1091653 - Firefox fails to play Youtube Flash videos at 720p or 1080p (those uploaded at 60fps)

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[dusty-2011]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:33.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/33.0
Build ID: 20141027150301

Steps to reproduce:

Open a 60 fps YouTube video in Firefox, such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE4y5kxA9ak.
When I select 720p or 1080p the video stops playing, the video screen is black with a circle in the middle indicating buffering. The video stays like that forever. 
So the issue is not that the video does not display 60 fps, the issue is that the video does not play at all when I select 720p or 1080p. Lower resolutions work because those do not support 60fps.


Actual results:

See above. The problem occurs with all 60 fps videos on Youtube, including:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zPm3SSj6W8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iUFiaqZqKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNlKpuS8ZhA


Expected results:

When I select 720p or 1080p the video should still play.


I have done the following troubleshooting steps:
1) Delete all my history, cookies, etc.
2) Restart my PC
3) Reset Firefox to the default state
4) Create an entirely new Firefox profile.
5) Clear the entire cache of the Flash player.

None of these troubleshooting steps have led to a solution. So yes, I have verified the bug in a clean Firefox profile.

Here are my system specs:
Windows 8.1, latest updates installed.
Firefox 33.0.2.
Flash player 15.0 r0 (15.0.0.189)
Graphics card: Asus Strix Geforce GTX 970 (Nvidia)
Graphics drivers: up-to-date (344.48)

Comment 1

[dusty-2011]

The 60 fps videos play fine (at 60 fps) in both Internet Explorer 11 and in Chrome 38. Both these browsers use the HTML5 video player.

If I set Firefox to use the HTML5 video player (via https://www.youtube.com/html5) then the videos play fine at 30fps on 720p. 1080p playback is not available (since Media Source Extensions is not supported in Firefox).

Comment 2

[dusty-2011]

This problem is present on a 5 year old computer too, with an AMD/Ati graphics card. So it's not a system-specific issue.

I'm not sure if it's Firefox's bug. It might be a YouTube bug only present on Firefox.

Comment 3

[Loic]

It could be an issue with the Flash player, it doesn't work on my computer too. 
I tried recent and old versions of Firefox, same issue.

Comment 4

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

(In reply to Loic from comment #3)
> It could be an issue with the Flash player, it doesn't work on my computer
> too. 
> I tried recent and old versions of Firefox, same issue.

Flash Player isn't used now on YouTube as it uses HTML5 player.

Comment 5

[dusty-2011]

(In reply to Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] from comment #4)
> (In reply to Loic from comment #3)
> > It could be an issue with the Flash player, it doesn't work on my computer
> > too. 
> > I tried recent and old versions of Firefox, same issue.
> 
> Flash Player isn't used now on YouTube as it uses HTML5 player.

You are wrong about that. The current release version of Firefox (33) uses Flash Player by default to view Youtube videos. You can easily verify this by right clicking on a video and the bottom menu option will be "About Adobe Flash Player 15.0.0.189". If it doesn't say that for you, then you have to visit this page: https://www.youtube.com/html5?hl=nl&gl=NL. Click on "Use the standard player", and it will use Flash instead of HTML5.

This bug is specifically for those that use the Flash Player. If you use the Flash player then the new videos on Youtube (those that were uploaded at 60 fps) refuse to play at all in 720p or 1080p. If you use the HTML5 player then you can still view those videos at 30 fps on 720p. 1080p playback with the HTML5 player on the release version of Firefox is disabled because release Firefox doesn't support Media Source Extensions (and thus doesn't support DASH playback).

Comment 6

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

I'm right, but only partially as I use Firefox Nightly which already supports Media Source Extensions and DASH. So in next future releases Mozilla Firefox on YouTube will only use HTML5 player. I didn't saw that you're using Flash Player based of first post here.

Based on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1031121#c3
(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] from comment #3)
> It's unlikely that we'll be spending any effort on improving Flash-based
> video, especially since we have such little control.
this bug is more likely as WONTFIX

What's your current opinion about this Benjamin Smedberg [:bsmedberg]?

Comment 7

[avada]

(In reply to Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] from comment #6)
> I'm right, but only partially as I use Firefox Nightly which already
> supports Media Source Extensions and DASH. So in next future releases
> Mozilla Firefox on YouTube will only use HTML5 player.

Not until the FF HTML5 player is dysfunctional. If memory serves people were complaining that evil google forced HTML5 from FF32 when it was in beta/aurora or something, yet we still get flash with stable FF. So it seems they'll disable the HTML5 player by default on stable versions until it works properly.

Comment 8

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

(In reply to avada from comment #7)
HTML5 player with DASH support will be enabled by default on YouTube starting with Firefox 36.

