Why can't Firefox playback half of YT videos?

[nubc]

Half of YouTube videos won't play in Firefox. I allow FF to crash my system every night at 1:00 AM, when it audo-updates. You mean, this browser updates every night, and it STILL can't play YouTube videos? Why am I using this POS browser? Let me tell you what happens when our beloved Firefox won't play a YT video. First step, I have to refresh the page, because it may be a false error. That's right, the previous video error often carries over in to the next video, and when I refresh the page, sometimes a video starts to play. BUT, if the next video was actually HTML5, then the YouTube page blanks out and becomes inoperable. So, if I'm lucky, I can go back a page and get the original error page. BUT, the original error page now has no scroll bar, and I have to go back to the source page and try to find the link that brought me to this video. Summarizing, when I encounter a YT video with the HTML5 error, I am faced with the question whether it's a false error. If it's not a false error, which is likely, and I gamble on it being a playable video by refreshing the page, I lose the video and have to painstakingly retrace my steps to find it again. Does this seem convoluted? Here's another thing, I download a video. If that browser instance has a problematic video in its history, the download dialog may present the last playable video, not the video I am now trying to download giving an error, whether the latter is playable or not. If fact it could get stuck on this one video, and any video download dialog gives only this certain video that Firefox fixates on. Since half of YouTube videos won't play in Firefox, I have to download loads of stuff just to hear it, and this certainly makes the evaluation process difficult, and slower, and a lot less fun. I don't explore like I used to, because every video is potentially problematic, even the ones I am familiar with, since videos that used to play won't play any more. The FF download dialog can't remember the last download location, which is good, because when I use my virtual keyboard, the download applet tries to autocomplete with suggestions and this usually covers the entire page including my virtual keyboard. Why would I want autocomplete or suggestion on a download title??????????????????????????? Stupid defaults. but I guess I'm asking for it, because I am using a virtual keyboard. Oh, that's why nothing works. I'm afraid to talk to Mozilla. Oh, I see, you're not using Windows, are you? Well, that's the fault of Puppy Linux, it doesn't support such and so, not our problem. We can't help you. OR, yeah, YouTube changed something two years ago, and there's nothing we can do about it, because we are pure as the driven snow when it comes to proprietary software. Mozilla apologists always blaming Google/YT. Not being able to play YT, I'm going to have to do something about this.

[8Geee]

Lets get past the bitch piss and moan.

What Puppy
What version Firefox
Do you have GTK3.0 and apulse installed if Firefox is newer than version 60

Regards
8Geee

[Wiz57]

I gave up on Firefox a few months ago after discovering Palemoon/New Moon...these even work on my ancient WinXP (New Moon by roytam). I use Palemoon in all my Pups now (all Slackware based), and videos work pretty much the way they did a year ago! Much simpler than hoping I choose the correct launcher script for FF to load any work-arounds for pulse audio etc. Also a bonus with PM/NM...they seem much more responsive, quicker...but that may just be a perception on my part.
Wiz

[nubc]

I have apulse and libgtk-3, tahrpup 605, FF Quantum 66.0.3 (32-bit)

The download capability in Pale Moon is inferior and tedious.

[mikeslr]

It's hard to find content for my Betamax. See 8Geee's response.

[Mike Walsh]

@ nubc:-

Y'know, words fail me. I have never seen anybody else on this (or any other forum, come to that!) have so many 'issues' with their browsers as you do.

What on earth d'you do to the poor things? (Auto-updates every night; what, are you using Nightly, the dev version?) I'm amazed that you can't just use, say, Fred's 'portable-Quantum' (download, unzip, follow a couple of very simple instructions - in clear, plain English) and watch YT with that. More and more of us are using it regularly. It just 'works'!

I use it to watch YT not every day, but fairly regularly.....and my viewing experience is seamless.

And as for 'inferior, tedious' download speeds in Palemoon.....sorry, can't agree with that. For me, stuff from Palemoon downloads in the wink of an eye (and we have a pretty average broadband connection. Which for the UK, is quite a bit slower than what you guys are used to t'other side of 'the Pond').

Downloads aren't instantaneous, y'know.

------------------------------------------

You could always swallow your obvious prejudice against Google, and try an up-to-date Chromium-based browser. Google own YT, so it's in their own best interests to make sure it all 'works'.

Just my tuppence-worth (FWIW).

EDIT:- Try this. Delete your profile and cache.....and start again with a clean sheet. Pounds to pennies most of your trouble stems from old, 'stale' settings/config stuff, somewhere along the line.....

Or delete Tahrpup completely, and start again from scratch..... Doesn't take long.


Mike.

