Looking for a way / extension to play facebook videos by default in 360p.
I'm using Firefox Beta on a slow laptop in Linux -so, manually changing videos to 360p from the cog works to make them play smoothly. The facebook SD Only setting in https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=videos doesn't really work -only in a few videos. If anyone knows of an extension that handles this on latest Firefox Beta let me know. Thank you.
Chosen solution
If your pc is slow or you need a fast quality player for facebook and youtube videos, you can use the "Play with..." Firefox extension and open the videos in mpv.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/play-with/
To work in facebook (see pic), just right-click on the time right below the title of the video, and click on "play with...".
To watch shared videos inside groups, left-click (or open in new tab) on the post until you see "shared post". Then right-click on the word "post" and play with...
You'll need mpv and youtube-dl. This extension doesn't need a native installer. First time you click on it, it will give you directions to associate .m3u with mpv and to do it automatically after that.
An mpv.conf is recommended, here's a really fast one that opens mpv in full screen, enables hardware acceleration if available, uses a firefox user agent to play all sources, and chooses the best video and audio codecs, blocking VP9 which is buggy and really slow on slow pcs. The one used instead is x264, which is a proper quality video codec. It also limits videos to 720p or lower to avoid frame skipping.
More info about mpv:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mpv
Custom mpv.conf:
fs=yes
hwdec=auto
user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0"
ytdl-format="bestvideo[height<=?720][vcodec!=vp9]+bestaudio/best"
All Replies (13)
It would be perfect if there was an extension for facebook videos that does what this extension does for youtube videos: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-video-quality/?src=search
Yes that would be nice. Have you tried to contact the developer of that add-on?
Please see this: https://github.com/dessant/youtube-video-quality/issues
Did you try to contact Facebook for support since the steps they list aren't working properly ?
the-edmeister said
Yes that would be nice. Have you tried to contact the developer of that add-on?
Please see this: https://github.com/dessant/youtube-video-quality/issues
I just did.
cor-el said
Did you try to contact Facebook for support since the steps they list aren't working properly ?
Only about 8-10 times. They don't care.
[deleted]
Modified by csts
Opened an issue to another youtube video quality addon for future facebook support. https://github.com/AleshaOleg/youquachoo/issues/1
Note that each website uses its own way to configure the media player and that it is already difficult to maintain an extension for YouTube. Supporting more websites might be too much to expect even if this is about the same feature.
A temporary solution until an extension appears is to use the new FB interface and the Flash Video Player for Facebook™ extension for videos.
Last note about facebook -no need to annoy you more about it-, I set uBlock Origin to hard mode (block all 3rd-party stuff, and only allow enough for sites to work), and besides speed, videos play better.
[Edit] Found a better way that doesn't need a native installer, in Arch Wiki, read below.
Modified by csts
Note that Adobe will be discontinuing all support of their Flash Player Plugin at end of 2020 so Flash is not really a long term option.
Chosen Solution
If your pc is slow or you need a fast quality player for facebook and youtube videos, you can use the "Play with..." Firefox extension and open the videos in mpv.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/play-with/
To work in facebook (see pic), just right-click on the time right below the title of the video, and click on "play with...".
To watch shared videos inside groups, left-click (or open in new tab) on the post until you see "shared post". Then right-click on the word "post" and play with...
You'll need mpv and youtube-dl. This extension doesn't need a native installer. First time you click on it, it will give you directions to associate .m3u with mpv and to do it automatically after that.
An mpv.conf is recommended, here's a really fast one that opens mpv in full screen, enables hardware acceleration if available, uses a firefox user agent to play all sources, and chooses the best video and audio codecs, blocking VP9 which is buggy and really slow on slow pcs. The one used instead is x264, which is a proper quality video codec. It also limits videos to 720p or lower to avoid frame skipping.
More info about mpv:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mpv
Custom mpv.conf:
fs=yes
hwdec=auto
user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0"
ytdl-format="bestvideo[height<=?720][vcodec!=vp9]+bestaudio/best"
Modified by csts