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firefox won't play videos, I have asked this and get no response, all are updated

  • 18 replies
  • 11 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by TedBuck

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Most videos will not play (like on Facebook page) I have researched ALL OVER and tried many suggestions. Firefox is up to date and so are my players such a Flash player. I go to the same video in Chrome and it plays. Is my only choice to DELETE Firefox and USE CHROME which is not my choice.

Most videos will not play (like on Facebook page) I have researched ALL OVER and tried many suggestions. Firefox is up to date and so are my players such a Flash player. I go to the same video in Chrome and it plays. Is my only choice to DELETE Firefox and USE CHROME which is not my choice.

All Replies (18)

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You didn't give much detail. It could help if you would explain exactly what happens when you try to play a video on Facebook or other sites. If possible, also provide a link to some problem videos.

You said you tried many suggestions. What have you tried already? Did you try the suggestions on these pages?

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When I click to play a video The box turns black and I get 3 bars like it is trying to load. Then box just goes black and does not play. When I hover over it with the mouse I get the right and left arrows to move forward or back but clicking on them does nothing.

When I said I tried many things, I tried EVERYTHING I COULD FIND and did it for days before I asked for help.

The pages of suggestions you offered I have already seen and tried along with going in circles following suggestions to update everything, complete uninstall and then reinstall, deleting prefetch files for Flash, etc, etc, etc. Then I asked once for help and got no reply so I asked again and am told I didn't give much detail. I have seen many people who have had this problem, some have had success, but most I have seen did not get a fix to the problem.

EDIT: I just tried my TV NEWS channel on facebook and still the same thing. The forward and Back arrows do work to take me to another video and the sidebar comments change showing I went to another video but the box stays black and no video plays. I also have the words Options, Share, Send, Like- on the bottom right- they will work but do nothing to show the video.

Modified by TedBuck

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I just wanted to mention that Windows XP is quite old and no longer being updated so I'm not surprised that you are having issues with Flash videos. You are also using Firefox 36 Beta which is a "test" version.

Since you already tried everything on the pages I linked and you never got an answer to your original question, /questions/1043900 I'll escalate this to the Helpdesk. In the meantime, could you furnish a link to one of the problem videos?

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XP may be old but it has been working right along. Only problem I am having is on Firefox. this is a link to one of the vids that won't play. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10155288106680195&set=vb.221849125194&type=2&theater

Thank you.

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The all-black description of the original poster's non-playing videos are the same as what I see. They just seem not to load. I'm on Mac Mavericks (iMac) with the latest Firefox and continue to keep any video apps updated so that I can see them in the browser. Only two sites I visit refuse to play videos except in my Safari, which I seldom use. Weather Channel (http://www.weather.com) and C|net (http://www.cnet.com/videos/). C|net will show a countdown from 5 on the vid screen but after "1" the vid doesn't start. ALSO, any other video link you click on will not move you to the new video at all. Again, both sites work fine in Safari.

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I have "Downgraded" to Firefox 25 instead of the Beta 26. Still does the same thing. I am in CHROME right not and all the videos load and play, including the one I sent you to try. I guess it is NOT MY OLD XP, NOR THE BETA VERSION OF FIREFOX.

I have used Firefox for quite a while with no problems until now when it just stopped loading the videos. I am not the only one with this problem and we all get the same answers that don't work for most of us.

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While waiting for the Helpdesk to respond (which may take up to 72 hours) please furnish more information about Firefox, to help find a solution:

  1. Use ONE of these methods to open the Firefox Troubleshooting Information page:
    • Click the menu button New Fx Menu, click on help Help-29 and select Troubleshooting Information.
    • Type about:support into the Firefox address bar and press the enter key.
  2. At the top of the Troubleshooting Information page that comes up, you should see a button that says "Copy text to clipboard". Click it.
  3. Now, go back to your forum post, right-click in the reply box and select Paste from the context menu (or else click inside the reply box and press the Ctrl+V keys) to paste all the information you copied into the forum post.

If you need more information about the Troubleshooting information page, please read the article Use the Troubleshooting Information page to help fix Firefox issues.

Thanks in advance for your help!

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Here's mine: Application Basics


Name: Firefox Version: 35.0.1 User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0 Multiprocess Windows: 0/1

Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days


All Crash Reports

Extensions


Name: Add to Amazon Wish List Button Version: 1.10 Enabled: true ID: amznUWL2@amazon.com

Name: DownloadHelper Version: 4.9.24 Enabled: true ID: {b9db16a4-6edc-47ec-a1f4-b86292ed211d}

Name: FoxClocks Version: 3.4.14 Enabled: true ID: {d37dc5d0-431d-44e5-8c91-49419370caa1}

Name: Garmin Communicator Version: 4.1.0 Enabled: true ID: {195A3098-0BD5-4e90-AE22-BA1C540AFD1E}

