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Question for the technically-inclined

zuzu

For about a week or so, I’ve noticed that I can’t hear sound on YouTube videos on my home computer. There’s nothing wrong with my speakers, so I can hear other things. But while I can see the videos fine, I can’t actually hear them.

This is true both for videos at the site and embedded videos.

Also, for some reason, when I went into YouTube today for the first time since noticing this, I realized that I wasn’t automatically signed in as usual; instead, when I went to log in, my yahoo login and password were filled in, not my YouTube login.

Anyone have this problem? If it helps, I’m on Firefox.

17 thoughts on Question for the technically-inclined

  1. You may have one particular volume setting turned all the way down, or muted. Try double-clicking the volume icon in the task bar (so that it brings up a window for it, not just a context menu with a volume slider.) If any of the volume sliders are turned down or muted, tinker with it and see if that fixes it.

    If that doesn’t seem to be the problem, go through the menu of that volume window, and make sure it’s displaying all the volume channels available. In the preferences of most volume-managers you can choose which ones appear in the main window… make sure they’re all enabled, and that they aren’t down/muted when they are displaying in the window. If that’s not it, I’m at a loss.

  2. I am not having this particular problem, but I am having other problems. My playlists are not showing up for some reason. I also use Firefox.

  3. Your Flash plugin may be broken; they tend to do that sometimes, and I’ve been having quite a lot of trouble with Flash in Firefox 2. Can you hear sound in other Flash files, and specifically in other Flash videos? (Godtube uses the same type of Flash video as Youtube, so if you can hear Godtube videos then you should be able to hear Youtube ones as well.)

    Uninstalling and reinstalling Flash Player might fix it, or it might not; so might uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox (which won’t hurt the bookmarks &c. in your profile directory, but may require you to reinstall extensions).

    I’m not sure what’s going on with the Yahoo credentials being filled in instead of the Youtube ones. That’s just weird.

  5. How long have you been running Firefox continuously? A simple quit and relaunch of the app may be what’s needed. If it runs for too long, it could create such a huge drain on the available memory that problems like that start cropping up.

    The lack of sound has happened to me before. I could hear YouTube videos in Safari, but not FFox, and restarting Ffox helped.

  6. i don’t know about your audio problem. but recently, the same sort of login issues have been popping up with my firefox. some sites have been updating their technology so things such as the automatic fill-in on firefox are disabled. Although, my fill-in feature doesn’t work on yahoomail.com so I don’t know if it’s the same deal?
    maybe a chat with technical support would help. 🙂

  7. Like Aaron, I would really suspect the Flash plugin first. If you can’t hear sound in other Flash things in your browser, that’s probably the ticket. Definitely check whether you experience the same problem with Internet Explorer, too — that will help narrow things down.

  8. I’m not sure if you’re a Mac user, but I experienced this same problem in Firefox after upgrading to 2.0 a few months ago. Turning off NoScript and reinstalling Flash did not help. I found the solution here:’

    Move the three Flash files out of /Library/Internet Plug-ins and into your own ~/Library/Internet Plug-ins folder. …

    The three files are:

    Flash Player Enabler.plugin
    Flash Player.plugin
    flashplayer.xpt

  9. Since we’re on the subject – Youtube NEVER works for me. Instead of a smooth-flowing video I get one frame every two seconds. Occasionally the sound works; sometimes it’s also really choppy. This happened when I had the most recent Flash and when I installed an older version (thinking the update might be the problem). And this happens in both Firefox and IE.

    Any ideas?

  10. Ooh, while we’re asking questions of the technically inclined, can I throw one out there?

    I’m trying to fix up a friend’s PC for her, and it’s been a bit of a nightmare. I’ve gotten most of it sorted out, but I can’t figure out for the life of me why it won’t display background colours in anything. For instance, if I were to visit hotmail.com in either her IE or newly downloaded Firefox, I don’t get a blue background. I get plain. In programs like BookCat or whathaveyou that have fields with backgrounds, I don’t get the background colour, just plain white.

    The PC doesn’t seem to have a problem with colour, she’s got a rather colourful wallpaper, her security options in IE and Firefox look normal, and that wouldn’t account for why windows-style database interfaces don’t show colour either.

    Any ideas?

  11. Youtube hasn’t been working for me in Firefox since a couple days ago. Works in Safari though. Strange.

  12. There are two things that do that on my PC. One is when I play a video file in Windows Media Player and click the “mute” button; after I do that “mute” stays on. That’s easy to fix: to turn it off fire up the “Volume Control” widget (on my system right-click on the speaker icon in the toolbar in the lower-right corner of the screen and select “Open Volume Controls”) and turn the volume back up.

    The other cause for YouTube video going silent is when I use a program that accesses the sound card exclusively. The one that comes up all the time on my system is Warren Furlow’s indispensable HP-41 emulator “V41.” You can’t fix that by opening up the “Volume Control” widget; the only way to allow other programs to drive the sound card is to temporarily exit out of “V41.” Sometimes having a particular web page open in a Firefox tab has also made Winamp refuse to play sounds until I closed that tab.

    Arianna: …I can’t figure out for the life of me why it won’t display background colours in anything. For instance, if I were to visit hotmail.com in either her IE or newly downloaded Firefox, I don’t get a blue background. I get plain. In programs like BookCat or whathaveyou that have fields with backgrounds, I don’t get the background colour, just plain white…

    Look in the “View” pull-down menu under “Page Style.” Is it set to “No Style” instead of “Basic Page Style”? That setting gets rid of background images and font colors. It is a very useful setting for those eye-killing pages with, for example, tiny red text on a black background.

  13. Since we’re on the subject – Youtube NEVER works for me. Instead of a smooth-flowing video I get one frame every two seconds. Occasionally the sound works; sometimes it’s also really choppy. This happened when I had the most recent Flash and when I installed an older version (thinking the update might be the problem). And this happens in both Firefox and IE.

    Any ideas?

    Are you on broadband or dial-up? When I’ve had that happen to me, it’s an issue with how quickly the video gets buffered. So with longer videos, I’ll usually not play them until about half gets buffered. You can measure this by looking at how the less bright red line moves along the bottom. When you play the video, there’s a bright red line that shows you how far you’re into it. The buffer is the less bright one that precedes that line.

  14. I think something is wrong with the latest Firefox version (which I downloaded about a week ago). I’m not having any problems with Flash, but I’ve had inexplicable crashes on a fairly regular basis since I patched. Might explain the Youtube stuff, too.

  15. OK, I will not say that this always works, but…

    Go to Start, then My Computer, then right-button click your CD or DVD player, then go to Properties. Click the Properties folder there.

    At the bottom half of the Properties pop-up you’ll see something called “Digital CD Playback”. Within that, you’ll see something like “Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device” or somesuch, with the checkbox probably checked.

    If it is, uncheck it, hit “OK”, count to ten, then go back in, check it and get out, then reboot your PC. If it isn’t, check it, then get out, then reboot your PC.

    I’ve noticed, as my Windows XP PC gets older, it seems to get occasionally confused on account of my using it a lot as both a movie watcher and a web browser.

    My two bits…

  16. Are you using a Mac? If so, simply quitting the browser and opening Garage Band will most likely fix it. Apparently, Garage Band resets the sound settings to what they should be. You don’t need to do anything in GB, just open it and close and then reopen the browser. Works for me every time.

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