Youtube / Flash Player challenges

HarryN

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Hi, I am having some challenges lately with watching youtube videos and wondered if anyone can give me some pointers.

a) Hardware / OS - HP laptop 6475b running AMD Turion 64x2, 4 gig ram, windows vista 64 bit pro

b) Where it started
- I usually use IE (9 in this case) and youtube was working more or less ok. I don't remember the videos have problems, but there could have been a few. I tend to set privacy settings medium to high and dump cookies as fast as possible.

- About 2 weeks ago I downloaded and am testing firefox 20.0 as an alternative browser, and nearly every video seemed to lock up the browser. I am new to firefox so I assumed the problem was some setting I was using. The only way to exit was a ctrl/ alt / del (task manager) and then shutting down the browser. Since then, I have upgraded the browser to 201.0.1, same result.

- This past week, even using IE, the videos starting pushing to upgrade to the lastest flash player. Some still worked, but others would not, so finally I did. What I didn't do though, is allow it to install the google chrome browser or tool bars, which it tried to do by default.

The current situation is that perhaps 25% of the videos work, but the rest do not, even on IE.

It looks like google has done something to youtube to force some setting on computers, but I am not really sure what it is or why. Any suggestions ?

Thanks

Harry
 

ElectronGuru

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Flash is a horrific format for video and became the standard only because it came built in while all the others required user installed plug ins (or a specific platform). Flash is CPU and memory intensive, so assuming your connection is good and you are allowing time for the content to spool in (play - pause - wait - play to be sure), focus first on resources.

Restart the machine, load one browser first and only, then try a few tests. Visit a site that lets use choose different sizes and start with the smallest (YouTube). If the 320s work but the 720s don't, try a better/newer computer on the same connection.
 

Lite_me

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Just got this... locked up FF ...using 20.0.1

But after about 10-15sec a popup let me stop the plug-in that was not responding.

Must be a bug in the latest ver of flash. I haven't researched it as yet.

captureue.jpg
 

HarryN

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Thanks for the double check and info. After reading a bit more closely, I saw that there appear to be (at least) two versions of flash - one for IE, and one for firefox. I am starting to wonder if my computer really knows which one to use when I open various browsers - could be a user error.

To start off again, I removed firefox and all adobe products / readers. Now I can watch about 20 - 25 % of the youtube videos in IE 9. When I get time, I will try to reload FF and the flash player.

Normally I wouldn't bother since I am happy enough with IE, but I am seriously considering to move to linux debian mint cinnamon (to avoid win 8) so IE will not really be an option anymore. I cannot honestly see why people like FF so much, but it is ok. I have used libreoffice for a long time, so that is not an issue.
 

HarryN

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Progress.
- Ran the uninstaller for adobe flash - 2x. (1 X didn't seem to do it)
- Uninstalled firefox
- Deleted every adobe related file I could find on my computer.

- Downloaded Firefox
- Used FF to download adobe flash player (not sure if I used IE or FF the first time)

The obvious change - maybe related, maybe not.
- clicked on the little down arrow in the top right of FF to open the folder of downloaded programs.
- Then could click to install it from FF, rather than from the windows file manager.

I don't know if this was the difference (using FF's tool bar vs win file manager) or something else, but now I can watch youtube using FireFox so something has changed.

I am guessing user error / learning curve with FF, but who knows. Maybe this will help someone else that is having a similar challenge. There seem to be plenty of similar situations on youtube right now and there are web pages related to it on the adobe site.

It seems strange to me that google / android is so big on not supporting flash in their phones and pushed for HTML 5. OTOH, they require flash to make HTML 5 compatible PC browsers use youtube. It is right on the edge of hypocritical.

I am just curious, since apple doesn't really support flash, surely you can watch youtube on an iphone - right ? I still use a symbian / nokia e series phone and that works, so I assumed that an iphone can do it.
 
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HotWire

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gadget_lover

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I'm glad you were able to get it to work. Chances are that there was a bad file or bad registry setting that was not cleaned out until you did all that. The other step I usually take when troubleshooting a situation like that is to restart windows between steps. That gets rid of any odd little libraries or settings that you may not want to have carried forward.

I am just curious, since apple doesn't really support flash, surely you can watch youtube on an iphone - right ? I still use a symbian / nokia e series phone and that works, so I assumed that an iphone can do it.

My understanding is that the iPhone goes through a special proxy for youtube videos. The videos are presented in a format and size suitable for the small screen.

My phone (android) has a youtube app that takes care of all that. I don't have any problems with youtube on my Linux based PCs or my android phones. I've had 3 android phones under two cellular carriers and at least 5 versions of the android OS. :)
 
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