1317737 - Educational videos stopped playing (lynda.com), but still works in Chrome

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

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

Description

[jh.murray]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0
Build ID: 20161019084923

Steps to reproduce:

1. Started Firefox 47.0.2, and logged into lynda.com as a paid subscriber.
2. Selected an educational video to play.
3.  None of the controls for playing the video appeared in the video window, thus I could not start playing the selected video.
1a. Started Chrome and logged into lynda.com as a paid subscriber.
2a. Selected an educational video to play.
3a. The course details and controls appeared in the video window, then allowed me to start the video:  successful video and audio appeared and played to the end.


Actual results:

See previous field text for the failure of Firefox, but success of Chrome.  This is an XP SP3 machine.


Expected results:

Step 2 should have resulted in displaying the course details and controls in the video window, then auto-starting or allowing me to start/stop as desired.  This feature was working properly a few days ago (in Firefox) but is not now.  Lynda.com Technical Support attempted to assist me, but ultimately gave up and declined responsibility because XP is not officially supported.  Several changes may have contributed or influenced this problem:  a) Update of Firefox; b) Receiving a virus; c) Plug-in broken/updated/disabled; d) Cookies or cache problem, although I have cleared them multiple times; e) Other.

I have attempted to uninstall and reinstall Firefox.  I suppose it is possible that the uninstall was not fully successful.

I have done some cleanup of emails (Thunderbird) but don't see how that would affect it, even though it is a Mozilla product.

I have also executed Webroot Secure Anywhere, and I think it did find a virus or malware; however nothing changed.

I have performed defragmentation recently.

I have attempted to update plugins that were obsolete.

Comment 1

[Loic]

Are they Flash or HTML5 videos?
In addition, is it possible to have an access to the videos to test ourself.

Without that, it will be difficult to help.

Comment 2

[jh.murray]

(In reply to Loic from comment #1)
> Are they Flash or HTML5 videos?
> In addition, is it possible to have an access to the videos to test ourself.
> 
> Without that, it will be difficult to help.

I have contacted lynda.com, who told me that the videos are HTML5.

Certainly you may access lynda.com to play a sample video; let me know if you need my login credentials.

I am wondering if I had the problem after I upgraded Firefox over the weekend.  Is is possible to download/downgrade to a previous version?

Comment 3

[Loic]

Before downgrading, can you test:
1) in safe mode: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode
2) with a fresh profile: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

Does it work normally?

If not, you can download the previous version here http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/49.0.2/
(or http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ )

Comment 4

[Loic]

That said, I tested this free video, I have no issue to play it:
https://www.lynda.com/User-Experience-tutorials/Welcome/490663/537743-4.html

Comment 5

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

(In reply to jh.murray from comment #0)
> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0
> Build ID: 20161019084923
> 
> See previous field text for the failure of Firefox, but success of Chrome. 
> This is an XP SP3 machine.

This is likely where your problem is...

Windows XP doesn't provide a H264 decoder. Chrome ships a h264 decoder (but we can't).

(By the way, we are dropping support for windows XP after Firefox 52 is released)

lynda.com seems to only provide MP4 video with h264.

Attempting to play on windows XP, it displays a black screen, and present a link in the top left corner to download the file instead.
However, that button doesn't work either, it simply attempt to play the video again.

You need to tell lynda.com to fix their JS so that the user is properly able to download the video.

At least, you'll be able to use other tools to play the downloaded video (like VLC).

If you want to be able to play the video within Firefox there's not much you can do at your end other than upgrade to Windows Vista or later.
Any other solutions to be able to play on Windows XP would require Lynda.com to provide videos in another format, such a WebM using the VP8 or VP9 codec for the video track.