video doesn't load and/or play
(Firefox 94.0; Fedora 34; Gnome)
When I go to some video websites and click the play button, I see the little circular thing in the image are spinning, indicating that the video is loading. But it never stops and it never plays. Also, the pause button does not have any effect; the loading indicator keeps spinning. Example website: "https://proclassictv.com/" (both with "The Rifleman" and "My Favorite Martian" episodes. I've tried this on a few of the videos available there. Same result. I've tried this with add-ons enabled and with add-ons disabled (current session). I've seen this in a few other websites also. I don't know if the problem is my system, Firefox, or the host website.
I am able to view youtube videos with no problems.
How do I get the videos to play?
Thank-you.
All Replies (15)
It works for me. see screenshot Make sure you have the latest FFmpeg and libavcodec packages. see screenshot
screenshot...
(replying to both posts by jonzn4SUSE)
According to the Fedora package manager "dnf", I have ffmpeg: -bash.6[~]: dnf list --installed ffmpeg Installed Packages ffmpeg.x86_64 4.4.1-1.fc34 @rpmfusion-free-updates -bash.7[~]: This was updated earlier this month.
According to the "ls" command, I have libavcodec: -bash.13[lib64]: ls libavcodec* libavcodec.so.56 libavcodec.so.58 libavcodec.so.56.60.100 libavcodec.so.58.134.100 -bash.14[lib64]: These were last updated last month.
Try downloading another copy of Firefox and run it from the folder. Do not sign into your Firefox account and see if you have the same issue.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
jonzn4SUSE said
Try downloading another copy of Firefox and run it from the folder. Do not sign into your Firefox account and see if you have the same issue. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
Before my original post, I tried: - clicking the gnome activities icon to launch Firefox; and (separately) - using Firefox Help->Troubleshoot Mode to relaunch Firefox (add-ons disabled). Minutes ago, I tried launching Firefox from the terminal command line. In all three cases, I was not signed into a Firefox account. In all three cases, I have the same problem.
What you suggest will be done when new Firefox patches are available in the appropriate Fedora repository. I'm not a sys.admin., and do sys.admin. tasks very poorly. So I don't dare try a download and install except via "dnf", and that requires that something new be in the Fedora repositories.
Meanwhile, 1. What kinds of files are the web sites trying to feed me for the videos? 2. What do I check in Settings->Applications? I see, for example, that "MPEG-4 video" is set to "Use VLC media player...".
Thank-you for your efforts so far.
Time to get out of that shell... there is no install. Just download, unzip, and run it from the folder. Nothing difficult. see screenshot
Modified by jonzn4SUSE
You're going to have to get your hands dirty if your going to run Linux. ;-)
downloaded; unzipped; ran it. It works.
So why does the regular install (version 94.0) *not* work? Even launching in safe-mode from the command line does not work. That rules out plug-ins and add-ons. What in my settings, preferences, etc. needs to change, and to what? This needs to be properly diagnosed and fixed.
You will have to ask the folks at Fedora. This is why it's a good idea to run more than 1 version of Firefox. Sync also will see the 2nd Firefox as another device and you can sync between the two. I lost tabs several months ago with openSUSE's Firefox and moved to Nightly as my daily driver. I use the distro version as a backup to sync.
Modified by jonzn4SUSE
I'm curious, what version of Firefox did you get?
Modified by jonzn4SUSE
94.0.2
Did you check the Web Console or Browser Console for possible related messages?
Firefox 94.0.2 became available in the Fedora repositories, so I upgraded (using the "dnf" command as root). I then rebooted. I tried again to view a ProClassicTV video. The problem persists.
I shutdown Firefox, and then restarted it from the command line using the "--safe-mode" option. So NoScript and uBlock Origin were not active. I launched the browser console. I navigated to the webpage that has the video that I wanted to watch. I waited a minute+ to make it easy to see in the logs when I clicked the play icon. I clicked the play icon, and then waited a minute+ before screen-capturing the browser console. The screen capture is attached. I clicked the play icon at 15:53:32. Nothing in the logs gets my attention. Any clues?
It seems to me from the testing done so far that the problem is not likely to be in Fedora or Firefox code. My sense is that the problem is most likely to be in configuration settings and/or preferences and/or something else like those. But I don't know specifically where to look or what to look for.
I notice that there are 6 error messages, currently hidden. Did you check those as that can possibly show issues ?
Last night, I got different messages, including security errors. This morning, I saw yet different messages, now including in the web page itself. I tried a few other proclassictv The Rifleman videos; they worked! The series finale of The Rifleman still does not work. My sense now is that the problem is on their side rather than in my configuration, preferences, settings, Firefox code, Fedora, etc.. So I'm putting this aside for a few days to see if the problem goes away as things do seem to be changing on their side. I'll report back in a few days.