This browser does not support video playback.
I've gotten used to switching to a different browser when the above message appears on videos posted on Twitter. Every now and again, though, I get frustrated and spent absolutely ages trying to find a reliable way to get the damn things to play in Firefox or the Firefox-derived Pale Moon, which is my current default browser, but I've never yet had any luck. And the sheer number of search-results leading to other people's attempts to solve the same problem convinces me that it's an extremely common problem.
Proposed solutions generally include all the stuff most of us have already tried before resorting to searching message-boards for answers. Updating flash and enabling or disabling flash or HTML5. Then there's suggestions regarding changing various entries in the about:config page. Some of the discussion gets esoteric to say the least and none of it seems to work. Either you have the problem or you don't, and if you do, it seems that by and large you're stuck with it. So back to opening a second browser then.
Trouble is, opening a second browser can be a little frustrating at times. My computer is definitely getting a little too aged to have too many memory-sucking programs open at the same time, and I've often already got two or three things open, so opening that second browser can be a slow process at best, and actually loading media-heavy web-pages in it can be even worse. And many people, of course, don't even have a second browser.
So anyway, the other day I found a workaround, all on my ownsome. It's ugly as sin, but it does allow you to play the video in a new tab or, if you prefer, download it to play in a desktop media player. (Turns out the actual media-format is only a plain old mp4 file, so almost any browser plug-in for playing video files or desktop-player (I use VLC for both) should handle it. It's Twitter's proprietary player that causes the problem, not the media itself.)
Browsing my Twitter stream, the first video I came across was this one, re-tweeted by William Gibson, so let's use it as an example. It's not a particularly amazing clip, but it'll do for our purposes. (And Gibson's involvement is somewhat apt for this blog, so that's a small plus.)
First, right-click in the video, and then in the This Frame
section of the context-menu, click View Frame Source
.
A window will open, displaying a huge chunk of code. We're looking for the URL of the mp4 file, so hit Ctrl+F
and search for .mp4
. The URL will begin with https
(or possibly in some cases http
), so scan backwards from the .mp4
term until you find that, and then copy the whole chunk, including those two terms, into a text-editor. You should end up with (for this particular video) this:
https:\/\/video.twimg.com\/ext_tw_video\/726104401195204609\/pu\/vid\/636x360\/e84UOktBDgcvvKfV.mp4
And we need to get rid of all those back-slashes, which is why we pasted it into a text editor. In your editor's search/replace thingy, put a back-slash in the Find
box and leave the Replace With
box empty, then hit Replace All
. You should now have a proper URL:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/726104401195204609/pu/vid/636x360/e84UOktBDgcvvKfV.mp4
If you want to watch the video in-browser, just copy the cleaned-up URL, open a new tab, paste that into the address-bar and hit Go
(or, of course, press the Enter
key). If you'd prefer to download the video, open the downloads window (Ctrl+J
on a Windows machine) and press Ctrl+V
(right-clicking doesn't work) to paste the URL, and it should automatically start downloading.
And that's all there is to it. As ever with these posts, I hope this has been of use to someone.
—Daz
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Or you could just use a browser that actually works – Chrome.
I thought you were adamantly opposed to using Twitter.
I’m not Twitter’s greatest fan, ‘specially when people try to use it for what should be complex and nuanced debates. People on other fora do link to videos posted there, though, now and again.
Chrome? No thanks; I’m too fond of having a menu bar. Also, I’m still on Vista, and Chrome are no longer providing updates for pre Windows 7.
Similar to the wizard wheeze of pinching artwork off someone’s website (45cat is a good one here) when it’s been locked.
Chrome has actually deteriorated in recent years, but I still prefer it to Firefox, and I’m still using it myself despite the non-Vista support. And I refuse to upgrade my computer just because it’s no longer fashionable. It does everything I need to do, which is edit mediawiki sites.
