Youtube not working in Firefox 31 (or the latest Waterfox).
Youtube videos play a brief one or two segment portion of the video, stutter for a moment and repeat a few frames, and then go to the black screen with the white loading circle. Sometimes it remains, other times it goes to an error screen.
The weird thing is that the videos will play when I first start my computer for a time. I can watch several if I go to a Youtube video soon after I power on. However, after a period of time, the issue starts without fail.
Since I installed the latest Firefox (and the latest Waterfox) this issue has been present. It's present only in Mozilla based browsers. Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari all work fine and play videos with no problems at all. It is also exclusive to Youtube as near as I can tell. Flash videos from other sites all run fine. I've tried several and they play without issue. That seems to indicate it's an issue with the Mozilla browser and not Adobe or Youtube.
Things I have tried: Running in Safe Mode, Clearing the Cache, uninstalling and installing Adobe Flash Player, Uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox and Waterfox, scanning for Malware, Adware, and Viruses, clearing out all tabs and using a fresh instance, and making sure the Firefox and Waterfox processes are shutting down properly in the task manager. [Both have a tendency to not shut down when I close the browser, but that's a minor thing that's been going on for a while.]
The Youtube issue has only plagued me since I updated both Firefox and Waterfox. I usually use Waterfox as I have a 64bit system, but the same thing happens even if I run Firefox exclusively.
As I said, rebooting my computer temporarily resolves the issue and is the only way to get the browser to play Youtube videos. It consistently repeats after a time without fail and only occurs in the Mozilla browsers since the latest update.
All Replies (6)
Hi Contrabardus, Can you please provide an example url and the error message that is being received?
The error may better investigate what is going on. I would recommend disabling Hardware acceleration, but let's see the error first.
The error message only shows up rarely and it's just the standard Youtube error message inside the video.
The error message has happened all of twice and all it says is "An error occurred, please try again later." inside the video player.
Most of the time what happens is I'll start the video, it will play for two to five seconds, skip back a few frames two or three times, and then go to the buffering/loading screen with the spinning circle of white dots and get stuck there indefinitely.
There is no specific URL that does this, any and all Youtube videos are plagued by this issue. Youtube videos run fine in Firefox and Waterfox when I first start my computer, but after a period of time, somewhere around 45 minutes to an hour or so, I'll come back and they'll no longer load behaving as described above. Nothing but restarting my computer fixes the problem, not even closing all Mozilla processes in the task manager.
It is only a problem in Mozilla based browsers. Chrome, Safari, IE, all work fine and play the same videos without any issues. It happens regardless of plugins or safe mode, and I've tried a clean install of both Firefox and Waterfox with and without various plugins. The result is the same and it's only been an issue since the last update.
It's also only Youtube. Any other site with flash video works fine.
Disabling hardware acceleration did not change anything.
Not sure what is causing this, but it's limited to my Mozilla browsers exclusively.
Finally figured out where the problem is coming from. Youtube running in Firefox or Waterfox is locking up my audio driver for some reason. It's like it's trying to switch the output method and isn't finding my current audio out.
It doesn't recognize my audio output and that prevents the video from playing and hangs it up at the start. Sometimes playing a media file in a music player like Windows Media Player lets it relocate my audio output source, other times I have to restart my receiver or computer. It's not the receiver because it does this with direct audio from the PC as well.
Definitely an audio issue with Youtube and Mozilla. I have more than one audio out with different drivers, AMD HD Audio and Realtek and they both behave the same way. Even when the Youtube videos aren't working because of this problem, media from any other source plays fine, and it's only an issue in my Mozilla based browsers.
It's not as much of a problem as it was before because I figured out how to get around it without restarting my computer. Still, it's annoying.
Modified by Contrabardus
Also, yes, I did uninstall/update/reinstall both audio drivers. Nothing changed.
Modified by Contrabardus
Are you switching the audio out while Firefox or Waterfox is running?
If so, try restarting Firefox / Waterfox after changing the audio out but before playing anything to the new output.
Phillip was pretty helpful and told me about enabling html5 for youtube content: https://www.youtube.com/html5 and this will be enforced by google soon in version 33.