1407113 - Twitch streams don't play when media.autoplay.enabled is set to false

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P3)

Description

[chancharge]

Attachment: Screenshot-2017-10-9 Bacon_Donut - Twitch.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20171005195903

Steps to reproduce:

1. Click on any live channel on www.twitch.tv
2. Click the play button


Actual results:

Nothing happens, but the video updates every time I click the play button. In the file uploaded, the video is frozen. There is also no audio. 


Expected results:

The stream should've started playing as soon as I hit the play button, like on YouTube.

Comment 1

[chancharge]

Update: This also affects netflix.com

Comment 2

[jscher2000]

If setting

media.autoplay.enabled => false

breaks custom video controls on a site, you can try this new preference added in Firefox 59:

media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed => true

Note that it also has the side effect of allowing muted videos to autoplay, which will increase bandwidth consumption.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button to accept the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste autoplay and pause while the list is filtered

(3) 

> Firefox 61 (Nightly): 

Double-click the media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed preference to switch the value from false to true

> Firefox 59 (Release) or 60 (Beta): 

You need to create that preference, it is hidden in these versions. Here's how:

(A) Select and copy the following preference name:

media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed

(B) Right-click a blank area of the about:config page, then click New > Boolean

(C) In the small dialog that appears, paste the new preference name and click OK

(D) In the next dialog, click true then click OK

That works for me on Vimeo; I haven't tested Twitch or Netflix.

Comment 3

[chancharge]

That setting appears to solve the issue, thank you!