Reallowing flash videos on YouTube in Firefox 33+/Getting 1080p+ back

[colonel_mortis]

Introduction

GoogleTube recently made the weird decision to force all users of Firefox 33 and up to use the HTML5 player for their videos. While that doesn't sound bad at first, Firefox doesn't currently support a protocol (?) called "Media Source Extensions", which is the "MSE" on this YouTube page. This means that Firefox doesn't currently support a technique called DASH playback, where bits of the video are loaded at a time, and Google really wants you to use DASH, so disables all qualities except 360p and 720p when using the HTML5 player in Firefox. The only reason I can see for them making HTML5 compulsory is that they want to drive chrome adoption, which is just not the right way of going about it.

How to:

1. Download the "UAControl" Firefox addon, then restart your browser when prompted.
2. Go to http://www.youtube.com (or any YouTube page)
3. In the addon/address combo-bar, a new icon should have appeared (from before you restarted). Click it, then click "UAControl Options for this site" (or if you didn't load a YouTube page, you will have to click "UAControl Options" and manually enter www.youtube.com)
4. Select "Custom", and in the text field next to it, paste Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:32.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/32.0 (This is the FF32 User Agent)
5. Click OK and OK again, then just refresh YouTube and it will use the default player as set at https://www.youtube.com/html5 (presumably you want to request the default player).
6. ???
7. 1080p Profit.

Please note that I am not affiliated with the developer of this addon in any way.

[Askew]

Mine still uses Flash by default with all the resolutions, I am using Firefox 31.

 

If I select HTML5 on the YouTube selection page, I am landed with the limited number of video streams.

 

Does this mean if I don't update Firefox this problem won't affect me? TBH the Flash player is the leading reason for Firefox crashes on my machine, I'd like to see it gone in favour of HTML5, I'd also like to see Netflix stop using Silverlight.

[colonel_mortis]

Mine still uses Flash by default with all the resolutions, I am using Firefox 31.

 

If I select HTML5 on the YouTube selection page, I am landed with the limited number of video streams.

 

Does this mean if I don't update Firefox this problem won't affect me? TBH the Flash player is the leading reason for Firefox crashes on my machine, I'd like to see it gone in favour of HTML5, I'd also like to see Netflix stop using Silverlight.

AFAIK it is an issue for FF33+ only, which is really weird because Mozilla didn't enable MSE in FF33 (it's disabled by a config option, and from my experience doesn't work anyway). If you don't update to FF33 when it comes out in 90 days then you will still get the option to switch between HTML5 and flash (probably, although you can't second guess Google). However, I would suggest that sticking to the latest version of software, especially a browser, is very important as a general rule.

[Askew]

AFAIK it is an issue for FF33+ only, which is really weird because Mozilla didn't enable MSE in FF33 (it's disabled by a config option, and from my experience doesn't work anyway). If you don't update to FF33 when it comes out in 90 days then you will still get the option to switch between HTML5 and flash (probably, although you can't second guess Google). However, I would suggest that sticking to the latest version of software, especially a browser, is very important as a general rule.

 

I take it you are using a developer release of FF? I was thinking to myself WTF there is not even FF 32 yet what is this man saying lol

[c3p0]

I take it you are using a developer release of FF? I was thinking to myself WTF there is not even FF 32 yet what is this man saying lol

 

Test it on nightly FF34 :3 https://nightly.mozilla.org/

[Askew]

Test it on nightly FF34 :3 https://nightly.mozilla.org/

Thanks but I will leave it to people who know what they are doing, I can't code and am not a developer.

[StingBull]

What you don't get to choose the player? It just ignores the Flash and forces HTML5 when it sees FF 33. That's odd.

 

I haven't check the timeline, is Mozilla even going to add the "Media Source Extensions" support by the time Firefox 33 releases?

[colonel_mortis]

What you don't get to choose the player? It just ignores the Flash and forces HTML5 when it sees FF 33. That's odd.

 

I haven't check the timeline, is Mozilla even going to add the "Media Source Extensions" support by the time Firefox 33 releases?

Not as far as I can see - it's currently hidden behind a preference (media.mediasource.enabled) which is still set by default to false (disabled), and even when I manually enable it, YouTube doesn't accept that I support MSE, and MSE tests fail. I really do hope that mozilla are able to release proper MSE support soon because generally the HTML5 video player is better in terms of features (slow/fast motion) and performance.