[nubc]

In the last 6 months, I went through two Dual Core computers, and now I'm using a Pentium 4. I complained above that Mozilla frquently blames Google/YT for their problems or issues. There is no 32-bit Chrome that is supported, and generally, Chrome extensions are not as good as FF. I'm moving to another house, and I don't have as much free time. FF updates crash my computer once a day, usually in the wee hours of the morning. At such a time, I usually ask myself, when did I give permission to do that, because this update comes without warning or explanation? I find out after a hard reset that FF is installing updates.

[s243a]

Some firefox (and/or ffmpeg?) packages don't support H.264, MSE & H.264 due to licensing issues. I'm not sure which versions of firefox (and/or ffmpeg?) available on this forum either as packages, sfs files, installed as part of the distro or available via the package manager have this issue.

I do know how to patch this issue for the Opera browser (and likely other chrome based browsers). See post:

I discovered a youtube page which tells you what HTML5 formats that your browser supports:
https://www.youtube.com/html5
Currently, the firefox from the tazpup package manager supporting:
HTMLVideoElement
Media Source Extensions
WebM VP8
MSE & WebM VP9

what is unsupported is:
H.264
MSE & H.264

I might take a look at one of the portable sfs versions of firefox developed on this forum instead and try that instead of the one supplied by the tazpup package manager.

I found a way to get these two video formats working for the opera browser.

Download the amd64 version of the package located at:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial-upda ... mpeg-extra

Extract this package using uextract. From the extracted folder copy the file

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libffmpeg.so

to

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/libffmpeg.so

I recommend backing up the old version of libffmpeg.so

Note that I took the version from xenial because the version from bionic requires too new a version of glibc.

On a related note I don't think I need ffmpeg and if I decide to use opera as the browser for the next release then I don't need xine or the MozPlugger plugin. The chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra is part of the ubuntu meta package "ubuntu-restricted-addons". The other packages which are dependencies of this meta-package are gstream plugins and as I note above I don't think these gstreamer plugins are required. As a side note these are only recommended dependencies so if one has their package manager set to not download recommended packages then they won't be downloaded.

I created a patched version of the opera browser to support these video formats:
opera_stable64-58.0.3135.127_H264_x86_64.tazpkg

I haven't tested it now but plan to include the patched version in the next release...maybe part of the adrv, so it is easier to remove if someone wants to create a lighter weight browser.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 66#1024866

If your running a recent 64bit version of puppy you might be able to use the Opera package I built but you'll have to convert it using taz2pet.

Note that the newer versions of firefox come with a plugin pre-installed that supposedly can play H.264, MSE & H.264 but this didn't work for me (on my TazPup64) and I have no idea how to troubleshoot it.

P.S. as for getting firefox to work maybe try Fred's 'portable-Quantum' as Mike Walsh notes above.

[Mike Walsh]

@ s243a:-

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's ever visited Mozilla's site, or had a squizz through the package listings, read some of the blogs, etc. I do know this much; in normal usage, if one is using the 'stable' releases of Firefox, they, like the Chrome releases, are usually updated every 6 weeks or so.

The only version of Mozilla's browser that I know updates literally 'every night' is 'Nightly'. I mean, the name says it all, right?

---------------------------

@ nubc:-

There is no 32-bit Chrome that is supported...

Chrome itself, no. Google haven't built a 32-bit Linux version of Chrome for around 4 years. They build 32-bit for Windows & Mac.....but not for us poor, destitute ingrates on t'other side of the fence.

Chromium, however, which Chrome is based on.....well, the 32-bit builds are still very much alive and kicking. However, I can tell you now, you will not get current Chromium to run with a P4; Chromium is built to be 'cutting-edge', and to require the very newest of everything.

OscarTalks has, however, got a version of Iron 69 available. Iron, like SlimJet, compile the Chromium source code against older dependencies to produce their browsers. It runs on my ancient, P4-powered Dell lappie.

Iron will do everything Chrome does. Guaranteed.


Mike.

[nubc]

My understanding is that any browser should be able to play HTML5, and that was the whole point of it. I refer back to my original question. Why can't Firefox in Puppy (Tahrpup 605) play an HTML5 file? Something to do with pulse audio perhaps? Some kind of funky permissions artefact?

If you think I went to Mozilla to pick up a nightly updated browser, you are mistaken. I picked up the FF package from a link provided on this forum. I wouldn't normally desire a dev version of any software. I prefer standard software for users.

[s243a]

My understanding is that any browser should be able to play HTML5, and that was the whole point of it. I refer back to my original question. Why can't Firefox in Puppy (Tahrpup 605) play an HTML5 file? Something to do with pulse audio perhaps? Some kind of funky permissions artefact?

If you think I went to Mozilla to pick up a nightly updated browser, you are mistaken. I picked up the FF package from a link provided on this forum. I wouldn't normally desire a dev version of any software. I prefer standard software for users.

It's my understanding that newer versions of firefox use ffmpeg to play HTML5 with the exception of H.264, MSE & H.264 in which case firefox comes in with a built-in plugin for H.264, MSE & H.264 that may or may not work...depending on your setup. .

