videos never play

[NonSequitur]

links to all videos here go to a blank viewer that appears to be loading but never does. does anyone know if this is a browser setting? i have heard others say the same is happening to them. thanks in advance!

[jaxxas]

Good question! It happens to me as well!

[Cajus]

The solution may vary depending on whether the video is a straightforward YouTube page, or an embedded video i.e. within the forum page itself.

Some people have fixed issues by deleting browser cache, cookies and similar data.

Some people have found problems with hardware acceleration. There is a setting in Adobe Flash Player for hardware acceleration - right click on the video, click on "Settings...", click on the first tab and change the setting "Enable hardware acceleration".

There is a relevant YouTube support page here, with a link to a troubleshooter:
YouTube videos won't play?

In Yahoo! Answers:

It looks like lots of people are asking about YouTube screens
and players that are blank or all black. Thus, I recently spent
2 hours googling, researching and reading multiple-dozens of
help forums and threads...

Why can't I see embedded Youtube videos on sites?

Issue with Vaio laptop, solved by turning off hardware acceleration in the settings menu (Tech Support Guy Forums):
Solved: Can't watch YouTube videos on YouTube, only embedded


Mozilla support pages:

Youtube videos are blank black screen only on my firefox browser

I can't see youtube videos since last update


When a Youtube video is embedded, there is a facility to view it externally in Youtube - if the preview is visible, click on the YouTube logo at the bottom right.

Here is a link that says people who can't view embedded Youtubes "need to reinstall Flash 10 or newer; but with a special uninstaller"
The uninstaller is hosted on http://helpx.adobe.com, which rates "We've tested this site and found it safe to use" on McAfee SiteAdvisor... DYODD.
Microsoft Community Link

[NonSequitur]

I can see this vid: http://www.kitco.com/Exclusive-News/

Anything hosted on youtube still does not play from the kitco site even after trying all the fixes listed above.

I'll have to look at it again later. Thank you for your time and help!

[Cajus]

I can see this vid: http://www.kitco.com/Exclusive-News/...

When I tried that link, I got this:

This video stream is currently unavailable.
Please try again later.
Error Code:
VE_FMS_CONNECT_FAILED

Many other people have encountered this problem and this link suggests no particular browser dependence:

LinuxQuestions.org: VE_FMS_CONNECT_FAILED error from browsers on certain videos

Disabling PC firewall settings enables the video to play, even if reenabled after the video starts. Therefore it appears that there is a connection being established to a port at the start which is blocked by a firewall setting.

It appears that it is a connection with Flash Media Server that is responsible:

By default, Flash Player and AIR clients make RTMP connections to Flash Media Server over port 1935 over TCP.

To communicate with Flash Media Server over the RTMP protocol, clients attempt to connect to ports in the following order: 1935, 80 (RTMP), 80 (RTMPT).

http://helpx.adobe.com/adobe-media-s...ia-server.html

When I viewed the video with firewall disabled, a connection to port 1935 was established, but with firewall normal it was not there.

The video also played if I enabled network access for "Plugin container for Firefox" through the PC firewall.

Fixes will depend on your local OS and PC firewall applications, and possibly on settings in a router firewall.

[NonSequitur]

it is interesting that the firewall is blocking videos being hosted on the third party site, namely youtube.

i wonder if there is something being detected in the data transaction that is being deemed unsafe?

EDITED TO ADD: This is happening with windows 7 and internet explorer 9

[Roman65]

This post is so helpful to me.