Vimeo videos not working?

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owlice
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Vimeo videos not working?

Post by owlice » Fri May 06, 2011 8:55 am

APOD recently received the following message:
Since the Astronomy Picture of The Day site has started using videos embedded from Vimeo, I have been unable to make a single one play on my computer. The error console gives the following message: "Error: uncaught exception: Permission denied to call method Location.toString". This is apparently a well known problem. The link on the Firefox forum is: "http://support.mozilla.com/pa-IN/questions/796279". The link on the Vimeo forum is: "http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:35904".

According to the forums, Vimeo attempted a fix but it only works on Firefox version 3.6. All other versions are still having problems. In my own case, all that I get is a black field where the player is supposed to be showing.
I would like to know whether others are having this issue. If you're unable to run Vimeo videos used on APOD, please post details (OS/browser/version) here; thank you!

(Please keep comments to the issue of Vimeo not working, rather than comments about whether APOD should be showing videos. Thanks!)
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Fri Jul 26, 2013 2:28 pm

Graveyard post - digging up an old thread.

My Firefox V22 and for a large number of releases into the past, doesn't play the Vimeo videos on APOD. Win 8 32 bit, Firefox in safe mode does the same thing. Win 7 and XP did the same thing as far as I can remember.
The video starts and displays a static frame, plays the sound normally, and updates the frame with another static frame a minute or so further on into the video. MSIE plays the videos ok.

Do others suffer from this problem? FWIW I've asked some Linux users to check and they reported no problems.

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by geckzilla » Fri Jul 26, 2013 3:43 pm

I've got Firefox 22 and I use Win 8 64 bit and haven't had any issues with Vimeo videos. Do you have any addons that might be causing the issue? Since it did the same thing on the same hardware but two different operating systems, it might be something to do with your hardware. Firefox might be trying to use your GPU to render the video and IE might be using the CPU which could explain why one would work and the other would not. I'm not sure why only Vimeo would be affected if you have a hardware issue, though. Other video-intensive things such as 3d rendering or watching a DVD might also be affected.
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foxidrive

Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Sat Jul 27, 2013 12:26 pm

Thanks for your reply.

When I run in Firefox safe mode it also fails.
I renamed my roaming\Mozilla folder and tried it with a blank new profile and it failed too.

Hardware flaw? Dunno.

I get an error message when I try and close the tab (which doesn't respond) saying that shockwave flash is not responding and do I want to close the plugin.

foxidrive

Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Sat Jul 27, 2013 12:58 pm

A follow up to my post here.

If I uninstall Adobe flash - the Vimeo video plays fine. When I run the shockwave uninstaller, the video still plays fine.

When I reinstall Adobe flash then the problem returns.

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by geckzilla » Sat Jul 27, 2013 3:03 pm

I did a search and some people have managed to fix the problem by clearing their cache and cookies. Might be worth a try.
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by neufer » Sat Jul 27, 2013 3:28 pm

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
geckzilla wrote:
I did a search and some people have managed to fix
the problem by clearing their cache and cookies.

Might be worth a try.
That's good enough for me.
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by Beyond » Sat Jul 27, 2013 4:49 pm

So... foxidrive just needs to install a cookie monster cookie cache clearer add-on to the browser and that should do it, unless there's a crumb build up :?:
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Sun Jul 28, 2013 6:06 am

Funny, guys! :D

The sad thing is that I watched cookie monster sing until the very end *laughs*

Cleared all cookies and the cache, cleared all flash player cookies and settings. The problem remains.
I also changed media.windows-media-foundation.enabled in about:config to false so that Firefox doesn't render the Vimeo video - no help.

It's curious. Maybe it *is* related to hardware.

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by neufer » Sun Jul 28, 2013 12:06 pm

foxidrive wrote:
Cleared all cookies and the cache, cleared all flash player cookies and settings. The problem remains.
I also changed media.windows-media-foundation.enabled in about:config to false so that Firefox doesn't render the Vimeo video - no help.
Will it not play at all?

