wrote:
On Fri, 3 Nov 2017 18:18:47 -0700, XPer wrote:

Win XP Pro all updated.
Firefox updated.

Some on-line videos i can watch and some are scrambled and some say
"No compatible source for this media"

In some cases i can download and view in VLC but mostly I cannot download.

What am i missing ?
How do I view them ?

I have been seeing that lately too. Maybe one out of 30 videos on
Youtube pop up with this error message. It says something about HTML5 in
the error message. That dont surprise me. html5 has been nothing but a
pain in the ass since it first came out. I wish they would shove it up
the ass of whoever things we need it, because we dont. The old html was
just fine. But there has got to be some idiot who is never satisfied
with anything and has to find a way to **** up what works and make
everyone suffer.

I'm running XP Pro SP3, and Firefox. I'm probably back about 8 or 10
versions from the latest and dont intend to upgrade anytime soon. The FF
version I run is already slow compared to the older versions. I dont
need more of their bloatware to slow me down even more. I'm seriously
ready to dump Firefox and find another browser. But there dont seem to
be much to pick from.

When I encounter that error, I just move on to another video. I dont
have time to fight with garbage. Someone should tell Youtube to clean up
their act, and get rid of that **** which dont work. But I'm sure they
are sleeping with the idiot who created this ****, and will kiss ass to
them to make a buck! After all, Youtube is Google, and google has sold
out to anyone and everyone who makes them money. Google is NOT my
friend!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtub...ty_and_formats

"The default video stream is encoded in the VP9 format
with stereo Opus audio; if VP9/WebM is not supported
in the browser/device or the browser's user agent
reports Windows XP, then H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video with
stereo AAC audio is used instead."

Which means, if they make mistakes, then at least two formats
are possible. If not more.

There was a Youtube Downloader, which would list all the
formats available for a particular video, so you can
work on this if you want. It really depends on how badly
you want a Youtube video, as to whether it's worth it
or not. My Youtube video collection has a size of zero,
for example :-) Can't be bothered.

Here's a snip from some past experiment...

*******

youtube-dl --list-formats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyQUCYl-ocs

[youtube] wyQUCYl-ocs: Downloading webpage
[youtube] wyQUCYl-ocs: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] wyQUCYl-ocs: Extracting video information
[youtube] wyQUCYl-ocs: Downloading js player vflmw6aFG
[youtube] wyQUCYl-ocs: Downloading MPD manifest
[info] Available formats for wyQUCYl-ocs:
format code extension resolution note
139 m4a audio only DASH audio 48k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.5@ 48k (22050Hz), 1.90MiB
249 webm audio only DASH audio 60k , opus @ 50k, 2.03MiB
250 webm audio only DASH audio 79k , opus @ 70k, 2.52MiB
171 webm audio only DASH audio 91k , vorbis@128k, 3.19MiB
140 m4a audio only DASH audio 128k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k (44100Hz), 5.06MiB
251 webm audio only DASH audio 156k , opus @160k, 5.50MiB
160 mp4 192x144 DASH video 85k , avc1.4d400b, 25fps, video only, 3.30MiB
133 mp4 320x240 DASH video 204k , avc1.4d400d, 25fps, video only, 7.50MiB
17 3gp 176x144 small , mp4v.20.3, mp4a.40.2@ 24k
36 3gp 320x240 small , mp4v.20.3, mp4a.40.2
18 mp4 320x240 medium , avc1.42001E, mp4a.40.2@ 96k
43 webm 640x360 medium , vp8.0, vorbis@128k (best)

To download in a specific format:

youtube-dl --format 251 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyQUCYl-ocs

*******

Paul