That's supposed to say "modern format called HEVC"

I also feel I should have included more information in the original post. I called Ring and they suggested it's probably a Firefox issue. The videos still work fine on my phone app and in Chrome. It's just Firefox that they've suddenly stopped working in.

Did Ring recently change their format? Firefox cannot play HEVC (H.265) video. On Windows, Firefox relies on Media Foundation to play media encoded with patented/closed source CODECs. If that is an option, and would allow Firefox to decode H.265 video without violating the patent, it's a possibility for the future. But right now, I don't think anyone is actively working on it, judging from the lack of active "bugs".

They said nothing changed on their end. I've had the camera for a little over 7 months, and it only just became an issue today.

What is Windows Media Foundation? Is it possible some setting got changed during an update, and if I changed it back it would sort out the problem?

Windows Media Foundation is also used to play H.264 video and MP3 audio. You probably would have noticed other things breaking if Firefox lost use of it.

When I search about this, it seems you are supposed to be able to use a legacy mode, but people are having trouble finding it:

https://community.ring.com/t/location-to-toggle-legacy-video/210139

Viewing and playback seems to be working fine in firefox for everything else so far.

I have found the legacy mode thing, and newer recordings seem to be working. That doesn't really explain though, what the problem is, and how to fix it. It seems like the explanation is that there is basically a compatibility issue between the way some Ring products record their videos, and Firefox's playback options. The problem I have with that is everything was fine for 7 months. The issue only showed up 24 hours ago.

So I'm trying to figure out what changed, and what I might try to do to fix it.

I've tried googling this as well, and found a couple other discussions about this that don't really seem to offer a solution beyond one that said switch to legacy mode after time was spent with customer support trying other solutions. Ring says it's a Firefox issue, Firefox says it's a Ring issue, and nobody seems to have come up with a solution.

I'm sending this to Ring as well, because I really want to see if somebody can come up with a solution to this, as Firefox is my preferred browser.

I really appreciate the help and information you've provided so far.

Some video players have a properties or information menu that could tell you whether videos from two days ago were HEVC/H.265 or a legacy format (I don't think browsers can tell us that). If they were in a format that Firefox can't play on its own, hmm, I wonder whether you had an add-on that could decode them somehow. ??

Any thoughts on what I might look at to see if there is something in a player or add on that might influence Firefox's ability to play those videos. Is the Windows Media Foundation something the average person could open up to see what is enabled, or is it just a driver that doesn't have any changeable settings?

I tried looking through my Firefox settings yesterday but didn't see anything obvious. If I had an idea on what to play around with we might be able to solve this for everybody.

My understanding is that Firefox is not configured to play HEVC/H.265 media because of patent issues. I searched around for workarounds, and didn't see anything that would involve updating system components. I can't recommend any of the add-ons without researching/testing them.

You can use mozregression to test older versions of Firefox and see if it was caused by the recent update.

Ok. It's just weird that it worked for so long and suddenly stopped. I keep thinking there must be some obvious change somewhere that caused it that I can change back if I could just find it.

I guess it's unlikely the computer itself was translating the video encryption and it's a simple matter of finding the right setting within my system itself.

Thank you so much for your time on this. As somebody who is not tech savvy at all I really appreciate the help.