Name: Ghostery Version: 5.4.1 Enabled: true ID: firefox@ghostery.com

Name: Print Edit Version: 13.8 Enabled: true ID: printedit@DW-dev

Name: Show Parent Folder Version: 2.1 Enabled: true ID: showParentFolder@alice

Name: WOT Version: 20131118 Enabled: true ID: {a0d7ccb3-214d-498b-b4aa-0e8fda9a7bf7}

Name: YouTube Video and Audio Downloader Version: 0.4.3 Enabled: true ID: feca4b87-3be4-43da-a1b1-137c24220968@jetpack

Name: Adobe Acrobat - Create PDF Version: 1.2 Enabled: false ID: web2pdfextension@web2pdf.adobedotcom

Name: DivX Plus Web Player HTML5

Graphics


Device ID: 0x9488 GPU Accelerated Windows: 1/1 OpenGL (OMTC) Vendor ID: 0x1002 WebGL Renderer: ATI Technologies Inc. -- ATI Radeon HD 4670 OpenGL Engine windowLayerManagerRemote: true AzureCanvasBackend: quartz AzureContentBackend: quartz AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: none AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0

Important Modified Preferences


accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar: 0 browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400 browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400 browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false browser.cache.frecency_experiment: 2 browser.history_expire_days.mirror: 180 browser.link.open_newwindow: 2 browser.places.importBookmarksHTML: false browser.places.importDefaults: false browser.places.leftPaneFolderId: -1 browser.places.migratePostDataAnnotations: false browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion: 7 browser.places.updateRecentTagsUri: false browser.search.useDBForOrder: true browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID: 20150122214805 browser.startup.homepage: http://my.earthlink.net/ browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID: 20150122214805 browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone: 35.0.1 browser.tabs.drawInTitlebar: false browser.tabs.onTop: false dom.disable_open_during_load: false dom.max_chrome_script_run_time: 0 dom.max_script_run_time: 0 dom.mozApps.used: true dom.w3c_touch_events.expose: false extensions.lastAppVersion: 35.0.1 font.internaluseonly.changed: true gfx.blacklist.direct2d: 3 gfx.blacklist.layers.direct3d9: 3 media.gmp-gmpopenh264.lastUpdate: 1423192712 media.gmp-gmpopenh264.version: 1.3 media.gmp-manager.lastCheck: 1424459751 network.cookie.cookieBehavior: 3 network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true places.database.lastMaintenance: 1424467401 places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 104858 places.history.expiration.transient_optimal_database_size: 167772160 places.last_vacuum: 1303131143 plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types: application/pdf plugin.importedState: true plugin.state.adobepdfviewernpapi: 0 plugin.state.silverlight: 0 print.print_bgcolor: false print.print_bgimages: false print.print_colorspace: print.print_command: print.print_downloadfonts: true print.print_duplex: 0 print.print_evenpages: true print.print_footerleft: print.print_footerright: print.print_headerleft: print.print_headerright: print.print_in_color: true print.print_margin_bottom: 0.5 print.print_margin_left: 0.5 print.print_margin_right: 0.5 print.print_margin_top: 0.5 print.print_oddpages: true print.print_orientation: 0 print.print_page_delay: 50 print.print_pagedelay: 500 print.print_paper_data: 0 print.print_paper_height: 11.00 print.print_paper_name: print.print_paper_size: 5439593 print.print_paper_size_type: 1 print.print_paper_size_unit: 0 print.print_paper_width: 8.50 print.print_plex_name: print.print_printer: print.print_resolution: 0 print.print_resolution_name: print.print_reversed: false print.print_scaling: 1.00 print.print_shrink_to_fit: true print.print_to_file: false print.print_unwriteable_margin_bottom: 17 print.print_unwriteable_margin_left: 17 print.print_unwriteable_margin_right: 17 print.print_unwriteable_margin_top: 17 privacy.cpd.formdata: false privacy.cpd.sessions: false privacy.donottrackheader.enabled: true privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs: true privacy.sanitize.timeSpan: 4 security.warn_viewing_mixed: false storage.vacuum.last.index: 1 storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite: 1422950213

Important Locked Preferences


JavaScript


Incremental GC: true

Accessibility


Activated: false Prevent Accessibility: 0

Library Versions


NSPR Expected minimum version: 4.10.7 Version in use: 4.10.7

NSS Expected minimum version: 3.17.2 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.17.2 Basic ECC

NSSSMIME Expected minimum version: 3.17.2 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.17.2 Basic ECC

NSSSSL Expected minimum version: 3.17.2 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.17.2 Basic ECC

NSSUTIL Expected minimum version: 3.17.2 Version in use: 3.17.2

Experimental Features


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Application Basics


Name: Firefox Version: 36.0 User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/36.0 Multiprocess Windows: 0/2

Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days


All Crash Reports

Extensions


Name: AdBlock for Facebook Version: 0.1.2 Enabled: true ID: jid1-dwtGBwQjx3SUQc@jetpack

Name: Adblock Plus Version: 2.6.7 Enabled: true ID: {d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}

