Video help

[sammy13]

I used to be able to watch any vids I wanted on youtube, right up until a couple of days ago.

Now the very odd one I can watch but most I get an error message on.


I clicked on more and this is what it says =

hope this shows ok -

support.google.com/youtube/answer/3037019?p=player_error1&rd=1

I have not changed anything, not downloaded anything, not done anything different on my comp.
One day it all worked next I get this ???

Does anyone know what is going on please?

[Pepperty]

Sometimes you need to just allow PC to update driver (for viewer)

[Arcturion]

You can see whether your Flash player is knackered by trying to view videos using HTML5 technologies instead. Most modern browsers can do this (and it's much safer). Try going to www.youtube.com/html5 and if you see a green tick by the text "The HTML5 player is currently used when possible." then click the "Request the HTML5 player" button. Now go back to YT and try and view a few videos.

[sammy13]

Jun 1, 2014 19:00:00 GMT Arcturion said:

You can see whether your Flash player is knackered by trying to view videos using HTML5 technologies instead. Most modern browsers can do this (and it's much safer). Try going to www.youtube.com/html5 and if you see a green tick by the text "The HTML5 player is currently used when possible." then click the "Request the HTML5 player" button. Now go back to YT and try and view a few videos.

Good god I have no clue what you have just said, but I will do it, hold up,

[sammy13]

Ok help I got this page, I hope it posts as I see it -

www.youtube.com/html5

[sammy13]

I have clicked request. Hopefully I was meant to.

[Arcturion]

Hang on. I gave you a bit of a misstep - copied the wrong bit of text. If you see a green tick in a little box that says "HTMLVideoElement" then click the "Request the HTML5 player" button.

[Arcturion]

What does it say now just above where that button is?

[sammy13]

God god it worked, well at least it has just now, thankyou so much Arcturion.

Can I ask though just cos I will always wonder, why has it always worked ( youtube ) but suddenly not now?

[Arcturion]

Jun 1, 2014 19:11:17 GMT sammy13 said:

Ok help I got this page, I hope it posts as I see it -

www.youtube.com/html5

That page will be different for everyone (and every browser) that visits it.

[sammy13]

Lookie this plays, and it would not play last night -

[sammy13]

Am I ok now, or do I need to keep doing it?
I don't know what changed like overnight???

[Arcturion]

Jun 1, 2014 19:14:45 GMT sammy13 said:

God god it worked, well at least it has just now, thankyou so much Arcturion.

Can I ask though just cos I will always wonder, why has it always worked ( youtube ) but suddenly not now?

Okay, so basically, Youtube by default will use something called Flash in order to show video. Flash is not part of your operating system (Windows, MAC OS X or Linux) and comes from a company called Adobe. Most operating systems provide means to automatically install it for you when needed but it is notoriously unstable and prone to error - not to mention that historically it has had vulnerabilities that enable malware etc. I can't say why yours has stopped working but it's possible that, as Pepperty said, you'll need to allow your operating system to update it before it will work again properly. I would run your operating system update process to make sure.

What you've just done is to tell Youtube that when your current browser is viewing it should try and use a newer way to show videos. This method is basically part of the HTML specification - HTML being the code browsers use to render webpages. It is thought to be much safer and should be much faster than Flash though you may find that not all the videos on YT will work with it. You can always go back to that page (http://youtube.com/html5) and switch back to the default player or back to HTML5 at any time.

[Arcturion]

To clarify my last post, what I posted above only really applies to systems where Flash is already installed. It can be installed as additional software by some other applications so even if you haven't directly installed it it might appear on your system. iPhones/iPads for example have never had flash installed and only ever used HTML5 in the Safari browser. Most versions of Linux and all current version of MAC OS X don't have it installed and generally only use HTML5 for video on the web.

[sammy13]

Not working again

Will unload flash player, and get it again.