 2017 part at time was going by a vague comment in one bug. The same person who posted the vague comment posted a newer bug after stating WinXP/Vista support will be until 52 ESR ends. The articles on the old Kitsune platform Mozilla went back to using temporary while they fix the Lithium platform is not really being updated. Though apparently moving to Lithium may not be the case anymore as of recent.

It would not make sense to end support for WinXP/Vista in September as there is no reason why 52.5.0 to 52.8.0esr will not work on WinXP/Vista as the updates are just for security and allowed stability fixes.

Any videos that still works on Youtube is using the Flash Player Plugin as a fallback since WinXP does not have the needed codecs that Vista and newer has from Microsoft to use the HTML5 player.

https://www.youtube.com/html5/

This is good to know, as I am in the process of building a new PC, and it looks like it may overlap the September date. I get all sorts of issues while playing videos, and not just videos using Youtube: besides the most common unresponsive script error messages, sometimes when I try to full-size the video playback, instead of the small media player enlarging to a full size, another taskbar tab opens that looks like its the Adobe Flash player opening the tab (it just has the Adobe Flash logo on the tab), where the normal sized media player I opened up initially freezes, and the new tab has the full-screened video playing. Hopefully the above posted link and suggested fix will solve my video-playing issues...

[James]

This is good to know, as I am in the process of building a new PC, and it looks like it may overlap the September date. I get all sorts of issues while playing videos, and not just videos using Youtube: besides the most common unresponsive script error messages, sometimes when I try to full-size the video playback, instead of the small media player enlarging to a full size, another taskbar tab opens that looks like its the Adobe Flash player opening the tab (it just has the Adobe Flash logo on the tab), where the normal sized media player I opened up initially freezes, and the new tab has the full-screened video playing. Hopefully the above posted link and suggested fix will solve my video-playing issues...

There is no September date for anything Firefox.

Also you could look into dual booting with a Linux distro however you will have to find one that still supports 32-bit CPU's. If you do then use something light like Xfce and not Gnome 3 or KDE for window manager. There a number of light options like mentioned at https://itsfoss.com/lightweight-linux-beginners/ and even more regular options that are still pretty light like Xubuntu.

HTML5 videos work in Firefox and SeaMonkey on Linux fine and Adobe does support Linux with current branch version of Flash Player.

I had OpenSuse 13.2 with Xfce (dual booting with WinXP) running fine on a P4 2.8HT with 1GB Ram and a ATi x850XT till the PSU took it down in early June 2015. If this PC was still running I likely would have switched to something like Xubuntu since I like Xfce as openSUSE dropped 32-bit. So depending on you specs you may not need to go really light.

[lacene]

OK, an update on my issue. Sorry it took so long:

I updated my about:config with the above settings provided by dickvl, minus the ones for earlier versions of Firefox than 49 (I have 52.2.1), and installed the Primetime plugin. I now get the videos to work on youtube......somewhat. In the instructions provided on msfn.org in the link, there's a test page I can access to see if my youtube now supports HTML5 video - there are boxes of video formats that are blue (if supported), and red (if not). Both H.264 and MSE & H.264 boxes are still red, but I now get video & audio playback for the videos, where once I only got the black screen with error message saying the formats were not supported.

But the video is more like a slideshow - the FPS is very poor. The audio is fine though. I made sure to set the youtube flash video player plugin I have from flash to HTML5, and disabled the Shockwave Flash plugin. I guess a slideshow is better than nothing, haha.

I'm attempting to start up an account on msfn.org to ask questions about my issue in that thread, but am having difficulties with getting them to email me a confirmation email so I can proceed. I'll keep updating on my issue here....

[Brummelchen]

plugin-container has no further usage then to uncouple flash from firefox, no security gain on xp.
if it crashes its a flash issue or some stupid antivirus or firewall is causing that. it has nothing to do with firefox.

current flash is 26.0.0.137 - you are outdated and highly vulnerable, but xp itself is not secure since 3 years, so why bother you with flash

[lacene]

Final update to this thread for me I guess, unless something new develops.

As I posted above in my previous post, after I manually installed the Primetime plugin, there was a webpage provided by youtube that one could access to check to see what formats were supported. The formats for H.264 and MSE & H.264 - which were not supported with Shockwave Flash - and therefore would be red with flash, should've been blue had I installed Primetime properly. I posted above that both were still showing as red. I now revisited that webpage, and they are now showing as blue.

I had even restarted Firefox after installing Primetime and before going to that webpage, and it still was red. But I guess it needed time to percolate, haha. Anyhow, all video formats are now shown as blue on the check page, which means I am now supported. The video now plays better - above I posted that it was mostly like still photos in a slideshow, but it now shows actual animated video. It sort of stops and stutters, but that's better than with flash, when I had nothing at all. The buffering for videos seems slow too, but that was always the case: oftentimes the video play would overtake the buffering, and the video would stall until the buffer kicks back up in front. I don't know how to improve video buffering, as I guess that has something to do with my internet connection??? I don't know - its been a problem for me for awhile.

So thanks to all for your help. Hopefully this will hold me until I get my new PC put together.....

[lacene]

OK, I'm back, just like that haha. Not a new problem, but in relation to my above issue with video buffering being slow for youtube videos, what are y'all's opinions for the Youtube Center extension build?? I've just read it allows for videos to buffer fully even while paused, as opposed to it only buffering when active. I think that's what Youtube used to do years ago, and I never had problems with buffering holding up my ability to play vids until maybe 2-3 yrs ago, and only then when videos were large. Now even 3-5 minute videos often need 10-15 minutes to buffer first, if it buffers at all.

The Youtube Center add-on shows to be in developer beta, or in experimental mode right now. What are your experiences with using it, or is it not advisable for my issues??

[Brummelchen]

we can not advise you to use or not to use addons - its up on you to make your own experience.
if you want to hold it you have to deal with its problems.

i ran "magic actions for youtube" in both browsers here without any problem.
stuttering videos has many causes.