1230645 - Can't play youtube videos on fennec any more, it just spins forever

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Audio/Video, defect)

Description

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Attachment: Youtube spinners

Nightly on a Nexus 4, Android 4.2.2 with no flashplayer. In about:addons I see the OpenH264 Video Codec from Cisco. When I go to a URL like https://youtu.be/v0u-elClgP0 I get what appears to be the HTML5 video, but it just spins the loading icon forever. There's actually two loading icons, see screenshot.

It used to be that clicking on a youtube link would take me to the youtube app in android, but that doesn't happen any more. I don't remember when this started happening but it's not a very recent regression, I don't think.

Comment 1

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

fwiw, we've done some work to remove Youtube-specific handling so we can play HTML5 videos in the browser but I can't remember the details.

Workaround: the Android icon in the url bar should still open the Youtube app.

Comment 2

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Kats, if you go to youtube.com/html5 is the MSE stuff enabled? Can you play H264 videos at http://people.mozilla.org/~atrain/mobile/tests/media.html or other youtube videos?

Comment 3

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

comment #2

Comment 4

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

This works for me on a Nexus 4. Can you still reproduce?

Comment 5

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

(In reply to James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) from comment #2)
> Kats, if you go to youtube.com/html5 is the MSE stuff enabled?

The MSE & WebM VP9 box says it's not supported. All the other boxes are supported (HTMLVideoElement, H.264, WebM VP8, Media Source Extensions, and MSE & H.264)

> Can you play
> H264 videos at http://people.mozilla.org/~atrain/mobile/tests/media.html

I can play both the High Profile and Baseline Profile H264 videos on that page.

> or
> other youtube videos?

Got a specific one you want me to try?

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #4)
> This works for me on a Nexus 4. Can you still reproduce?

Using the youtu.be link in comment 0, yes, I can still reproduce.

Comment 6

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

The lack of MSE is probably the cause here. Did you turn media.mediasource.enabled (or related sub-prefs) off at some point? Anthony, we should always have MSE on Android 4.1+ unless prefed off, correct?

Comment 7

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

The only media.mediasource.* pref that's false for me is media.mediasource.webm.enabled, presumably because that's the default value at https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/modules/libpref/init/all.js#499

I don't remember ever touching these prefs.

Comment 8

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

And flipping that pref to true does indeed make the video play. \o/

Comment 9

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Anthony, what is the timeline for flipping MSE+WebM on Android?

Comment 10

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Is this the same as bug 1233429?

Comment 11

[Anthony Jones (:ajones, :kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e)]

(In reply to James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) from comment #9)
> Anthony, what is the timeline for flipping MSE+WebM on Android?

You just have to turn it on when you're convinced that a software decoder is good enough, or the alternative is bad enough.

Comment 12

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Let's test what happens when we turn this on for users.

Comment 13

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Attachment: Enable MSE/WebM on Android

Comment 14

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/4e56796fa59b

Comment 15

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/4e56796fa59b

Comment 16

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Should we uplift this?

Comment 17

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

I think we should just let it ride unless we have tons of reports of stuff not working. Most (the vast majority) of YT videos will fall back to H264.