Question Firefox Not Playing YouTube Videos Properly!?

[meeshu]

Running Windows 7 64 bit SP1 with Firefox version 115.0.3. This version of Firefox is the last with support for Windows 7 I understand.

On playing back videos on YouTube via Firefox, the videos initially play back OK for the first few seconds or so, but soon the video either stops playing or the video stutters severely with the sound (audio) usually continuing to play back fine.

Other than the red playback progress bar, I notice when playing YouTube videos (using other browsers) that there is a partly transparent white progress bar at the bottom of the video window which indicates the state of video data being buffered. The white bar usually (or should be) way ahead of the red playback progress bar. But when playing YouTube videos on Firefox, the white data buffering progress bar soon stops and and as soon as the red playback progress bar reaches the end of the white buffering progress bar, the video then stops playing or stutters substantially!

I've tried the solutions as suggested in this YouTube video (watching video using another browser), but none of the solutions seem to work!!??

So, is/are there another means to get Firefox playing back YouTube videos properly under Windows 7 64 bit SP1?

 

[mindless1]

My Win7 64 bit SP1 box has Firefox Portable 115.16.1 ESR on it. Extended Service Release version of 115 is still receiving minor revision updates.

It has no problem playing youtube videos, except that recently youtube has gotten more aggressive at trying to force ads on people who are blocking them with browser add-ons. Sometimes when youtube tries to play an ad, it blocks the ad from playing or only plays a few seconds before returning to the primary content video. Therefore if you have noscript or adblock plus, ublock, et al., you might try disabling them and see if that makes a difference.

I have come upon a "few" videos, maybe 1 in 200, where the problem seems to be the person/device that recorded the video did not have high enough performance to encode it in realtime, so it's the video itself that is garbage, not on my end, as any other video works fine, and if I download the video so I have a local copy to play back in a video player like MPC-BE, it does the same stuttering, and is not a client performance issue, just a low resolution, low bitrate video which doesn't tax the system at all.

Can you provide a link to one of the videos that stutters for you, and then I'll check it out on the Win7 box with 115.16.1ESR ? I just used that system to load the "this" link you gave, and it has no problem with playback, not having to change playback quality and not having to disable any extensions. It will even play it flawlessly at 2X speed on "Auto" at 1080p.

However, every now and then I get a popup on a page that reads something like "Experiencing Interruptions? Find Out Why.", which links to nonsense suggesting that the problem is internet congestion or on my end, which is not true at all as I can use a video downloader and download multiple videos simultaneously from youtube at (at least) 10X the bitrate that was the video's encoded bitrate for realtime playback of any single one of them. It just means youtube is over capacity.

 

[meeshu]

Thank you for your detailed reply!

The first time I noticed this issue was when trying to play this video on YouTube. This video plays without issue via YouTube using either Chrome and Opera browsers. I also downloaded this video and it plays back fine using MPC-BE player. So I doubt there is an issue with the video itself.

Another video FireFox had trouble playing was this one also. Again Opera and Chrome played this video fine; no issues at all.

The first thing I did was to disable Firefox extensions (including an ad blocker) as suggested in the troubleshooting video mentioned in my first post, but that made no difference. Firefox continued to have problems playing YouTube videos. I tried other suggestions as per the troubleshooting video including changing some FireFox options to false. But again this made no difference as FireFox continued to have issues playing the YouTube videos.

As mentioned and implied in my first post, it seems that video data buffering is being stopped after the first few seconds of playing YouTube videos under FireFox. It's as though something is blocking further video data from being buffered for video playback!?

 

[mindless1]

With the aforementioned Win7 and FF ESR, your first link plays fine for me up to 1440p, and at 2160p, youtube can't deliver the data fast enough and the buffer (white portion in front of the red on the bar) runs out. I have far more ISP bandwidth than needed to keep up with that bitrate, and on a wired network not wifi, but youtube can't get it to me fast enough.

2nd link plays fine at the highest 1080p offered.

What if you try the Firefox Portable? It installs into its own folder, doesn't disturb your existing FF installation, though IDK if you can run both concurrently.

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition Legacy 115 (customizable web browser) | PortableApps.com

Mozilla Firefox® Portable Edition Legacy 115 is the longer-than-usual extended release of the 115.x branch of the Extended Support Release of the Mozilla Firefox web browser designed for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users with support until March 2025. It is bundled with a PortableApps.com launcher as...

portableapps.com

The only thing I notice on my FF Portable installation that may not be the default (in any way relevant to performance at least) is in settings, I've uncheckmarked "use recommended performance settings" and under it, checkmarked "Use hardware acceleration when available". If there is a cache size somewhere, in about:config if not elsewhere, have you set yours to be very small? You might also look through about:config to see what else isn't at the defaults.

 

[meeshu]

Thanks for the additional comments.

I think I know what the problem might be. A couple of days ago I got messages popping up while trying to watch videos on YouTube via FireFox. The messages said something about an ad blocker being detected and that watching further videos would be blocked!

So despite disabling FireFox ad blocker (I think it might have been Ublock Origin?), videos failed to play (completely) using Firefox! The videos were blocked apart from being able to watch the first few seconds or so of videos.

I have completely uninstalled FireFox, and have now re-installed FireFox version 115.0.3. This time there are no ad blockers currently installed (yet) in FireFox. As of this writing, YouTube videos are playing back fine (so far). But, I have to put up with advertisements for the moment. I'll maybe try an alternative ad blocker and see if that works and allows the videos to be played back without issue.