I have a moderately slow DSL system that usually requires me to leave while the Vimeo runs slowly & intermittently the first time.

I then return a half hour or so later and replay it at a normal speed.
Art Neuendorffer

foxidrive

Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:21 am

neufer wrote: Will it not play at all?

I have a moderately slow DSL system that usually requires me to leave while the Vimeo runs slowly & intermittently the first time.

I then return a half hour or so later and replay it at a normal speed.
You have great patience. :)

My issue is not data throughput but a flaw in the playing - it displays a single video frame near the start and the music plays normally, and after a while I get a new single frame - and then flash crashes (plugin not responding message).

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:28 am

foxidrive wrote:My issue is not data throughput but a flaw in the playing - it displays a single video frame near the start and the music plays normally, and after a while I get a new single frame - and then flash crashes (plugin not responding message).
Try disabling Flash in your Add-ons dialog. Vimeo does not require it, or any other plugins, although it will use it by default if available. (I understand you might not want to leave it disabled, but this is a good test of whether the problem is with Firefox or Flash.)
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by geckzilla » Mon Jul 29, 2013 2:50 am

Yeah, that's really perplexing. There's got to be something wonky with Flash. I'm guessing you already tried uninstalling and reinstalling it? You might try the same with Firefox. Maybe deleting the profile folder would help too. I'm grasping at straws, here. ("Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on? That fixes all computer problems.")
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Mon Jul 29, 2013 7:50 am

Thanks for your suggestions guys.

To recap:
As in previous posts, I have uninstalled flash and the vimeo video plays fine.

I used a blank Firefox profile and it still had the problem (with flash installed).

I uninstalled and reinstalled flash while testing, a few times, and deleted cookies and cache, and reset flash to defaults. When flash is installed the problem exists.

It works in MSIE with the flash active X plugin.

Flash is definitely part of the issue - I wonder why Youtube videos play ok but Vimeo videos don't?

There is an Addon installed in Firefox that allows me to 'open the page in IE' and so I use that have a workaround.
It's just a curious thing...

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by Beyond » Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:51 pm

Perhaps it's similar to having more than one antivirus program running at the same time. They tend to interfere with each other. I have Windows 7 with IE10 and shockwave flash enabled as an add-on and don't have any problems with any videos I've run across. IF however, i disable the flash, then i might not be able to play a couple of sites videos. Also, there might be a slim chance that you have something a bit on the old side that hasn't been updated and just isn't able to connect right anymore. Updates are important! Things change.
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Jul 29, 2013 2:32 pm

foxidrive wrote:As in previous posts, I have uninstalled flash and the vimeo video plays fine.
Of course, Flash is an obsolete method of playing videos in webpages, and you're generally better off without it. Most sites these days will serve up HTML5 video before Flash video if the browser supports it. Vimeo, for whatever reason, defaults to Flash.

Perhaps a simpler option in your case would be one of the Firefox add-ons that give you an quick enable/disable button for flash, or one of the Flash blocking add-ons that can be tuned to specific pages or hosts (like Vimeo).
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by geckzilla » Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:29 pm

Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:46 am

Beyond wrote:Perhaps it's similar to having more than one antivirus program running at the same time. They tend to interfere with each other.
Do you mean web browsers? They are stand alone and you have have several.
AV programs run all the time and also block files - that's a different modus operandi to a web browser.
Chris Peterson wrote: Of course, Flash is an obsolete method of playing videos in webpages, and you're generally better off without it.
I tried youtube without flash and it doesn't work... and I do have an addon that disables java/flash/javascript/siverlight/cs etc but when I disabled flash using that, the vimeo video complained that there was no plugin to play it.
geckzilla wrote:Have you tried this? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/re ... t-problems
Thanks and Yes, I tried a blank profile - absolutely pristine with nothing loaded - and the same issue was there unless I uninstalled flash.

If I find a solution I'll return and update the thread. Thanks for all your posts and suggestions.