Name: Avast Online Security Version: 10.1.0.170 Enabled: false ID: wrc@avast.com

Name: RealDownloader Version: 1.3.4 Enabled: false ID: {1B12EF76-2B5E-4DA1-B587-4762D49BFE03}

Graphics


Adapter Description: Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family Adapter Drivers: igxprd32 Adapter RAM: Unknown Device ID: 0x2772 Direct2D Enabled: Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version 6.1400.1000.5218 or newer. DirectWrite Enabled: false (0.0.0.0) Driver Date: 2-15-2008 Driver Version: 6.14.10.4926 GPU #2 Active: false GPU Accelerated Windows: 0/2 Basic (OMTC) Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version 6.1400.1000.5218 or newer. Subsys ID: 01ad1028 Vendor ID: 0x8086 WebGL Renderer: Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version 6.1400.1000.5218 or newer. windowLayerManagerRemote: true AzureCanvasBackend: skia AzureContentBackend: cairo AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0

Important Modified Preferences


browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400 browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false browser.cache.frecency_experiment: 3 browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion: 7 browser.search.useDBForOrder: true browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID: 20150219174507 browser.startup.homepage: http://www.google.com/ browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID: 20150219174507 browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone: 36.0 dom.mozApps.used: true extensions.lastAppVersion: 36.0 gfx.blacklist.direct2d: 3 gfx.blacklist.dxva: 3 gfx.blacklist.layers.direct3d10: 3 gfx.blacklist.layers.direct3d10-1: 3 gfx.blacklist.layers.direct3d11: 3 gfx.blacklist.layers.direct3d9: 3 gfx.blacklist.layers.opengl: 3 gfx.blacklist.stagefright: 3 gfx.blacklist.suggested-driver-version: 6.1400.1000.5218 gfx.blacklist.webgl.angle: 3 gfx.blacklist.webgl.msaa: 3 gfx.blacklist.webgl.opengl: 3 media.gmp-gmpopenh264.lastUpdate: 1424397813 media.gmp-gmpopenh264.version: 1.3 media.gmp-manager.lastCheck: 1424487467 network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true places.database.lastMaintenance: 1424519745 places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 53427 plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types: application/pdf plugin.importedState: true plugin.state.java: 2 plugin.state.nprndlhtml5videoshim: 2 plugin.state.nprpplugin: 2 privacy.donottrackheader.enabled: true privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs: true storage.vacuum.last.index: 0 storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite: 1424434953

Important Locked Preferences


JavaScript


Incremental GC: true

Accessibility


Activated: false Prevent Accessibility: 0

Library Versions


NSPR Expected minimum version: 4.10.7 Version in use: 4.10.7

NSS Expected minimum version: 3.17.4 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.17.4 Basic ECC

NSSSMIME Expected minimum version: 3.17.4 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.17.4 Basic ECC

NSSSSL Expected minimum version: 3.17.4 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.17.4 Basic ECC

NSSUTIL Expected minimum version: 3.17.4 Version in use: 3.17.4

Experimental Features


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Did you confirm via the right-click context menu that the Flash plugin is used and not the HTML5 media player?


If you use extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) that can block content (e.g. Adblock Plus, NoScript, Flash Block, Ghostery) then make sure that such extensions aren't blocking content.

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Thanks for your input. Yes I have confirmed Flash is used. I only added HTML5 player AFTER the problem in order to see if that would help INSTEAD of Flash. I have also disabled Adblock Plus and that did not help either. I have also tried complete removal of the programs and clean install of each with the latest versions. I even tried the Beta 26 version of Firefox and have since gone back to version 25.

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I just deactivated everything except Flash and tried 2 videos and they wouldn't start.

(1) https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1528540033953540

(2) https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10155174588035005&set=vb.122034670004&type=2&theater

I also went outside of Facebook to this video with same results http://news10.com/2015/02/21/mac-n-cheese-bowl-raises-money-to-benefit-the-regional-food-bank/

I have same problem and just a black box.

Modified by TedBuck

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That Facebook video does not play for me, either. I tried it on all 4 of my browsers: Firefox, SeaMonkey, Safari, Opera. The plugins-click-to-play placeholder identifies it as Flash.

I just tried it on my iPod, and it works there.

Modified by finitarry

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I just tried ALL 3 of the vids listed above in my copy of Chrome and all 3 played fine, no problems.

Modified by TedBuck

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Does this mean that your issue is solved or are there still problems?


Note that these media files come from the fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net domain, so make sure that you aren't blocking these files.

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Only 2 of the files come from that domain, that is why I included a 3rd file from a different place. I ended with "I have same problem and just a black box." and did not check problem solved, so THE PROBLEM REMAINS on is not fixed.

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You can open the Web Console (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer). Check on the Network tab if content from a specific domain is blocked and has a file size 0 (zero).

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When I click on tools>web developer>network I get info, but not sure what I am looking for. None of the file size column says "0" but a few do say "0.07" others are 3.22, 2.29, 1.55, 1.51 and more like that

Modified by TedBuck