I'm a frequent viewer of YouTube videos using either Firefox 45
or Opera 12 on a Fedora 12 desktop. A couple of weeks ago, the
appearance of the control bar (containing the volume slider, etc.)
changed and videos no longer had any audio. This happened for both
browsers, and on both of my two Fedora 12 boxes. On a Windows XP
desktop, the control bar also has the new appearance, but the audio
still plays. Evidently, YouTube has stopped being friendly to
browsers under Fedora. What do I need to do to get audio back?
I hope you don't say upgrade Fedora. Audio for all other applications
and websites works just fine. Also, I know how to unmute YouTube audio
by clicking on the slider. This is not that kind of problem.

Hello and welcome to the forum

Can you give us a screenshot of the control bar in question? I, too, own a Windows XP system and I've not noticed any change in the control bar in the time frame you've mentioned.

Also, if the videos you're watching use Flash Player, which version are you using? If not Flash Player, which program?

Regards...

I think that what we both see on Windows XP, and what I called "new," is actually the default that has been in place all along. Evidently YouTube had been sending an earlier version to my Linux. That one had a thumb on the volume slider that was a slender rectangle. The one I get now on Linux is the same as on XP and has a thumb that is a fat white circle.

I actually saw YouTube negotiate with Opera the last time I heard audio using that browser. First I saw the video start, for about a second, with audio and the old control bar. Then an generic error message showed for about a second. This was followed by the video starting again, with the new control bar, and no audio. Since then, videos start with the "new" control bar, without audio.

With Firefox, when I disabled Flash, it didn't affect YouTube videos, but did result in an error message with a couple of web radio sites. Therefore I believe that YouTube doesn't require Flash.

I've found in online searching that HTML5 might be involved with the problem, but it's not clear how.

Thank you but I would still need to see a screenshot to get a better idea.

Interesting. What version of Opera are you using? And, again, what is your version of Flash Player?

For newer browsers (and possibly versions of Linux,) no. HTML5 is now the default. For older browsers, you still need Flash Player. Take a look here.

Regards...

Have you checked youtube html5 support page? www.youtube.com/html5

In at leas one distro, I read that firefox would use ffmpeg for <audio> and <video> tag multimedia playback.

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