8mo ago

Google disrupted YouTube video playback on Firefox, again - gHacks Tech News

www.ghacks.net 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.

102 comments

Clearly this isn't an anti-competition effort.
- We need to being back trust busting.
  
  FTC is already on Google's case

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.
- 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.
  
  You can get an extension to easily change your browser ‘user agent’ to make YouTube think you’re on chrome lol
  
  I've been having this exact issue too
- I've noticed that 60fps videos struggle a lot, even at 720p, suspiciously, no issues on chrome

I have had the same issue for at least a month now. I use YouTube Premium, the fuck am I paying for?
- You're posting for your inability to download ublock.
  
  I already have an uBlock dude, it's just I like to support content creators on YouTube by having Premium.
- 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!
- I also pay for YouTube, and I keep chrome around for watching it, and for the Google apps
- You're paying them to sell your data and to better advertise to you.

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.
  
  The DRM module tells Netflix you are on Firefox. For Netflix I would use Chrome on Wine tbh, it now supports 1080p w/o extensions. Or maybe Chromium w/ ChromeOS' Widevine module.
- 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?

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?
  
  I exclusively use Piped, and never have any problems. No ads, no bullshit, sponsorblock and DeArrow.
  
  I had issues yesterday with re vanced, but it was only a couple of videos not all
- You browse YouTube in the browser then use a handler to send it to MPV?
- What is this?
  
  mpv? yt-dlp? mpv is a media player, kind of like VLC but more powerful and lightweight.
  yt-dlp is a CLI (command line interface) tool that allows you to download youtube videos as videos, videos without audio, or just as audio files.
- 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.

I solved a lot of performance issues I had with yt playback by disabling Ambient Mode (it's hidden under cog menu in the player). No clue why, but it was causing massve CPU usage.
- Yeah. I hate ambient mode. Kills battery life on all systems.
  
  It's also really ugly and distracting.

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.

- NewPipe on Android.
  Fuck GrayJay, their marketing lies, and their nasty license.
  
  Isn't the greyjay developer team funded by Louis Rossman
  
  "nasty license" ok dude.
- How can I use those while keeping my watch history automatically sync'd between devices?
  
  Can't speak for invidious, but grayjay's youtube plugin has a "Provide Youtube Activity" option in it's settings to keep history synced.
- you can use a native client that incorporates invidious servers like pipe-viewer or minitube to reduce overhead and browser dependence

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.
- @FuryMaker@lemmy.world @cloudless@fedia.io do you use an adblocker?

No such problems with yt-dlp + mpv. And still no injected ads.

Badly muxed VP9 stream? Is that where they tried to stuff ads into it?

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.

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.

The youtube ui is so slow I don't use it, even back when I was using chrome. Thanks invidious!

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.

this is frustating i had to use open with potplayer extension most of times.

They work fine on Brave Browser.
- Of course, Brave is built by Google.
  
  Here we go with the circle jerk of trolls.
  No, it isn't.

I resorted to having Chrome for work things, Opera for Youtube and Firefox for the good stuff. Divide and conquer, I guess.

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.

102 comments