Flash Streaming Video Stops After Few Seconds, No Sound.
Recently I was bothered by the apparent non-functioning of the Flash plugin in my Firefox that suddenly stopped playing the streaming videos from websites, including Youtube, Wired, etc. It was a systematic problem across many websites so was no doubt caused by some software update I did without really paying attention to it (possibly updating either the Flash plugin or Firefox itself).
The symptoms are fairly annoying in that when you go to for instance YouTube, the video seems to start fine, it plays for a while -- although there's no sound -- and then just stops even though the buffering/downloading seems to continue until the file is complete.
That is, it doesn't just stop because of a congested bandwidth, but refuses to play normally at all.
So the steps to fix this is relatively simple:
Recently I was bothered by the apparent non-functioning of the Flash plugin in my Firefox that suddenly stopped playing the streaming videos from websites, including Youtube, Wired, etc. It was a systematic problem across many websites so was no doubt caused by some software update I did without really paying attention to it (possibly updating either the Flash plugin or Firefox itself).
The symptoms are fairly annoying in that when you go to for instance YouTube, the video seems to start fine, it plays for a while -- although there's no sound -- and then just stops even though the buffering/downloading seems to continue until the file is complete.
That is, it doesn't just stop because of a congested bandwidth, but refuses to play normally at all.
So the steps to fix this is relatively simple:
- Shut down Firefox
- Uninstall Adobe Flash Plugin
- Restart Firefox
- Reinstall Flash when prompted for required plugin
Easy enough, except for the "Uninstall Adobe Flash Plugin" part. While Firefox has a nice utility for managing extensions and themes, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to manage your plugins.
The terminology here is a bit vague but it appears that plugins are those things you can install by clicking when prompted for it, such as video codecs, Shockwave, Java, etc. while extensions are those extra little programs you need to go look for yourself and install into your Firefox.
Anyway, after a little bit of digging I found the uninstaller for Flash. Yes, it is a separate program you need to go download in order to uninstall something from your computer.
Furthermore, reading from Adobe's website, it has this fantastic piece of marketing explaining the need for a separate uninstaller program:
Due to recent enhancements to the Adobe Flash Player installers, you can now remove the player only by using the Adobe Flash Player uninstaller
So, you've enhanced the product by making it more difficult to get rid of it.
I'm so impressed. Not.
So there you have it. Simple uninstall, restart and reinstall to fix your Flash, in case there's someone else out there trying to figure out how to fix it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment