Fix Vine videos not playing in the Firefox web browser

Martin Brinkmann
Aug 26, 2013
Firefox
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12

I have to admit that I have not really paid much attention to Vine and other time-restricted video recording apps. All have in common that they provide users with the opportunity to record video for a couple of seconds, and share that video online either with friends or the public.

Vine is operated by Twitter, and available as an application for Android and iOS devices. The official website of the service is Vine.co, and videos that get published by users of the service are made available on that website.

If you are running the latest version of the Firefox web browser you may have noticed that Vine videos do not play when you open a video page on the official website in the browser.

You see a static image instead and a mute button at the top left, but that is about it. If you try to play the same video in a different browser, say Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, you will notice that it plays just fine in it.

You can use this test video to test this for yourself. If you are using Firefox, the video won't play on Vine while it will play fine in other browsers.

Vine makes use of HTML5 video by default, but will fall back to Adobe Flash if HTML5 video is not supported by the web browser or disabled.

vine videos firefox playback

While I cannot say why Vine videos won't play in Firefox, I can offer a temporary solution that fixes the issue for the time being. As I mentioned earlier, Vine will fall back to Flash video if HTML5 is not supported or enabled in the browser, and that is what we will be doing. Disabling HTML5 video in Firefox will force the service to use Flash video instead, which play fine in Firefox provided that Flash is installed in it.

Here is the fix:

  1. Type about:config in Firefox's address bar and tap on the enter key afterwards.
  2. Confirm that you will be careful if this is your first time accessing the advanced preferences.
  3. Search for media.windows-media-foundation.enabled
  4. The default value is set to true.
  5. Double-click on the preference name to set it to false.

Vine videos will now use Adobe Flash instead of HTML5 video for playback. Note that this change may impact other websites and services that use HTML5 video for playback.

There are other options. You can use a different browser to play videos on Vine, or download the videos instead to your system. Those options may not be as comfortable though.

There is another solution that may work out for you:

  1. Right-click on the Vine video page and select View Page Source from the context menu.
  2. Use Ctrl-f to bring up the on-page find box.
  3. Enter mp4 into the search form.
  4. Copy the first url containing mp4 (all of it), and load it in Firefox directly.
  5. The video will play just fine then even with the preference set to true.
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Comments

  1. Graham said on October 28, 2016 at 5:08 am
    Reply
  2. Dean said on October 8, 2013 at 3:32 pm
    Reply

    That worked. Awesome! Thanks so much.

  3. Meg said on September 22, 2013 at 8:04 pm
    Reply

    I’m running Firefox 23 in Windows 7 and neither of the suggestions in the main post works. I’d already tried the first; it’s on Mozilla’s site. The second, copying from the page source, brings up a static image, which is fortunate I guess because that’s a lot of trouble to go to just to watch a 6-second video. The script suggestion in the last comment brings up a page with a big blank area; there is code in one of the other tabs but I have no idea what to do with it.

    Vine has some kind of app you can download but I’m not sure I want to try that; I’m not even sure it’s for PCs (when I see “app” I think “smartphone”, which wouldn’t apply in my case because I don’t have a smartphone).

    This is the 4th site I’ve tried without success. I’m debating whether to keep looking.

  4. RNiK said on September 17, 2013 at 10:39 am
    Reply

    The following Greasemonky script works just fine as a workaround ==> http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/176997

  5. Uthred said on August 27, 2013 at 11:32 am
    Reply
  6. ROD said on August 27, 2013 at 12:19 am
    Reply

    Your test video ran fine on my Firefox 23.0.1 on Win XP; media.windows-media-foundation.enabled is set to True.

    When I enable Flashblock, then the video fails – so something else is making me drop back to Flash.

    1. qubit said on August 31, 2013 at 4:14 am
      Reply

      Windows XP doesnt have the windows media foundation built into vista, 7, 8 that firefox uses to play MP4 videos. So On xp it always uses Flash.

  7. Hasan said on August 26, 2013 at 8:45 pm
    Reply

    Did you Test it on latest Firefox 23.0.1 on Win XP ??
    I see the video playing fine on this platform.. No differences when i play it in different browsers..

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 26, 2013 at 9:02 pm
      Reply

      I have tested it in Firefox 25 Aurora

  8. David said on August 26, 2013 at 12:03 pm
    Reply

    There is a problem in Firefox 23 with instagram too. You click on a user’s photo, then you can’t click on another one. You have only one shot, lol. If you find a solution in the meantime for this would be appreciated.

    This was reported to Mozilla/Instagram too btw: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/967651?page=1

    1. Len said on October 8, 2013 at 9:23 pm
      Reply

      With instagram you can drag the thumbnails into the tabs bar to avoid the page getting messed up.

      I’m not sure why the vine things don’t load in the first place though. Strangely for me they don’t load in IE either from the direct website links. AFAIK vine claim nothing’s wrong so it may be some privacy setting or hosts file/firewall thing, though the only other thing in their script is google tracking.

      As another FF vine solution, load the video page on vine.co and click “embed” and the video already embedded on that page seems to work (for me)

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