firefox/youtube - display difficulty

English Applications
#1

mozilla firefox version - 43.03

youtube no longer functioning after updates of 2 days ago.
Alos updated 30 minutes ago (roughly) and youtube does not display media correctly.

Here is a screenshot of what I see when I view https://www.youtube.com/html5
which is one of the places where I looked for clues. Having visited this page often I know this is not right:

http://paste.opensuse.org/42100794

The actual youtube homepage is bereft of visual imagery as well - white with black squares and blue links

If anyone is interested I can post half a screenful of youtube’s home page as well.

current repository output:

# zypper lr -d
# | Alias               | Name                              | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh | Priority | Type   | URI                                                                                             | Service
--+---------------------+-----------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------
1 | extra               | extra                             | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Extra/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/                        |        
2 | infinality          | infinality                        | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/nick31:/INFINALITY-ULTIMATE/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/ |        
3 | nvidia              | nvidia                            | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/leap/42.1/                                                   |        
4 | packman             | packman                           | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/packman/suse/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/                              |        
5 | repo-non-oss        | openSUSE-Leap-42.1-Non-Oss        | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/42.1/repo/non-oss/                               |        
6 | repo-oss            | openSUSE-Leap-42.1-Oss            | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/42.1/repo/oss/                                   |        
7 | repo-update         | openSUSE-Leap-42.1-Update         | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/42.1/oss/                                              |        
8 | repo-update-non-oss | openSUSE-Leap-42.1-Update-Non-Oss | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/42.1/non-oss/                                          |

Anyone else seeing (not seeing) youtube as it is meant to be seen? I expect not since I have experienced this for two days and seen no other reports.

Hugh

#2

Hi
Looks fine here, no KDE or packman though;
http://paste.opensuse.org/405bd3ad

Maybe try cleaning out the gstreamer bin file;


rm ~.cache/gstreamer-1.0/*

Restart Firefox… I found on my GNOME DE I had to tweak the gstreamer blacklist (in about:config) to false to get mp3’s playing.

#3

Thanks for jumping in Malcolm.
I’ve just gone to my other linux install (not opensuse) and discovered the exact same thing happening there.

Firefox is 43.04 in the other linux.

Might be something else going on like Country related perhaps - just guessing really.

Pages that carry embedded youtube videos no longer display the video correctly - white space with 4 squares and a giant replay/refresh icon.

Haven’t tried vimeo - dailymotion yet - but I suppose I must in the attempt to narrow the search for the culprit.

My country, if indeed it is country related is New Zealand so any kiwis confirm or counter the Country argument?

Hugh

#4

vimeo and dailymotion work fine.

It surely must be an anomaly of location.

Hugh

#5

I disovered that youtube has forums who knew? - the very first post described exactly what I see.
Apparently many people have reported this and it is relate to a adblocker.

Well this must be a very recent thing as until 2 days ago I have never had a problem with an adblocker.

I only have one popular adblocker as they say in the trade and as an experiment I ticked the disable on youtube.com box, refreshed the page and there was youtube in all its tawdry glory.

This has to be a very, very new feature.

Hugh

#6

Hi Hugh
New Zealand is where I hail from, just reside in the US of A now :wink:

So maybe deano_ferrari can confirm since he is in that locale as well…

#7

Oh hi, absentee kiwi. I’m irish living in Otago.

Not locale, definitely the adblocker - as soon as I disabled it for youtube in this distro and the other distro - boom: there was youtube.

Their forums are hiving with complaints and the response is this:

Hi [deleted], a number of people have reported that this issue is related to ad blocking software, so if you have an ad blocker installed on your browser, try disabling that.

I am going to merge this into the “master” thread on this topic so that you’ll get updates as they become available.

I read also historically that their experiment started with chrome users earlier and they would appear to have moved on to firefox users.
Come to think of it if it hasn’t affected your youtube experience it might be being rolled out slowly but surely. So it could be locale for now. Or you don’t use an adblocker.

Best wishes,

Hugh

#8

Hi
Yes I use an adblocker (uBlock Origin).

#9

Hello again,

more research - uBlock Origin works and so does Privacy Badger.

I have disabled adblock plus and am using Privacy Badger - youtube is fine again.

All the best,

Hugh

#10

I belive you haven’t done a full vendor change with packman and your ffmpeg is from oss.
go to about:config and check the preference media.fragmented-mp4.ffmpeg.enabled it should be false as LEAP comes with a crippled version of ffmpeg, if it’s on disable this to get webm video or youtube will keep offering you mp4 and your ffmpeg can’t handle mp4

ps my sugestion is to do a full vendor change with packman and disable media.fragmented-mp4.ffmpeg.enabled


zypper dup --from 4

even if you disable ffmpeg (with the above preference) you’ll get mp4 support as packman’s version of gstreamer does support decoding mp4

#11

Their forums are hiving with complaints and the response is this:
Hi [deleted], a number of people have reported that this issue is related to ad blocking software, so if you have an ad blocker installed on your browser, try disabling that.

I am going to merge this into the “master” thread on this topic so that you’ll get updates as they become available.

I read also historically that their experiment started with chrome users earlier and they would appear to have moved on to firefox users.
Come to think of it if it hasn’t affected your youtube experience it might be being rolled out slowly but surely. So it could be locale for now. Or you don’t use an adblocker.

so they’re blocking adblock plus users, it was only a matter of time after they started selling youtube red.

#12

No, my ffmpeg is from packman, and the reason I know this is when I checked earlier for updates I also did search for ffmpeg and it wasn’t installed. Thinking this was the problem I installed it and it quite clearly came from packman.
As you know now I went on to discover it was an adblocking problem and have disabled the adblocker I was using and installed Privacy Badger - result? back to normal.

Here is one of the threads:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/y5aP0WTWEsA

cheers,

Hugh