No video on youtube when on GSM/3g

Is this consistently not showing video when not on wifi or only intermittently?

seems to be pretty consistent, can easily replicate it.

Also after a bit more testing if I'm on wifi and already on the youtube site watching a video, then turn off wifi.... video continues to play. its only when I then refresh the page the symptoms return.

This seems similar to this: :https://bugs.launchpad.net/webbrowser-app/+bug/1415107

The reason maybe be due to video and audio streams coming from different servers, with different security settings (read: http vs https) which is forbidden by the web engine.

Or it could be that the youtube HTML5 player refuses to load the video because it thinks the limited bandwith won’t allow decent playback. Read http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html for a brief explanation of adaptive bitrate.

got a H displayed in the status bar and all my other devices don't have a problem streaming on the same connection, so not sure it can be that.

Also noticed today that if video is embeded in a google plus post for instance it plays fine, but if switch to youtube.com wont play with a picture

Confirming as this affects several users (see bug #1303997).

This bug is very annoing, because I can not see any youtube video. I use very much 3G. Please ask me anything you need for solving ths bug. I mention that I have Terminal and Logviewer installed on Ubuntu BQ Phone.

A new way of reproducing this issue, even when on wifi, was reported at https://lists.launchpad.net/ubuntu-phone/msg12224.html:
Before playing the video, tap the HQ button in the bottom-left corner of the preview to disable HQ. I can reliably reproduce, even on the latest vivid-proposed image (#191).

so probably the main difference between 3g and wifi is actually that on 3G it defaults to the LQ version of the video :)

I've had this problem for months, and only now realise that the problem doesn't occur in HQ mode. But, I've previously mentioned it also doesn't appear when the video is embedded in another website, rather than being viewed on the Youtube site, and it doesn't appear in the webapp. I don't think these other cases use HQ mode, as they don't seem to take as long to load as videos in HQ mode.

So, the problem only occurs when viewed in the browser AND when the video is viewed directly on the Youtube website AND the video is not in HQ mode.

I face this problem to this day and I can't find any HQ option (youtube removed it from mobile site?). So the only clumsy workaround is to switch to the desktop mode.

@Anupam: could you please elaborate on what steps you’re taking to observe the issue? (device used, image number, do you browse to youtube and look for videos, or are you taken to a video page from another website, what exactly happens when trying to play the video)

Could you please also attach the browser’s log file? You’ll find it at /home/phablet/.cache/upstart/application-legacy-webbrowser-app-.log.

Thanks!

@osomon
Device: bq Aquaris E5 HD, Ubuntu 15.04 (OTA-9)
I opened youtube site in the browser and played videos, did not get redirected from other pages. Video and audio works alright on wi-fi, but on 3g, only the audio plays, video stays all black. It's pretty consistent. I played some video without any issue on wi-fi, then switched to 3g, the same video shows black screen after reloading the page. Again after switching back to wi-fi it plays fine. I also tried the youtube app by Alan Pope, but the same issue!
I couldn't find the log file. There's apparently no such file in the directory.

Hi
Divice: Bq Aquaris E5 HD,. Ubuntu 15.04 (OTA -9.1)
I have the same problem with the youtube site on the browser. On 3G the screen go black and I just hear the audio stream.

Attention now comes the tricky part.

If the screen goes black I reload the page and videostream come again. Now you have to push off and on the HQ button (left bottom corner)

After this procedure the video and audio works alright.

Same here with a Meizu MX4, OTA-9.1. And switching to HQ is clearly not a suitable workaround on a meager 3G connection.

@Olivier: is there any big problem blocking this? Can we provide any log/info?

@Andrea: the only problem is that youtube.com chooses to serve different content based on a number of factors (including the UA string), and we have to guess what they do to try and expose the required capabilities to get the right content in all situations. And that changes over time. I think we have enough data to work on a solution, no need for more log/info, thanks.

The UA override I was mentioning in https://bugs.launchpad.net/oxide/+bug/1408760/comments/12 appears to fix that issue \😊/.

Why this bug is not on OTA-12?

The fix is actually in OTA-12, but the status of the bug report is incorrect.