Closed Bug 1268490 Opened 8 years ago Closed 7 years ago

Firefox 46 no longer play YouTube videos

Categories

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P1)

Product:
Core
Component:
Audio/Video: Playback
Version:
46 Branch
Platform:
x86_64
Windows 7
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED INCOMPLETE
Tracking Flags:
Tracking Status
platform-rel --- +

People

(Reporter: crowmag, Assigned: cpearce)

Details

(Keywords: regression, regressionwindow-wanted, Whiteboard: [platform-rel-Youtube]) 

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0
Build ID: 20160421124000

Steps to reproduce:

Updated to Firefox 46


Actual results:

Since Firefox updated to version 46 it no longer plays YouTube videos - only showing a black screen. Audio is heard but no video is shown.

Internet Explorer plays the videos.

An IE tab within Firefox plays the videos.

If Firefox is started in Safe Mode, Firefox plays the videos.

If all extensions and plugins are disabled manually and then Firefox is closed and restarted, it still does not play YouTube videos - only showing a black screen.

Installed extensions:

Adblock 2.7.2
Classic Theme Restorer 1.5.0
FEBE 8.9.2
Font Size 0.1.20100123.1.1-signed
IE Tab 2 (FF 3.6+) 6.2.18.1
Print Edit 16.6
Tab Mix Plus 0.4.2.2
Toolbar Buttons 1.1.1-signed
Translate This! 3.5.0
Uppitty 1.5.8.1-signed
Video DownloadHelper 5.5.0

Plugins:

IE Tab Plugin 2.2.0.1 - ENABLED
Foxit Reader Plugin for Mozilla 2.1.1.720 - DISABLED
OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems Inc. 1.5.3 - ENABLED
Primetime Content Decryption Module provided by Adobe Systems Inc 17 - ENABLED
Silverlight Plugin 5.0.61118.0 - DISABLED



Expected results:

Firefox should play the YouTube videos.
OS: Unspecified → Windows 7
Hardware: Unspecified → x86_64
Can you still reproduce it even with clean new fresh profile without any addons (extensions and plugins)[1]?

[1] = https://support.mozilla.org/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings
Component: Untriaged → Audio/Video: Playback
Flags: needinfo?(crowmag)
Product: Firefox → Core
I'm not sure what you mean by "clean new fresh profile". I am the only user on this computer with a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit as of Jan. 20015 (a year ago and 4 months ago) when I also installed the current (at the time) Firefox. Are you asking me to uninstall Firefox and then reinstall it?
No(In reply to crowmag from comment #2)
> Are you asking me to uninstall Firefox and then reinstall it?
No, just open this URL - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings
and follow the steps to get refreshed profile, as your old one maybe be bugged due to some extension interfering or something like that.
Doing the reset did not fix the problem. YouTube Videos are still black. I probably should mention that I uninstalled Flash several weeks ago (using an uninstaller and deleting some folders according to instructions) however, HTML5 should play the videos on YouTube regardless... it did before the FF 46 update.
More info... according to this page:

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/01/16/firefox-to-convert-old-youtube-flash-code-to-html5-video/

Firefox 46 is supposed to convert YouTube Flash code to HTML5 Video by default.

The boolean setting for the feature is found in about:config:

plugins.rewrite_youtube_embeds

searching about:config for that line showed that the default was set to "false" (the artical linked above stated it should be "true"). I double-clicked on it to set it to a user defined "true" closed Firefox and restarted.

This made no difference. YouTube videos are still black.

It should be easy to reproduce this bug. Just download the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller from here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html#main_Download_the_Adobe_Flash_Player_uninstaller

and follow their instructions.

If you run the previous version of FF before 46 and then update to FF 46 and YouTube videos run normally for you afterwards, I'll eat your hat.
Black videos are usually caused by driver issues. If this turns out to be the case then we may need to blacklist your video drivers.

Can you please share the graphics section from about:support so we know what hardware we're dealing with here.

Once you've given us that, can you try setting media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled=false in about:config to see if that fixes the issue.

Given that you've got a fresh install of Windows 7 you probably have the out of date graphics drivers shipped with Windows.

Let me know how you get on so I am able to help other people who have the same problem.
My display driver is the Intel HD Graphics 4600 built into my ASUS B85M-G motherboard with an i5 CPU and bought new 1 year ago last January. The "fresh" install of Windows 7 was installed at that time.

Setting media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled to "false" in about:config DID solve the issue.

I didn't think this would be considered an "old" driver but I'll look for an updated version.

Thank you!
FYI, I downloaded the 64 bit Intel HD Graphics 4600 Driver v15.36.28.4332 dated 12/11/2015 from Intel's site and installed it.

