Firefox 104.0.1 fixes YouTube playback issues
Mozilla plans to release Firefox 104.0.1 to the Stable channel today. The new version of the Firefox desktop browser addresses a playback issue on YouTube.
Firefox 104.0.1 is the first point update for Firefox 104, which Mozilla released last week. Firefox 104 improved the browser's battery usage through user interface throttling and introduced a new developer tools feature to measure a website's power usage.
Firefox 104.0.1
Firefox 104.0.1 is not yet available at the time of writing. Mozilla plans to announce the release later today, if you are reading this article on August 30, 2022.
Downloads will be provided on the official Firefox website but also as in-browser updates. Once released, Firefox users may select Menu > Help > About Firefox to run a manual check for updates. The window that opens displays the installed version and checks for updates by querying Mozilla servers. Any update found, and it should pick up Firefox 104.0.1 at that point, will be downloaded and installed automatically.
The Firefox 104.0.1 release notes have a single entry:
Addresses an issue with Youtube video playback that was affecting some users.
The changelog does not provide additional details on the issue that some Firefox users experienced. A bug report on Mozilla's bug tracking website provides the missing information.
According to the report, YouTube videos froze on some users since the update to Firefox 104. The bug poster linked to a thread on Reddit that was started five days ago.
The thread starter experienced random freezes on YouTube while using Firefox. One user suggested that the issue has been introduced by video performance improvements in Firefox 104 and that setting two preferences to FALSE would resolve the issue temporarily for affected users:
- Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
- Confirm that you accept the risks.
- Search for media.wmf.zero-copy-nv12-textures.
- Set the preference to FALSE.
- Search for gfx.direct3d11.reuse-decoder-device.
- Set the preference to FALSE.
- Restart Firefox.
Mozilla implemented a fix in Firefox 104.0.1 that reverted the change to enable the zero copy feature. Once updated to Firefox 104.0.1, or one of the recent development build updates, Firefox users should not experience any freezes when playing videos on YouTube.
Now You: do you use Firefox and YouTube? What has been your experience lately?
Oh, this is clever. In fixing playback issues on FF 104, Google has also royally screwed non-browser apps like VLC and SMPlayer from being able to stream youtube videos.
In the past these kind of issues have been addressed by creating a new lua script, but that doesn’t work anymore now and according to one of the devs Google’s latest youtube code which results in throttling streaming playback can’t be fixed by a lua script: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?p=531184#p531184
i use FireFox for the majority of my browsing including watching youtube i’m a Premium subscriber as i also watch youtube in the Living room on my apple TV i don’t like to watch adds.
I use Firefox on my computer because i like the fact that i can eddit settings with about:config
and save my SSD from unnecessary writes.
i have had zero problems. i just updates to 104.0.1
@TuxKey
> apple TV
Hm. If you had an Android TV or Fire TV I would have said install SmartTubeNext:
https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext
This blocks ads without YouTube Premium, but on Apple TV, not much choice unfortunately. If you have an Android phone or tablet you can use NewPipe:
https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
On tablets like iPads the website “Invidious” might also work well and is ad-free.
I say this because I hate it when people give Google money (you can’t avoid that on Apple devices though). :)
@Rex,
“The whole point of a streaming site is that you do NOT have to download videos locally first, dear Einstein level ‘31337’ n00b. It was what made Youtube wildly popular initially, when people had no other way to share large videos other than as email attachments. Not every video is worth saving locally for watching multiple times later”
And that capability still exists with browsers and many programs. No one has taken that away. Should we make yet another which does the same thing? Go ahead and stream YouTube videos.
“1337 you certainly are not.”
Crippled T-Rex who can’t even play ping pong you could be.
haha firefox uses gigs of ram on a single youtube page and fanbots call it lean when literally all of the firefox addons are ported from chrome in a desperate effort to keep its 5% market share
So cute to see ChromeZilla fanboys fighting over which Blink based or Blink copycatted browser is best.
Just another fucked up version!!!
I got that YouTube error on edge, i just updated ublock origin and that fixes it, so there was some modifications happen in the YouTube side, that ad/content blockers dosnt recognized and that’s why this happen.
Everything works fine with inprivate tab (no extensions loaded), so i figured out that it has to do something within those.
@ Anonymous said on August 31, 2022 at 2:48 am
“People want to watch videos not archiving them lol”
Did you even visit the site linked for YT-DLP? Do you even know what it does?
