Can't watch youtube videos with chromium on ubuntu 13.04 64-bit

Question

I've digged all over google but I can't find any solution to my problem.

Firefox works pretty well. I have this issue only with chromium and only with youtube. I have no problem watching videos at any other site with chromium.

When I try to watch a video a black screen occurs and after a while it gives me the warning "an error occurred". Weirdly, sometimes when I try a couple of refreshing it starts to play but then the issue occurs again.

I tried removing-reinstalling chromium or the flash plugin but it did not do any good.

Solution 1

The correct answer is here: https://askubuntu.com/a/316722/93826

To solve the issue you have to update the chromium ffmpeg codec to the extra version:

sudo apt-get remove chromium-codecs-ffmpeg

sudo apt-get install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra

Solution 2

I get the same error message occassionaly, but with HTML5 (at least according to right click). I am not in the HTML5 beta, but was years ago. Both flash en HTML5 work good on other sites.

The solution is to re-enter the youtube HTML5 beta, and immediately leave it again.

Solution 3

1. Youtube's HTML5 Player

   An option would be viewing your YouTube videos using HTML5 instead of flash.

   You just have to enter the Youtube HTML5 trial and enable HTML5 viewing, since Chromium offers almost full support of HTML5.

2. Fixing Adobe Flash

   How do I fix flash issues?

3. 'Aid' Flash at Chromium

   Type chrome://plugins/ in the address bar you can disable/enable e.g. PPAPI or NPAPI Flash Players.

Solution 4

Add &nohtml5=1 to the end of the url to force the page to using flash instead.

As a webdev who loves html5 and really dislikes flash I find it ironic that I'm suggesting this, but until Google fixes whatever is wrong with it's player, this is the only solution I could get to work.

View more solutions

Comments

[brim4brim]

I'm on 13.04 64 bit and it is working fine for me. What version of Flash you using? I'm using 11.2.202.285 successfully. You can check here: helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/find-version-flash-player.ht‌​ml

[Charanjit Pabla]

nope. that did not work for me. it's bit of an odd situation but it seems it's a cookie issue. when i block all youtube cookies everthings fine but can't login. i still can't find a solution.

[Rodrigo Martins de Oliveira]

That worked for me, I entered HTML 5 Beta, tried to watch a video, restarted the PC, tried to watch a video one more time and leaved HTML 5 Beta, gone to a random video and it is now working.

[Gerry]

Doesn't work for me. The video is still played in the html5 player no matter how what state that toggle is in. The only temporary work around I have at the moment is to switch to the embed link youtube.com/v/videoidgoeshere

[crayzeewulf]

Thanks! This worked for me. In my case, the first command removed chromium-browser and the second command reinstalled it. Youtube videos are now working correctly in Chromium.

[crayzeewulf]

@Gerry The above did not work for me either. But the answer by voiger worked for me.

[voiger]

You can use aptitude instead of apt-get. When you run sudo aptitude remove chromium-codecs-ffmpeg and it will inform you that chromium-browser depends on it, and first its proposition will be to remove chromium-browser. Don't agree as the second option will be to replace chromium-codecs-ffmpeg with chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra. And that is what we need.

[Rafael R...]

Don't remove chromium-codecs-ffmpeg (will uninstall chromium as well). You may just install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra and it will simply replace the 1st one. You can EVEN do this WHILE HAVING CHROMIUM OPENED (how cool is that?)

[daaxix]

this didn't work for me, I had to restart chromium first...