361881 - Youtube videos stream too slowly if cookies disabled and exceptions added

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[abeautifulgoat]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20061126 Minefield/3.0a1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20061126 Minefield/3.0a1

If cookies are disabled by unchecking "Accept cookies from sites" in the privacy preferences, and any site is added to the "Exceptions..." list, most videos on Youtube.com (though not all) will stream much more slowly than they would otherwise stream, making it impossible to watch them. (In the status bar a different Youtube server will be mentioned than would be if the preferences had not been changed). It makes no difference which sites are added to the "Exceptions" list, as soon as any site is added, and cookies are disabled, the problem occurs. Re-enabling cookies and removing all sites from the exceptions list does not rectify the problem. It is only rectified with either a new profile, or by deleting "cookies.txt" from the profile in use.

An example video which shows this problem is this music video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCTlF4x7MQ 

Although the problem occurs with many, many other videos on Youtube.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Disable cookies.
2. Add any site to the "Exceptions" cookies whitelist.
3. Attempt to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCTlF4x7MQ or almost any other Youtube video.

Actual Results:  
The video will download much too slowly to stream and playback will continually stop while buffering.

Expected Results:  
The video would play normally if the preferences described had not been changed. Changing the preferences back does not resolve the problem.

The problem was noted with all Firefox versions tested, including the latest nightly build.

Comment 1

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1pre) Gecko/20061126 BonEcho/2.0.0.1pre ID:2006112604
Works For Me.

Comment 2

[abeautifulgoat]

Sorry, since I filed the report I've been unable to get the problem to reoccur reliably, however it does still occur about half the time. Reloading the page with the video on will sometimes cause it to occur, also deleting cookies and cache causes it to occur. Can you try doing those things a few times and see if you have a problem? When the problem occurs, the status bar says data is being transferred from "ash.youtube.org" instead of "chi.youtube.org". Although it does not happen 100% of the time, it never crops up at all until you change the cookie preferences.

Comment 3

[abeautifulgoat]

Sorry, this is not a Firefox bug at all since the same thing happens in Internet Explorer with cookies deleted and disabled. My apologies.