Let me make this simple for you:
IT DOWNLOADS VIDEOS TO YOUR SYSTEM SO YOU MAY WATCH THEM AT ANY TIME AND YOU HAVE THE OPTION OF MANUALLY ARCHIVING THE MATERIAL WITH ANOTHER TOOL/FILE MANAGER ON YOUR OWN.
How’s that “lol” sound now? Moron.
The whole point of a streaming site is that you do NOT have to download videos locally first, dear Einstein level ‘31337’ n00b. It was what made Youtube wildly popular initially, when people had no other way to share large videos other than as email attachments. Not every video is worth saving locally for watching multiple times later, so it’s ridiculous to suggest this as a substitute for regular streaming on the site.
1337 you certainly are not.
What site linked? Could you link it again? Because you just linked the github before which doesn’t help the average user.
@Guest,
> What site linked?
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/08/30/firefox-104-0-1-fixes-youtube-playback-issues/#comment-4546870
“Now You: do you use Firefox and YouTube? What has been your experience lately?”
Yes, I use both. My experience has been great. YouTube works great for me on Firefox 104.
Firefox 104 did not fail my daily viewing of hours of tasteless garbage and virtue censored video on my Win10 PC.
@Iron Heart
> No, I use Chromium-based Brave and my recent YouTube experience has been great, thank you for asking.
Iron Heart enjoys using the privacy invading censorship platform youtube lol. BUt worries about MOzillas call for censorship? LMAO.
Chromium-based Brave, the. Clipboard issues, constant security issues, and bloated code. Manifest V3 lol and Iron Heart likely uses it on youtube with javascript on, hilarious stuff from the misinformation spreading noob that is Iron Heart.
Brave uses the disgusting chromium-codebase built and patched by an ad tech company and another company M$ known for terrible privacy and security issues in closed source windows. Two proprietary software spreading companys building a codebase as large as an operating system, way more code than leaner Firefox.The bloated chromium code-base literally being a monopoly creates a massive attack surface for cybercriminals. No one who wants security or privacy would use chromium based browsers, they are absolute shit software!
Google and M$ are terrible at writing browser code. They overbloat things and the they indulge in greed lol.
Their legacy? Privacy invasive and terribly insecure chrome, internet exporer and edge lol.
No one in security and privacy communities take chromium browsers seriously anymore. They are laughed at as being just horrible. Use a browser written by google and M$? Just LOL NO!
The BRave browser, Vivaldi etc are a joke compared to Firefox or forks of it.
@Anonymous
> In general, I avoid YouTube and other Google services altogether,
Google are an ad tech company, indeed what is to like about them.
Youtube is a censorship platform owned and run by google the biggest ad tech company of all time. Youtube is just horrible lol.
Iron Heart loves using censorship websites (says he uses youtube lol) and browsers where the code is built by an ad tech company. Then posts stupid comments and old memes saying deplatformfox, whilst he says he uses youtube LMAO.
This guy is an absolute noob level when it comes to privacy and security. He actually recommends JS To be on in a chromium browser. Lol. I enjoy the noob level extroadinaire comments from him though just for the laughs. But a voting system could be interesting to see how many people actually take his BS Seriously.
Iron Heart is my favorite poster on Ghacks. Lol the guy is hilarious because of how delusional he is.
He (who is responsible for the development of the “Floorp browser”) specifically emphasized,
that “Firefox’s code bases are completely (100%) open source, allowing them to be thoroughly scrutinized. The fact of the matter is that this was not possible with the in reality a closed-source Chromium. That code base is constantly being brushed up with modifications and deletions, so it is very sophisticated and fits in about 4 GB. Building a Floorp browser as a FOSS based on that code is a lot of fun. This kind of experience was not possible with Chromium (which was built with closed source and was too bloated).” such praised Firefox as the one and only FOSS.
Let me paraphrase somewhat (Brave to Chromium-based Browsers) and quote it below:
@GNU Linux Sophistication,
> Chromium-based Browsers, the. Clipboard issues, constant security issues, and bloated code. Manifest V3 lol….
Chromium-based Browsers uses the disgusting chromium-codebase built and patched by an ad tech company and another company M$ known for terrible privacy and security issues in closed source windows. Two proprietary software spreading companys building a codebase as large as an operating system, way more code than leaner Firefox.The bloated chromium code-base literally being a monopoly creates a massive attack surface for cybercriminals. No one who wants security or privacy would use chromium based browsers, they are absolute shit software!
Google and M$ are terrible at writing browser code. They overbloat things and the they indulge in greed lol.