Comment 9

[dusty-2011]

(In reply to Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] from comment #6)
> I'm right, but only partially as I use Firefox Nightly which already
> supports Media Source Extensions and DASH. So in next future releases
> Mozilla Firefox on YouTube will only use HTML5 player. I didn't saw that
> you're using Flash Player based of first post here.
> 
> Based on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1031121#c3
> (In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] from comment #3)
> > It's unlikely that we'll be spending any effort on improving Flash-based
> > video, especially since we have such little control.
> this bug is more likely as WONTFIX
> 
> What's your current opinion about this Benjamin Smedberg [:bsmedberg]?

This bug is for the 33 branch of Firefox, so you weren't right at all. The 33 branch is only the most popular branch of Firefox. Way more popular than the Nightlies...

I don't like your attitude at all. If this bug doesn't get solved swiftly then you are probably going to lose several percentage points of market share over the next months. YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the internet and most people watch 720p or 1080p now with the widespread use of broadband internet. I suggest that a Mozilla developer contacts Google and Adobe to find out what is going on here, and work together with them on a solution. If people cannot watch YouTube anymore with Firefox while it works fine on popular other browsers then that is really going to hurt the market share of Firefox.

Bugs like this that affect the usage of one of the top 10 websites globally and makes the site basically unusable should have a high priority and be solved as quickly as possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites
As you can see, YouTube is the third most popular site worldwide. I can make an analogy to show the severeness of this bug. How would you respond if all Firefox users suddenly could no longer post photos on Facebook? Or if all Firefox users would Bluescreen when visiting Facebook.com? This bug is comparable in magnitude to those hypothetical scenarios IMO.

Comment 10

[dusty-2011]

(In reply to Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] from comment #8)
> (In reply to avada from comment #7)
> HTML5 player with DASH support will be enabled by default on YouTube
> starting with Firefox 36.

That is good news but we can't wait for 2015-02-24 to make YouTube usable again for Firefox users. If you wait that long then Firefox is sure to lose quite some market share.

Comment 11

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

(In reply to dusty-2011 from comment #9)
> This bug is for the 33 branch of Firefox, so you weren't right at all. The
> 33 branch is only the most popular branch of Firefox. Way more popular than
> the Nightlies...
If you don't know we can always uplift the changes from Nightly to stable if it will be crucial and updated site will break compatibly heavily with Firefox which isn't the case here because YouTube still works and no bluescreens or crashes are occurring...

and firstly you compare Firefox with Flash player vs Chrome and IE with HTML5 player with DASH support, if so please compare it when the video players are the same in every browser, because this bug looks more likely like a duplicate of bug #778617

Comment 12

[Loic]

I don't really understand the discussion about the HTML5 player of YT. These videos are about Flash and they should be played with Firefox, no? Are 60-fps videos reserved only for the HTML5 player?

Comment 13

[dusty-2011]

(In reply to Loic from comment #12)
> I don't really understand the discussion about the HTML5 player of YT. These
> videos are about Flash and they should be played with Firefox, no? Are
> 60-fps videos reserved only for the HTML5 player?

The 60 fps videos are currently only available for the HTML5 player, as far as I know. You'll see the 60 fps resolutions marked as 720p60 and 1080p60. If you use Flash player the resolutions are marked as 720p and 1080p, and the videos should play in 30 fps. The problem is that instead of playing in 30 fps, the videos do not play at all in Firefox. Unless you set the resolution to lower than 720p, since those resolutions do not support 60fps at YouTube.

Comment 14

[avada]

(In reply to dusty-2011 from comment #13)
> (In reply to Loic from comment #12)
> > I don't really understand the discussion about the HTML5 player of YT. These
> > videos are about Flash and they should be played with Firefox, no? Are
> > 60-fps videos reserved only for the HTML5 player?
> 
> The 60 fps videos are currently only available for the HTML5 player, as far
> as I know. You'll see the 60 fps resolutions marked as 720p60 and 1080p60.
> If you use Flash player the resolutions are marked as 720p and 1080p, and
> the videos should play in 30 fps. The problem is that instead of playing in
> 30 fps, the videos do not play at all in Firefox. Unless you set the
> resolution to lower than 720p, since those resolutions do not support 60fps
> at YouTube.

If fail to see how Mozilla could do anything about this. The flash player fails with the 60hz videos. Just tried it with chrome+flash too. You get the same simptoms, either the playback hangs or you get the error screen. Only adobe/google could fix this. Whichever of them is at fault.

What Mozilla can do is finishing MSE support, which it does, albeit in a snail pace, so we wont see it anytime soon.

Comment 15

[dusty-2011]

Google has fixed the issue! The videos uploaded at 60 fps now play in 720p and 1080p in Firefox at 30-40 fps. There are a lot of dropped frames indicating the video is not playing at 60 fps, but that is a separate bug (I'm sure the bug exists already). Anyways, even though it is not 60fps the videos do look smooth to me. I'm glad YouTube is usable again in Firefox.