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by Beyond » Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:17 am

foxidrive wrote:
Beyond wrote:Perhaps it's similar to having more than one antivirus program running at the same time. They tend to interfere with each other.
Do you mean web browsers? They are stand alone and you have have several.
I think you mean you have to have several browsers? I only have one, IE10, and i seem to be able to view any video i come across. I only have a few add ons and they are known to be Microsoft compatible. So the key for me and what i use a computer for, is to keep it simple and compatible so there's no interference problems. Works for me, but you may have different needs.
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by Chris Peterson » Wed Jul 31, 2013 4:42 am

foxidrive wrote:I tried youtube without flash and it doesn't work... and I do have an addon that disables java/flash/javascript/siverlight/cs etc but when I disabled flash using that, the vimeo video complained that there was no plugin to play it.
You have something fundamentally wrong with either Firefox or your entire system. YouTube does not require Flash as long as you are running an HTML5 compliant browser, which includes versions of Firefox for the last couple years.
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Wed Jul 31, 2013 5:15 am

Well, here's the fix that worked for me... geckzilla was on the money.

Disabling hardware acceleration in flash made it work properly. See here: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/891337


And JFTR It doesn't matter if hardware acceleration is enabled in Firefox, it works with it enabled.

Cheers, and thanks.

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by geckzilla » Wed Jul 31, 2013 5:21 am

First hunches. Gotta love 'em.
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by Guest » Wed Jul 31, 2013 5:22 am

Chris Peterson wrote:YouTube does not require Flash as long as you are running an HTML5 compliant browser, which includes versions of Firefox for the last couple years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
Playback

Viewing YouTube videos on a personal computer requires the Adobe Flash Player plug-in to be installed on the browser. The Adobe Flash Player plug-in is one of the most common pieces of software installed on personal computers and accounts for almost 75% of online video material.[50]

In January 2010, YouTube launched an experimental version of the site that uses the built-in multimedia capabilities of web browsers supporting the HTML5 standard.[51] This allows videos to be viewed without requiring Adobe Flash Player or any other plug-in to be installed.[52][53] The YouTube site has a page that allows supported browsers to opt in to the HTML5 trial. Only browsers that support HTML5 Video using the H.264 or WebM formats can play the videos, and not all videos on the site are available.[54][55]
It still seems to be an opt in process - http://www.youtube.com/html5

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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by Chris Peterson » Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:06 pm

Guest wrote:It still seems to be an opt in process - http://www.youtube.com/html5
I think the Wikipedia article may need updating. And I don't think you need to opt in to receive HTML5 video content.

I tried YouTube both opted in and out, and all it changed was whether the first attempt was Flash or HTML5. If I opt out and disable Flash in Firefox, I see a plug-in not supported warning for a second or less, and then YouTube sends HTML5. If I opt in, I don't get the first attempt to send Flash. But the result is the same- Firefox plays the video.

I can well believe there may still be old videos that haven't been converted to one of the formats supported by HTML5, but I didn't find any. With Flash disabled, I bounced around different videos on YouTube for a few minutes, and they all played fine. With the explosive growth in popularity of smart phones and tablets, most of which don't support Flash, it's hardly surprising that YouTube has converted most of their content, and supports HTML5 just fine.

So I'll stick by my original comment: you don't need to have Flash installed, or enabled in Firefox, to view Vimeo or YouTube videos. And you don't have to do anything special to receive HTML5 video content, other than having a relatively up-to-date browser.
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Re: Vimeo videos not working?

Post by foxidrive » Thu Aug 01, 2013 2:44 pm

I uninstalled flash and opted into the HTML5 trial using MSIE, Opera and Firefox and most of the videos that I tried, didn't play. A Youtube graphic told me to install flash. Songs mostly. A few did play fine - but the results show that flash is far from obsolete, my friend. :)

Anyway, my issue with Vimeo and the APOD videos is resolved so thanks for all your help guys.

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