Their legacy? Privacy invasive and terribly insecure chrome, internet exporer and edge lol.
No one in security and privacy communities take chromium browsers seriously anymore. They are laughed at as being just horrible. Use a browser written by google and M$? Just LOL NO!
The Brave browser, Vivaldi etc are a joke compared to Firefox or forks of it.
The exact same (and more) phrase was used by the head of development of the “Floorp browser” to inform users of the reason for “discontinuing development support for the Chromium-based Browsers we had been working on, and switching to the latest Firefox ESR-based Floorp browser”.
Reviews about Floorp browser,
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/08/23/firefox-104-analyze-a-websites-power-usage-and-ui-throttling/#comment-4546529
I don’t use a browser to watch youtube videos and use VLC media player. Just copy the URL to the video, open VLC, hit Ctrl + N, paste the URL in there and hit Enter. Works flawlessly every time and no ads.
If you don’t have it installed download VLC from here: https://www.videolan.org/
@TelV
Try out an Invidious instance, it’s ad-free too and easier to use than VLC:
https://docs.invidious.io/instances/
@ Iron Heart,
Thanks for the link.
I’ll keep it in mind in case VLC goes pear-shaped one day, but I see no reason to switch to another player at the moment.
By the way, during my trials of using Brave I couldn’t find an addon which would change fonts from pale grey to black like Legibility does on Firefox and I tried all those available on the Chrome store. One of them (can’t remember what it was called now) looked interesting, but required a paid for upgrade to access more features. However, I wasn’t going to go that route until I could test it and it didn’t work in its default state.
That said, I use Brave Search as my default search engine on Floorp the latter of which is both fast and responsive and has a unique set of browser styles which I like as well (so happy to get rid of FF’s floating tabs).
https://floorp.ablaze.one/download/
@TelV
Is this the one you’ve found? https://makechrometextblack.com/
Yeah it does the job, but it’s paid, and as a subscription no less, which is quite ridiculous for what it does.
This is for free:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/a%20-fontsize-changer/ckihgechpahhpompcinglebkgcdgpkil
Hope this comment still reaches you, I sadly overlooked your reply for a time.
> Floorp
> FF’s floating tabs
No need to use Floorp or any other obscure browser just to fix tabs: https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
Just saying.
@ Iron Heart,
Sorry, missed your reply. I don’t receive notifications from ghacks if someone responds to something I wrote and have to rely on my own memory which fails me sometimes I regret to say.
Anyway, thanks for the tip, but the first addon you linked to costs $20 a year which isn’t very attractive.
The second one (fontsize changer) doesn’t work in the freebee version i.e. settings changed in the menu revert to default once the app is closed even if the browser remains open. The developer states that the premium (paid for version) has more possibilities. That may be the case, but I’d rather see it working properly first before putting money on the table.
@TelV,
Even if you give that person advice….
He has already pompously declared that “I am the only one who be well acquainted with the truth about Browsers and digital technology, and no one else”.
Well, his reply to you made it clear that he is a “Brand-ism” (he doesn’t look at anything that isn’t well known) and an “ear school” (he trusts in reputation, not practice and empirical research).
It is important to be fair to everyone, but unfortunately, it turns out that there has been clearly “futility (pointlessness) entities” (@ChromeFan and @Iron Heart).
@owl
> He has already pompously declared that “I am the only one who be well acquainted with the truth about Browsers and digital technology, and no one else”.
I have never said that. Stop lying.
> Well, his reply to you made it clear that he is a “Brand-ism” (he doesn’t look at anything that isn’t well known) and an “ear school” (he trusts in reputation, not practice and empirical research).
Both accusations are clearly false. If they were even remotely true, I would not use the software of small projects, so much for the “brandism” accusation that you pulled straight out of your arse. I also don’t blindly trust in reputation, I trust in the research that people put out, which in turn might give them a certain reputation as a consequence. Stop lying about me.
> It is important to be fair to everyone, but unfortunately, it turns out that there has been clearly “futility (pointlessness) entities” (@ChromeFan and @Iron Heart).
Still mad at the fact that I called you out on your bullshit more than once? Stay mad, I don’t care.
Thanks for hijacking the thread where I clearly tried to help out TelV with a very specific problem, you are doing great @owl, adding quality content to gHacks: Unfounded lies and badmouthing.
“ear school” = It is the heard knowledge
What a load of garbage. Yes, many players can play YT videos like that. You seriously think anyone is going to believe that you have now completely ditched YT and only use VLC to watch YT videos? Ok, how are you getting the url to the videos you want to watch?
