Videos in Firefox

[Tommy Trussell]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 1:39 PM, Scott Blair <scott.blair at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 2014-11-14 at 13:17 -0600, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Scott Blair <scott.blair at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >         All of the sudden I can't view video in Firefox.
> >         In Youtube it is a white screen, in Facebook it is
> >         a black screen. I re-installed flash, reset Firefox
> >         all to no avail. I can watch videos on the computer
> >         with no problem. Google is no help, all I can find
> >         is for Windows. I have adobe-flashplugin version
> >         11.2.202.418Outopic1 and running version 33 of
> >         Firefox. I installed Chronium browser, but it
> >         says that flash needs to be installed and it
> >         already is. Any ideas?
> >
> >
> >  Firefox is still working for me, with the same versions of Firefox &
> > Flash that you mentioned. Did you try opening Firefox with Add-Ons
> > disabled (from the Help menu)? I just tried it and YouTube still
> > worked.
> >
> >
> > As for Chromium, I believe it specifically does NOT use the same Flash
> > plugin that Firefox uses. I believe you have to go elsewhere and get
> > the Pepper Flash plugin for Chromium,  OR use Chrome from Google,
> > which has Pepper Flash included. (That's the version I'm running
> > here.)
>


> Yes, I have tried safe mode in Firefox and still nothing.
> Chromium now plays You Tube but not Facebook. I just
> installed Opera, which I really do not like, and it works
> fine. Leaving me to believe it is something in Firefox or
> in Flash plugin. Wonder if I can get an older version of
> Firefox or Flash plugin and try it. Was thinking it was
> my video drivers. This all started when I upgraded to
> version 14.10. Slowly the vidoes on Facebook stopped
> working, then on you tube. Still would rather use
> Firefox than Opera. Any more help would be great.
>

Many videos on YouTube do not require Flash; Chromium (assuming you haven't
installed Pepper Flash) would display those videos using HTML5. I don't use
FaceBook much but I think it's likely it doesn't fallback to HTML5 when
possible like Google services do.

When you see the white area on the screen (in FireFox) where the Flash
container is, are you able to right-click it and get the Flash settings
panels? You can TRY turning off (or on) hardware acceleration. (Assuming
you can get to the settings.) There are some other settings there, but that
seems to be the most likely -- I've never seen any of the other settings
affect video playback.

You said you reset FireFox, but you might also try creating a totally new
user account in Ubuntu and see if it's broken there. (I would think using
the Guest account would work for that test as well.) Maybe there's some
"cruft" in your regular account left from before the upgrade that a clean
new user account wouldn't have.

I don't use Opera much so I don't know why it might work when the others
don't.

It does seem possible an updated video driver on your system could conflict
with Flash. If you go to Software and Updates (via System Settings), you
might check to see if you're using a proprietary video driver, and if so,
what happens when you switch to the open source version. (You may not have
an option.)

By the way, the version of Flash available in linux is an lower release
number than the Pepper flash Google makes available in Chrome or the
version of Adobe flash available to Windows and Mac OS. Adobe is phasing
out support for linux, but does issue updates occasionally, but only to
address some of the known vulnerabilities (they certainly wouldn't be
trying to make it compatible with newer hardware). You can install Pepper
flash using the pepperflashplugin-nonfree package (which installs Chrome
and yanks Pepper flash out of it for use by Chromium) OR to use one of the
hacks to enable a Windows version. (With all the headaches and risks THAT
might involve.)
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