Firefox woes

[robkelk]

I just upgraded Firefox to 115.0.1 on my Win10 box, and now I can't play any media files. I can download them and play them locally just fine, I just can't play them in the browser. Is anybody else having this issue?

[Dartz]

...I didn't realise firefox could play media files natively. I've always just downloaded and opened it with VLC

[classicdrogn]

ISTR there's a tickbox in the Settings called "play DRM content" or something like that - did you check that? Settings getting munged is always on my short list for post-update troubleshooting.

[robkelk]

...I didn't realise firefox could play media files natively. I've always just downloaded and opened it with VLC

That's a followup question: what do you use to download from Youtube?

ISTR there's a tickbox in the Settings called "play DRM content" or something like that - did you check that? Settings getting munged is always on my short list for post-update troubleshooting.

No, but Wikipedia doesn't offer DRM content...

[classicdrogn]

Hm, that is a puzzler then.

As for spud collecting, it wasn't working as of a couple days ago (haven't tried it since) but my preferred extension is "Video DownloadHelper" (with just the one space for three words) as it lets you pick any of the available resolutions or convert to a number of alternate formats locally using ffmpeg without messing around with console commands or further external software.

In the meantime, I've been using "Easy Youtube Video Downloader Express" which has a more limited selection and unless someone with the paid premium version has requested it recently enough to be in the server side buffer does not allow 1080p video or MP3 conversions on its own. The error message it adds about this when it fails says 720p as well, but I have never had a 720p download fail and mostly only keep things at that resolution anyway, so insert shrug emoji here.

I leave both of them installed, as the first has a browser bar button and context menu item, while the second injects a button with a drop down menu on the actual web pages next to the like/dislike and Share buttons, and neither conflicts with each other or anything else as far as I can tell, and usually even if an update breaks one for a while (a few days to a week at most from what I can recall) the other keeps working.

[Inquisitive Raven]

I recently discovered an alternative front end for YouTube called "Invidious." It blocks ads and gives you a download button. AFAICT, you can't comment on videos using it, but it does let you switch to YouTube if you really want to. Several sites host it worldwide, and you can find a list of approved instances on the main website.

There's also a Firefox extension called "Privacy Redirect" that can intercept requests for certain big data harvesting websites and redirect them to more privacy-oriented alternatives, e.g. YouTube embeds get redirected to Invidious automatically or Google map requests get redirected to OpenStreetMap. I suggest finding an Invidious instance that you feel comfortable using and setting that as your default in Privacy Redirect or it will pick an instance at random, a procedure which gave my antivirus fits.

YouTube blocks certain videos from third-party downloaders like Video DownloadHelper. I was able to use Invidious to download one such video.

[Labster]

I haven’t had any problems but then again that bug report in OP is too vague to reproduce.

I use yt-dlp for all of my downloading needs. It has an easy to use command line interface with sensible defaults.

[robkelk]

Still can't play videos on Youtube. I can play videos on The Register. So it isn't a matter of the browser suddenly being unable to play media. It looks like something at their end isn't playing nice with my setup -- which hasn't changed since I could play videos.

Could it possibly have anything to do with me having the "send a do-not-track request by default" box checked?

Since audio files at CBC are also affected, I suspect this isn't a cross-border thing.

I'll give Invidious a try, later.

[robkelk]

Upgrade to 115.0.2 helped. The patches that Windows had been waiting to apply without telling me fixed the rest.

So... keep your OS up to date, folks.


EDIT: And the test file I used on Commons happens to have been performed by some guy named Schroeck and his wife. Pure coincidence, honest.

[Bob Schroeck]

Uncle Arthur and Aunt Linda strike again!

[nemonowan]

For whatever is worth, the same thing just happened all of a sudden to me to, in a Windows 7 machine with the 115.0.2 or 115.0.3 installed.
But it was blacking out and refusing to play any media no matter what site, even MP4s saved to disk.

I updated Firefox to the 115LTS and videos started working again.

[Vulpis]

Kind of belated response to this thread, but check your ad-blocker extension(s) possibly? I ran into a similar situation recently myself, suddenly unable to view YouTube videos, but downloading and watching them worked. It turned out the culprit was AdBlock Ultimate, which for some reason didn't want to play well any more---disabling it on YT let videos play again, and I've switched over to uBlock Origin, along with AdBlocker for YouTube.

[Inquisitive Raven]

And starting a couple of days ago, ads are slipping past μBlock on YouTube, at least at the beginning of videos.