Google disrupted YouTube video playback on Firefox, again - gHacks Tech News
Google disrupted YouTube video playback on Firefox, again - gHacks Tech News
Mozilla has fixed a playback issue on YouTube that affected some Firefox users for several months.
Some Firefox users noticed playback issues on YouTube for several months. These affected high resolution videos only, from 1080p and up. To make matters worse, no clear pattern could be identified.
Some videos played fine, others would stop abruptly when they ran out of buffer.
Oh lol so that was it, yesterday all of a sudden 1440p and 4k videos were unwatchable, it was a stutter fest and thought something was wrong with my gpu.
I've noticed that 60fps videos struggle a lot, even at 720p, suspiciously, no issues on chrome
Ya I've had this issue for months now, the video will freeze when the original 10 seconds of buffer is used, and it'll play fine if I skip another 10 seconds but just buffer indefinitely otherwise.
I have had the same issue for at least a month now. I use YouTube Premium, the fuck am I paying for?
For your experience to only be degraded a little.
For an slightly better but still degraded experience they want you on Google Chrome. But remember please use 360p or lower so their poor servers don't have to work so hard, they even help you do this by default on mobile!
You're paying them to sell your data and to better advertise to you.
I also pay for YouTube, and I keep chrome around for watching it, and for the Google apps
I stopped watching on their website due to this. It's faster and I get better scalers on ytdl(p)+mpv
Are Piped or vanced affected as well?
No, nither
I had issues yesterday with re vanced, but it was only a couple of videos not all
Could you elaborate on your workflow for that? I am really interested in doing the same.
Personally, I copy the url from the link or at worst the url bar after clicking into youtube.
Then 'mpv + [pasted url]' into a terminal (I use Yakuake as a quick terminal) and it's away quicker than youtube.com anyway.
mpv automagically invokes ytdl/yt-dlp if you have it installed on linux or if it's in the same directory as mpv or in a directory added to your windows search paths on windows. MacOS, just use a package manager like macports/homebrew.
Reminder for everyone to use a user-agent spoofing extension to make their Firefox appear to be chrome/another browser to Google
sadly, skewing stats like that gives Google more reason not to support Firefox in the long run.
Well.. yes, but I assume that this specifically was sabotage. Like how Intel products have been throttling amd cpu performance for years.
Absolutely not, I want them to know I'm using Firefox on my Linux computer. I'm doing my best to boost up marketshare.
Just add flag in about:config page
It seems Netflix is able to detect that spoofing, and sends this error when trying to play videos, "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later.". I had to disable my add-ons one by one to identify that it was User Agent Switcher causing it.
Simple solution is to not pay Netflix and just pirate their content. They go out of their way to make the experience worse for paying customers on a regular basis. Sonarr+Jellyfin on an old computer with no video card and you've got a better Netflix where your content doesn't just magically disappear or fail to play on some devices.
Any you recommend? I tried this during during the first round of YouTube fuckiness on Firefox, and it didn't seem to make a difference.
I'm also probably the least techy person on Lemmy, so chances are high that I fucked something up.
I personally use Chameleon on Firefox. Alternativly, you may find luck using a web client such as piped.
When it all goes down, there's always the option of just downloading what you want to watch and watch it in your favorite media player. That's what I do on my phone since I refuse to watch ads and they make everything buffer. Hit the dl button and in under a minute i have the video downloaded in hd.
what would be the benefit of that?
For months I’ve had problems with YouTube videos in Firefox, at any resolution. They would play at really low FPS. Sometimes the player would pause and continue at the correct FPS, but usually not. Skipping backwards or forwards usually fixes it but not always. Another step in their monopoly to destroy competition.
Firefox for Android? Happens with any video, this is not YT bug.
I love freetube
Me too. So nice not needing an account to keep a playlist or channel subs.
I happens to me but all i thought was that YouTube was bad not Firefox.
It is.
"This problem is triggered by bad muxed VP9 bytestream served by Youtube, so it's not a regression on our side, this issue can also be reproduced on old versions Firefox".
If it doesn't load quickly or properly, I just don't watch it, which ultimately hurts Google.
Badly muxed VP9 stream? Is that where they tried to stuff ads into it?
No such problems with yt-dlp + mpv. And still no injected ads.
I use Librewolf with Ublock and sponsorblock. Sometimes youtube video stops loading or keeps seeking 5-10 seconds forward. However, reloading the page helps. I don't have such problems when watching Youtube with mpv.
Hello! Cartel office!
I have issues with YouTube playback specifically on my work laptop. At home it's fine. It just started one day where videos sometimes fail to auto play and requires multiple refreshes. Even once they get going they often stall out and the progress bar goes all the way back to the beginning so I've gotten in the habit of taking notes of the time before I hit refresh and hope it comes back before I completely lose all interest.
I'd use Piped instead, but it has literally never once worked for me. Videos never load.
The youtube ui is so slow I don't use it, even back when I was using chrome. Thanks invidious!
My videos play fine but my side bar is completely gone. No recommended videos, no similar videos, no playlist. Works fine on my other PC.
It's underneath on mine, with the contents in the sidebar. Looks shite.
I resorted to having Chrome for work things, Opera for Youtube and Firefox for the good stuff. Divide and conquer, I guess.
this is frustating i had to use open with potplayer extension most of times.
Affected users might have blamed Firefox for the issue. Some may even have switched to a Chromium-based browser, as these worked without any issue.
I've been having issues with YouTube on Firefox for ages, not these issues, different ones. I haven't bothered to test if it's only Firefox that has the problem because I'm not using Firefox for a seamless experience, I'm using because why the fuck would I use anything else on Linux? I won't put google or ms into a Linux environment, even if I don't really care about privacy or whatever, it just feels like mixing oil and water.
Might use another browser like brave or whatever foss solutions are out there, but I'd be surprised if anything like that is better than Firefox.
When I have issues, I use user agent switcher and go windows with chrome and the problems magically disappear. Google is such shit.