I have a video now and then that won't play on YouTube but plays fine on Tor. Any ideas?

Hi, Rita.

That requires clarification: YouTube is a website, and Tor is a browser.

It sounds to me that there is a geographic filter that is affecting the YouTube availability......TOR is anonymized so sometimes if your IP address through normal browser access trips the filter, TOR will not.

...my best guess....

That's a new one on me; are such filters common?

Are they something along the lines of DVD regions?

Similar, but they determine where in the world you are located based on the IP address that you are accessing their site from.....IP addresses are geographically assigned. When you are using TOR, part of the anonymizing protocol is to hide your physical IP address.

I don't follow why a YouTube video would be blocked in such a fashion...particularly (or maybe not ) in the US.

I've never run across or even heard of one that was blocked, and it sounds like something that would have reared its ugly head countless times.

YouTube is also an app for iOS and there are several YouTube apps for MacOS, so plantsower's statement definitely needs further clarification.


Since TOR is based on Firefox, if the videos don't play on Firefox that would seem to support your "best guess".

I assumed you would know it was Safari. Sorry.

I couldn't get them to play on Firefox either. I am not very good on Firefox and can't get my plugins I put in to work either. I added Flash Control and see it in "tools" and it is activated, but when I try to play a video, it tries to load right away anyway not giving me the choice for HTML. It just keeps loading but doesn't play in any mode. It's okay, I don't like Firefox. I prefer Click-to-Flash on Safari but I can't seem to get it for Firefox. Anyway, my main problem is getting certain videos to play. It's so weird. This is what I was trying to play in HTML. War of the Worlds

I view videos so infrequently that I forgot about it, but I've also had trouble recently playing them in Safari: I click on your link and the video appears with the "HTML5" overlay, but when I click on the pane it turns black.

I just played around a bit, and I found that if I control-click on the pane after it turns black and click on "Restore Plug-in" the video plays.

This behavior began after I installed the most recent Flash update and didn't get any better when I reverted to the earlier version.

More: I just opened your video in a vanilla Firefox, and it played immediately.

More "More": I just tried the control-click trick with a different video with which I had had trouble, and it, too, played.

Dunno what's up.

I don't get a black screen. I get a "still" of the video and underneath is says "error" and the name of the video. It's not the Try Again error that shows up from time to time. I've heard that Flash can let people hack into your computer easier so I always try to use HTML when possible. Not sure what that's all about.

Have you tried control-clicking on the pane to see what options are offered?

I am able to play the broadcast in Safari version 10.1.1 (12603.2.4), Safari Technical Preview (Release 29 (Safari 10.2, WebKit 12604.1.19.0.1)) , iCab 5.8.3, Opera 43.0.2442.1165 (stable), Chrome 60.0.3089.0 (Official Build) canary (64-bit), Firefox 49.0.2, and TOR 7.0a2 (based on Mozilla Firefox 45.8.0). I do not have Flash installed so I assume this is HTML 5 content. This is the image displayed on all the various browsers.

Unless the geographic blocking is from your ISP, which IMHO would be truly evil 🙊, that would seem to point a finger at your version of Safari, or perhaps more likely an advertising blocker or other extension or app you have installed that is blocking something on the YouTube page. I know I have been forced to turn off a couple off recently to get access to some pages.

By-the-way plantsower, thanks for that URL. I am going to enjoy listening to the show

I struck gold (as respects my issue, anyhow)!

I found that I had lost HTML5 capability not just on YouTube, but everywhere, and that appeared to have happened simultaneously with my updating to the latest version of Flash, so my first stab was to download the Flash uninstaller, and that resulted in my getting the dreaded "Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available." screen, which, in light of this , made no sense at all.

I then realized that although my symptoms differ from Rita's, they are similar, and we're both running "ClickTo..." Safari extensions...she, ClickTo Flash, and I, ClickToPlugin, so I disabled mine to see what would happen, and VOILA, I regained HTML5 capability.

I then reinstalled Flash (I don't love it; I need it to list on eBay.), and HTML5 still works.

So, my suggestion to Rita is that she disable ClickToFlash and see what happens.

More: It would seem that I no longer need ClickToPlugin, because HTML5 is my default player without it.

How do you make HTML your default player? Is there a setting or such?

HTML5 is default in Sierra/Safari 10, Harv.


More: Safari 10 will prefer HTML5

(The downside is this pop-up, which pops up with infuriating regularity.