Regarding updates, maybe there is something in about:config that you can change to stop it from updating.

[8Geee]

What video chip-set in the computer are you using? i915, radeon, etc. Pup Sys-Info will find name.

Regards
8Geee

[Mike Walsh]

It's my understanding that newer versions of firefox use ffmpeg to play HTML5 with the exception of H.264, MSE & H.264 in which case firefox comes in with a built-in plugin for H.264, MSE & H.264 that may or may not work...depending on your setup.

A-ha. That might have something to do with it.

Canonical, for reasons best known to themselves when building Tahr, decided not to use ffmpeg, but instead to revisit the older avconv instead.

Tahrpup doesn't have ffmpeg, unless you add it yourself. Fred 's got a couple of fairly recent ffmpeg packages for 32-bit and 64-bit; size is 30 MB and 46 MB respectively. They're a lot bigger than the stripped-down versions Pups have shipped with for years (which seem to be missing a good many options); replacing the standard Puppy version of ffmpeg with these has cured the audio recording problems I'd been plagued with ever since I went all-Puppy around 5 years ago.

For Tahr 606 (605 will be the same), I installed Fred's 32-bit ffmpeg. I then deleted /usr/bin/avconv, and re-created it as a sym-link to /usr/bin/ffmpeg. Result? Anytime Tahr wants to use avconv, it'll look for it, find it, think it's using it.....but in reality it's using an up-to-date version of ffmpeg instead.

Works for me. (Mind you, that's not to say it'll work for anybody else...)


Mike.

[nubc]

I do not find Fred's 32-bit ffmpeg. Please provide link.

[Mike Walsh]

@ nubc:-

It'd take too much tracking down (it's buried in the middle of a discussion thread about something else entirely; Fred never posted a separate thread about it)), but I have it mirrored at my Google Drive, here:-

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YDqa2P ... sp=sharing

Rmember what I said about deleting /usr/bin/avconv, then re-creating it as a sym-link to /usr/bin/ffmpeg. And please realise that this won't necessarily work for you ( a lot seems to depend on the audio chip in use).....all you can do is to try it. In fact, rather than delete avconv altogether, move it to a safe location so you can replace it if this doesn't do what you want.


Mike.

[nic007]

I use Seamonkey 2.48 with Tahr605.

[a_salty_dogg]

@ nubc

There's also a (more recent?) "ffmpeg-3.2.2-32bit-static.pet", built by rockedge and available from him via the first post in this thread.

All needed dependencies are downloaded during the installation and it worked for me OOTB in both Tahr 6.0 and in Mikeslr's wonderful Tahr 6.06.

(Though of course, as Mike Walsh cautions above "Mind you, that's not to say it'll work for anybody else..." )

[nic007]

The answer to the user's problem is probably VP codec (html5/webm) related. Older youtube videos were encoded with VP8 codec whilst newer ones are encoded with VP9/10 codecs. Older ffmpeg packages did not include the VP9/10 codec so yes, updating the ffmpeg package will probably sort out the problem.
BTW - There is always an alternative way of doing things. Most (if not all) youtube videos are also encoded to the mp4 format. You can either stream or download a video using its mp4 download link.

[perdido]

Probably some issues are incorporated by google itself to sabotage firefox.
Toward the bottom of the article youtube and google are accused of sabotage.,

Former Mozilla exec: Google has sabotaged Firefox for years
"Not the first accusations

And Nightingale is not the first Firefox team member to come forward and make such accusations. In July 2018, Mozilla Program Manager Chris Peterson accused Google of intentionally slowing down YouTube performance on Firefox.

He revealed that both Firefox and Edge were superior when loading YouTube content when compared to Chrome, and in order to counteract this performance issue, Google switched to using a JavaScript library for YouTube that they knew wasn't supported by Firefox.

YouTube page load is 5x slower in Firefox and Edge than in Chrome because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome. You can restore YouTube's faster pre-Polymer design with this Firefox extension: https://t.co/F5uEn3iMLR
— Chris Peterson (@cpeterso) July 24, 2018

At this point, it's very hard not to believe or take Nightingale's comments seriously. Slowly but surely, Google is becoming the new Microsoft, and Chrome is slowly turning into the new IE, an opinion that more and more users are starting to share [1, 2, 3].

Reminds me of the time Microsoft used private APIs to make IE better. Google is the new Microsoft. The tables have turned :p
— Federico Ramirez (@gosukiwi) July 24, 2018"

And don't forget, google is your friend.

.

[nubc]

What video chip-set in the computer are you using? i915, radeon, etc. Pup Sys-Info will find name.
8Geee

Looks like 915G

I already have ffmpeg installed. Before I checked, I installed ffmpeg 3.2.2 32-bit static, but I don't know where it installed.