You’re just some noob that just found out VLC can play YT videos and you are over the moon about it, your ADVICE and LINK to VLC cracked me up…
I’m going to the site to get the URL, or if it’s embedded in a site somewhere I’ll copy it from there. Often as not I won’t watch a video on the same day as dicovering it.
What I don’t want to do is to watch it on the youtube site itself because of the privacy issue. I use a VPN so I can copy a batch of yt links and after clearing out LocalStorage of yt trackers, change my IP via the VPN.
As for VLC, it’s the most versatile media player I’ve ever come across and I’ll stick with thank you.
In general, I avoid YouTube and other Google services altogether, but if I did want to visit such a privacy-abusing site, I would do so via the LibDirect extension, which would redirect the link through Invidious, yewtube, etc.
I wonder if this is what I’ve been experiencing with YouTube as the bug report doesn’t mention how long the freezing issue is, recently I’ve been getting random 1-2 second pauses when loading some pages on YouTube.
I use Google Chrome (best browser ever),
and Youtube works with no issues, unlike Firefox.
A basic thing like video playback, and Firefox can’t even get that right. Instead of doing your own thing, follow web standards like Google and you wouldn’t have any issues.
All the money (billions) you have leeched from Google, and you can’t even have a basic and working browser.
ChromeFan,
This is pure trolling. Firefox ‘gets’ video playback just fine, and not only does Mozilla ‘follow web standards’, but this issue is a HW acceleration issue and has nothing to do with them.
Enjoy your Chrome browser and use it to learn facts.
I have no experience with the topic, as I no use the Google service YouTube (already set to block it in my host file) and my regular browsers are Firefox ESR (91.13.0) and Floorp 10.4.0 (Firefox ESR 102.2).
In the user community (forums.mozillazine.jp), there are currently no “issue reports about Firefox 104.0”, as most noticeable problem reports are related to “Thunderbird” due to the major version upgrade from v91.
@owl,
There appears to be a large number of third party modules in Floorp. Do you happen to know what purpose they serve?
Here’s a list of them:
xul.dll, nss3.dll, softokn3.dll, freebl3.dll, api-ms-win-crt-multibyte-l1-1-0.dll, lgpllibs.dll, ipcclientcerts.dll, nssckbi.dll, osclientcerts.dll.
I was surprised to see them all since I thought Mozilla was blocking third party modules by default these days.
@TelV,
> There appears to be a large number of third party modules in Floorp. Do you happen to know what purpose they serve?…………
For accuracy, I have posted this in the official support (Issues Tracker). Discussion is available there if needed.
Floorp seems to have a number of third-party modules, what purpose they serve? · Issue #48 · Floorp-Projects/Floorp
https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp/issues/48
Your sincere and specific comments are very meaningful to me. Please feel free to contact me in the future.
(but please be aware that our family is in a digital detox lifestyle, so responses will tend to be delayed)
As a side note, I get information (and replies, etc.) via “RSS”.
I use iPad, the Windows desktop app “RSS Guard”, Thunderbird, and the browser extension “Feedbro” to manage my “RSS” subscriptions.
Thanks owl. I note that they answered and closed the thread.
@TelV,
> I note that they answered and closed the thread.
I, too, saw that reply.
That is rather bare bones and lacks specificity.
Looks like the “thread is closed” but can be reopened.
The development manager and members of the team are current high school students and are preparing to take the university entrance exam in a few months (in Japan, the university entrance exam is difficult and graduation is a low hurdle).
Recently, the number of users outside of Japan, such as in Russia, China, the U.S., and Germany, has been increasing, and the development team has been very busy with a wide variety of requests and questions, including work to meet the release schedule for the base Firefox.
They guess the content of the reply (They would like to respond immediately, at least to the extent that them can) is due to their busy schedule (schoolwork, browser development, their own health care).
I am interested in your “doubt”, and will look into it.
Please give me several days.
3. Search for media.wmf.zero-copy-nv12-texture.
Is it supposed to be ‘media.wmf.zero-copy-nv12-textures’?
It is “textures” indeed. Corrected the instructions.
about:config includes indeed :
media.wmf.zero-copy-nv12-textures (plural : 1 texture but 2 or more textures, lol) // Default=true
gfx.direct3d11.reuse-decoder-device (correct!) // Default=true
Firefox: yes.
YouTube : only via Piped [https://piped.kavin.rocks/] and Invidious with the [https://yewtu.be/] instance in my case, for interactive 360 degree videos (requires WebGL), not handled at this time by Piped instances.
