How to make youtube work?

November 13, 2006 11:10 PM

I seem to be having trouble playing flash movies such as those on youtube; only 2 seconds of the movie will play.

If I skip to a different part of the movie, only 2 seconds of the new part will play, then the movie will stop. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Re-installing flash didn't work. I'm running Firefox 1.5.0.8 on Windows XP.

posted by dazed_one to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

This happens to me as well with Firefox 2.0 on Ubuntu Edgy. It started after I installed the new Flashplayer 9 plugin. I'll be watching this topic with interest.
posted by flabdablet at 11:58 PM on November 13, 2006

flabdablet: It appears to be a well-known bug with the Linux Flash Player (see: this entry on Adobe's blog). Since Flash Player 8+ is needed for so many different sites, my solution has been to keep Flash Player 7 installed side-by-side with Flash Player 9 (renaming them to libflashplayer7.so and libflashplayer9.so), and using the Firefox Plugin Manager extension to temporarily switch from version 9 to version 7 if 9 is choking on something.
posted by aiko at 2:15 AM on November 14, 2006

I've had this problem with all kinds of media in Firefox 2. Downloading a video and only get a couple hundred kilobytes of it. The bug could apply to more than just Flash.

Sorry I can't be of more help but when I fight bugzilla I usually lose.
posted by sipher at 4:15 AM on November 14, 2006

This'll sound odd, but....how much free hard drive space do you have? I've had this happen before in the past when my hard drive has, unbeknownst to me, completely filled up. The flash player has no space to cache the movie as it loads, so no video beyond a few seconds.
posted by ZaphodB at 5:21 AM on November 14, 2006

Same here. Flash video always stops after 2 seconds. Firefox on Windows 2000. I forget if it did the same in IE. For me, though, it's intermittent. I have another machine (Mac) on the same desk, so when this started happening, I just used the Mac. After a few months the Windows Flash video started working again.

Sorry I don't have an answer. (But I feel your pain.)
posted by nonmyopicdave at 9:07 AM on November 14, 2006

Best answer: First test: Create a new profile and run Firefox under the new profile. See if you can play Flash files normally.

Walkthrough on how to create new profiles.

If they play fine under the new profile, you could have an extension that is conflicting or profile corruption. If they don't play fine, it's probably a problem with Firefox and Flash itself. You'll probably want to uninstall Flash, uninstall Firefox, reinstall Firefox, and install Flash again.
posted by Nerro at 9:11 AM on November 14, 2006 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: It's not the free hard-drive space; got plenty of that. I'm going to try the new profile plan.
posted by dazed_one at 9:18 PM on November 14, 2006

Response by poster: the goog old uninstall/re-install worked. Problem solved.
posted by dazed_one at 12:05 PM on November 16, 2006