Videos are still broken if media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled is set to true.
I've got a 8086:0412 which claims to be Intel HD Graphics 4600 using 10.18.15.4279 on Windows 10 but I don't have the same issue. I really need the graphics section of about:support to understand what is going on.
Adapter Description	Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600
Adapter Drivers	igdumdim64 igd10iumd64 igd10iumd64 igdumdim32 igd10iumd32 igd10iumd32
Adapter RAM	Unknown
Asynchronous Pan/Zoom	none
ClearType Parameters	Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: R ClearType Level: 100 Enhanced Contrast: 400
Device ID	0x0412
Direct2D Enabled	true
DirectWrite Enabled	true (6.2.9200.17568)
Driver Date	11-20-2015
Driver Version	10.18.14.4332
GPU #2 Active	false
GPU Accelerated Windows	0/1 Basic (OMTC)
Subsys ID	00000000
Supports Hardware H264 Decoding	No; Hardware video decoding disabled or blacklisted
Vendor ID	0x8086
WebGL Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0)
windowLayerManagerRemote	true
AzureCanvasBackend	direct2d 1.1
AzureContentBackend	direct2d 1.1
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend	cairo
AzureSkiaAccelerated	0
(#0) Error	[D3D11] create swap chain failed: 0x80070057, 0
That shows hardware acceleration disabled. Is the issue reproducible in this state?
Priority: -- → P1
No, as I stated above, setting media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled to "false" in about:config solves the issue.
Here is the Graphics section of about:support with media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled set to "true":

---

Adapter Description	Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600
Adapter Drivers	igdumdim64 igd10iumd64 igd10iumd64 igdumdim32 igd10iumd32 igd10iumd32
Adapter RAM	Unknown
Asynchronous Pan/Zoom	none
ClearType Parameters	Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: R ClearType Level: 100 Enhanced Contrast: 400
Device ID	0x0412
Direct2D Enabled	true
DirectWrite Enabled	true (6.2.9200.17568)
Driver Date	11-20-2015
Driver Version	10.18.14.4332
GPU #2 Active	false
GPU Accelerated Windows	0/1 Basic (OMTC)
Subsys ID	00000000
Supports Hardware H264 Decoding	No; Unsupported layers backend
Vendor ID	0x8086
WebGL Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0)
windowLayerManagerRemote	true
AzureCanvasBackend	direct2d 1.1
AzureContentBackend	direct2d 1.1
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend	cairo
AzureSkiaAccelerated	0
(#0) Error	[D3D11] create swap chain failed: 0x80070057, 0
I don't know if this has anything to do with the problem but, using the FEBE extension to backup Firefox, I had to add the following to the FEBE ignore list because they couldn't be found.

1. Firefox Hello
2. Multi-process staged rollout
3. Pocket

They're probably unrelated errors but I felt it better to report them rather than not.
Well, I was a little premature in stating that setting media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled to "false" in about:config solved the problem. After a bit more use, I came to realize that while newer videos do play correctly, many older videos (like 2 yrs old) are still displayed a black screens. Hope this gets worked out soon, I'm getting a little annoyed at having to open pages with videos that don't display properly in an IE tab just to watch them.
Can you give an example of a video that does not work?

The only explanation I can think of is that you're somehow getting Flash for some videos. Can you try disabling Flash to see if it makes a difference?
FWIW, I see this on Developer edition too (48.0a2, 2016-06-06, Windows 10) when I have AdBlock Plus enabled (audio, but black screen), but *only* for videos that have a preceding ad. 

Videos without ads play fine. If I disable AdBlock temporarily on YouTube, the ad loads and then the video plays fine after the ad.
platform-rel: --- → ?
Whiteboard: [platform-rel-Youtube]
(In reply to Chris Cooper [:coop] from comment #17)
> FWIW, I see this on Developer edition too (48.0a2, 2016-06-06, Windows 10)
> when I have AdBlock Plus enabled (audio, but black screen), but *only* for
> videos that have a preceding ad. 

So you're saying that you can reproduce the problem by using AdBlock Plus?
Flags: needinfo?(coop)
(In reply to Anthony Jones (:kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e) from comment #18)
> So you're saying that you can reproduce the problem by using AdBlock Plus?

I tried again with Nightly today with a clean profile + Adblock Plus, and couldn't reproduce. So...no.
Flags: needinfo?(coop)
Chris - what do you make of this bug?
Flags: needinfo?(cpearce)
(In reply to crowmag from comment #14)
> I don't know if this has anything to do with the problem but, using the FEBE
> extension to backup Firefox, I had to add the following to the FEBE ignore
> list because they couldn't be found.
> 
> 1. Firefox Hello
> 2. Multi-process staged rollout
> 3. Pocket
> 
> They're probably unrelated errors but I felt it better to report them rather
> than not.

Your graphics driver is blacklisted so it isn't a graphics issue. I suggest you try safe mode:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode
platform-rel: ? → +
Assignee: nobody → cpearce
Rank: 15
Flags: needinfo?(crowmag)
(In reply to Anthony Jones (:kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e) from comment #20)
> Chris - what do you make of this bug?

crowmag's layers are unaccelerated. So even if hardware accelerated decoding is enabled, we still won't use it. Maybe we're always triggering the skip-to-next-keyframe logic? Things may be better with the A/V sync fix we have in Firefox 49?
Flags: needinfo?(cpearce)
I'm closing this because we haven't heard back from the reporter. Feel free to re-open if it or file a new bug if it is still an issue.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 years ago
Flags: needinfo?(crowmag)
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
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