No idea therefor if I would have encountered issues mentioned for Firefox 104.0
Just updated Firefox to 104.0.1
Running fast and flawlessly as usual.
Funny how this is treated like some minor blunder, the browser not functioning on the world’s most visited website. I’d call this a comical catastrophic failure and display of extreme amateurism. Embarrassing beyond belief. Maybe the woke-queen should redirect some funds to the development department instead of building another golden greenhouse in her garden, funded by donors that think their money goes to Firefox and Thunderbird..
> donors that think their money goes to Firefox and Thunderbird..
“Donation” is a voluntary act of the user, but Google (Chromium) is selling your browsing-activity and turning it into gold, without your consent.
Thunderbird is completely independent, and all donations go to Thunderbird.
Thunderbird 2020 Financial Report
https://16180574424147650216.googlegroups.com/attach/3636e0a8d6fa0/Thunderbird%20Financial%20Report%202020.pdf?part=0.1&view=1&vt=ANaJVrG9ZyQrihX1VlrWGHKV31FU4qDrs12W3Kmtc2udwYpfzMoEQSX_25GdRScEvhnjNL-kwSAetQBWnAlqlRonb_WAP29FakUdCdQhWIhG-Qlw1vCh97Q
Thunderbird 2021 Financial Report | Topicbox
https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/planning/Te67057a0f5f8a01e/thunderbird-2021-financial-report
Thunderbird belongs to MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation.
The entire project is funded “almost entirely” by donations.
Donations reached a record high of $2,796,996/2021.
Non-donation revenue (Thunderbird receives payments when users register with email providers Gandi and Mailfence) represents less than 1% of the total.
Thunderbird is open to exploring new revenue opportunities, as long as they are consistent with the project’s mission and values.
As for expenditures.
The majority of payments are made to employees.
The breakdown is
78.1%: labor costs.
10.5%: professional services (HR, tax services, contracts with other Mozilla companies, etc.)
5.5%: General and administrative expenses.
4.7%: donation transaction fees.
The Thunderbird project is expected to
disbursed a total of $1,984,510 in 2021, bringing the increasing the final balance to $3,616,032.
The Thunderbird project has a total of 18 employees.
The team hopes to hire some engineers without spending more money than is coming in.
I have no issues on Youtube with Firefox 104
Not all users were affected; in fact, it is unclear how widespread the issue was.
It is a webrender issue for people on older hardware directx11 and or Windows 7. Note Windows 10/11 can run without a directx12 GPU so it may effect those people as well.
If you used an old firefox installation so updates over updates for years. I am on Windows 7 with directx 11 Nvidia GTX 750 GPU. My Windows 7 installation is 13 years old.
Then sometime last year Firefox switched from directx11 to webrender. With directx11 beeing removed. However this did not implement as stated. As such I could still watch YouTube videos with Firefox 93 and later.
As off right now the lets disable directx11 for real seems to have happend. Webrender should use OpenGL but this was not enabled. As such Youtube video pauses at every frame.
about:config
search for gfx.webrender.software
set gfx.webrender.software.opengl to true
In most cases this will restore YouTube playback. Setting gfx.webrender.software.opengl to true may have been intended at the release of Firefox 93 and later but this did not happen. As such users must do this them selfs. My how or why may be wrong I am no expert but this made YouTube work for me.
I prefer:
= YT-DLP
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases
“yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork based on the now inactive youtube-dlc. The main focus of this project is adding new features and patches while also keeping up to date with the original project”
Works every time for archiving videos and music.
People want to watch videos not archiving them lol
Considering how much big tech is censoring it’s a good idea to let people archive and spread videos lol
> do you use Firefox and YouTube? What has been your experience lately?
No, I use Chromium-based Brave and my recent YouTube experience has been great, thank you for asking.
Brave? Ah, so you enjoy having your data stolen.
@Guest
> Brave? Ah, so you enjoy having your data stolen.
Source: Trust me bro.
@Tom Hawack
> And roses are red and violets are blue.
> Assertions free of arguments are pure poetry… at least poetic.
I didn’t find any argument in your comment either, thanks for posting.
Brave is better than Firefox.
Better at stealing your data maybe.
@Guest
> Better at stealing your data maybe.
Still waiting for a source that is not “Trust me, bro.”
PS: https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-browser-in-terms-of-phoning-home/
And roses are red and violets are blue.
Assertions free of arguments are pure poetry… at least poetic.