No Quality option on YouTube

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Nx64
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No Quality option on YouTube

Post by Nx64 »

Quality option stops appearing on YouTube time to time, sometimes it appears and sometimes it doesn't appear.

I have Firefox Nightly x64 and Flash Player 13.0.0.168 Beta. OS is Windows 7 x64 SP1 with all Windows Updates installed.

I don't have any other browser installed because I only use Firefox.

It worked correctly when I ran UX.
Last edited by Nx64 on March 26th, 2014, 6:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
KWierso
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by KWierso »

Out of curiosity, are the videos with/without the quality options using the Flash player or the HTML5 player?
Nx64
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by Nx64 »

KWierso wrote:Out of curiosity, are the videos with/without the quality options using the Flash player or the HTML5 player?


I think it's only Flash Player videos, I haven't tested HTML5 Player yet. Can you hit me with a link to HTML5 video on YouTube.
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Right-click the video... if it says Flash Options in the context menu then it's flash, if not, it's HTML5.

Are you talking about the quality button that appears on the toolbar? If so, that is being phased out and moved into the "gear" popup. Sometimes I still see the old UI... I think it's still used for videos embedded into webpages and the quality option appears in the toolbar there, but on YouTube itself it's been hidden in the gear. If a video has been uploaded at the lowest possible quality then there are no options for changing the quality. There was also a bug awhile back where some browsers were being offered different quality options than other browsers... possibly Google trying to screw over Firefox users.
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Nx64
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by Nx64 »

patrickjdempsey wrote:Right-click the video... if it says Flash Options in the context menu then it's flash, if not, it's HTML5.

Are you talking about the quality button that appears on the toolbar? If so, that is being phased out and moved into the "gear" popup. Sometimes I still see the old UI... I think it's still used for videos embedded into webpages and the quality option appears in the toolbar there, but on YouTube itself it's been hidden in the gear. If a video has been uploaded at the lowest possible quality then there are no options for changing the quality. There was also a bug awhile back where some browsers were being offered different quality options than other browsers... possibly Google trying to screw over Firefox users.


I'm talking about the Gear icon here, when I click it there's only Annotations option available.

And when I right click it says Flash.

Image

YouTube video I used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJkoZnR5nGc
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by patrickjdempsey »

That video shows quality options in release... maybe it's bad browser sniffing?
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Nx64
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by Nx64 »

patrickjdempsey wrote:That video shows quality options in release... maybe it's bad browser sniffing?


You have any idea how to fix it, or do you like to check my prefs.js file?
TheVisitor
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by TheVisitor »

Nx64 wrote:
patrickjdempsey wrote:That video shows quality options in release... maybe it's bad browser sniffing?


You have any idea how to fix it, or do you like to check my prefs.js file?


Since your using 64bit builds, anything is possible, and perhaps not supported in the 64 bit plugin.

I see the Annotations buttons, as well as quality 480p, etc in a drop-box from the 'gear icon' on the flashplayer.
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by patrickjdempsey »

I don't think there's anything in Firefox causing this... YouTube serves up the content based on what it detects about your system. It's possible it doesn't recognize Firefox 31.0 and is serving up generic content. Try this (temporarily, remember to reset it):

Set you UA string to resemble the "release' UA:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/General.useragent.locale

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0
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Nx64
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by Nx64 »

patrickjdempsey wrote:I don't think there's anything in Firefox causing this... YouTube serves up the content based on what it detects about your system. It's possible it doesn't recognize Firefox 31.0 and is serving up generic content. Try this (temporarily, remember to reset it):

Set you UA string to resemble the "release' UA:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/General.useragent.locale

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0


Now I don't fully understand what you mean.
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trolly
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by trolly »

I use Nightlies and have Quality under Gear. But I have only Flash 12. OP has Flash 13 (which is still Beta).
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Nx64
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by Nx64 »

trolly wrote:I use Nightlies and have Quality under Gear. But I have only Flash 12. OP has Flash 13.


This exact same Flash Player version worked correctly when I ran UX. I don't remember exact build date number though.
Nx64
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by Nx64 »

Update: Looks like it's because of Google, Gmail has now Server Error.
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by patrickjdempsey »

I don't think UX has gotten an update in a LONG time because everything in it landed in Nightly months ago.

In about:config, right-click on the field and create a new "Integer" preference:
general.useragent.override

Then copy in the sample string I put up there. Close Firefox and restart and see if the video works with the right controls. If it works, then that means YouTube's UA sniffer is broken.
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: No Quality option on YouTube

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Nx64 wrote:Update: Looks like it's because of Google, Gmail has now Server Error.


Google is a huge company with untold numbers of servers... highly doubtful an outtage at GMail would take down YouTube... and I'm watching videos on YouTube right now.
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