Thanks. Using your method I did something similar: I clicked This Frame, but then View Frame Info, and copy and pasted the video URL from that. It worked once VLC was running
I tried following the instructions above. When II opened the source, There and searched for .mp4, there was none. Then I searched for twimg.com and for a reference. From there, I reviewed the URL and everything look good except where I would expect the mp4 extension, I found “.m3u8”. This was very different. I modified the url removing all back slashes and ended with an address very similar to yours above except I need a special player, which I have yet to discover. I learned the M3U8 files are plain text files that can be used by both audio and video players to describe where media files are located. I tried opening the file with Windows Media Player, but I received a message, “The selected file has an extension (.mu38) that is not recognized by Windows Media Player…”
Example below:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/734783854985289728/pu/pl/j0xndFX9nO64erCV.m3u8
Any suggestion how to play the video and get it playing on the Twitter feed?
Thanks,
Joe
Joe K
A
.m3u8
is a playlist file. As you say, it should contain a URL of the media file to be played, but after opening your example in a text-editor, I see that it doesn’t. Bizarrely, it contains a truncated URL of the playlist file itself. I don’t see how that could possibly load any kind of video file, since it gives no information as to where such a file is located. Very odd.Could you provide the URL of the tweet it came from?
Hi Daz,
Thank you for your response. Her e is the link as you requested: https://twitter.com/embraer/status/734783963017957377
Hi Joe.
I’m sorry to say, that has me completely stumped. Which means my method only works for some videos. Bugger!
Hi, Daz! First, I’d like to thank you. Your method works. But now I’m stucked on the same problem of Joe K. Some videos with the extension .m3u8 are appearing, and I can’t watch them on any browser. Damn Twitter!
Having the same problem on an XP – guess I’m up a creek
It wasn’t working on my Google Chrome, in MacOS. The problem was Adblock.
Okay, using this method, I was able to find a workaround even for the instances where you find a .m3u8 file instead of the normal .mp4 file. It takes a few more iterations of basically the same steps.
Download the .m3u8 file, and open it in a text editor. Any text editor should work. You should see something like this:
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=320000,RESOLUTION=320×180,CODECS=”mp4a.40.2,avc1.42001f”
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/pl/320×180/Wjm5E00yOkTOCzoj.m3u8
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=832000,RESOLUTION=640×360,CODECS=”mp4a.40.2,avc1.42001f”
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/pl/640×360/BL7gVvi2qEnijw1x.m3u8
Copy one of the /ext_tw_video lines, for whichever resolution you want. Paste it onto the end of this string:
https://video.twimg.com
So, for the above, you’ll wind up with:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/pl/640×360/BL7gVvi2qEnijw1x.m3u8
Download that file, and open it in the text editor. You should see something like the following:
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:6
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:0
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:3
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/0/3000/640×360/w6E2VRfAOOhWVScd.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/3000/6000/640×360/Fr9BwuNAeCqq8X4B.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/6000/9000/640×360/t64UKg9ZB9zDJvmN.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/9000/12000/640×360/VL2mf0n2TZ4WLug2.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/12000/15000/640×360/wroRmMk8kQez4AFJ.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/15000/18000/640×360/q8NK58B9leU5HNWf.ts
#EXTINF:2.125,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/18000/20125/640×360/vorjWf5wH9dKgmn0.ts
#EXT-X-ENDLIST
Now take one of THESE /ext_tw_video strings (I believe the higher bitrates are the ones at the bottom), and paste it onto the end of the same string as before:
https://video.twimg.com
So you’ll wind up with:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/18000/20125/640×360/vorjWf5wH9dKgmn0.ts
Download THAT file, rename it to a .mpeg file, and you should be able to play that in any media program (although Windows Media Player seems to have an issue, for whatever reason).
All in all it’s about 20 steps to watch a 5 second video. Totally worth it. By the way, the video in question for this example is a bit NSFW (just one curse word), so bear that in mind.
Hope this helps.
When you get pointed to a .m3u8 file instead of a .mp4 file, you can still get to the video. It just takes a few extra steps.
Download the .m3u8 file, open it in a text editor, and you’ll see something like this:
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=320000,RESOLUTION=320×180,CODECS=”mp4a.40.2,avc1.42001f”
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/pl/320×180/Wjm5E00yOkTOCzoj.m3u8
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=832000,RESOLUTION=640×360,CODECS=”mp4a.40.2,avc1.42001f”
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/pl/640×360/BL7gVvi2qEnijw1x.m3u8
Take one of the /ext_tw_video lines and paste it onto the end of the following string: https://video.twimg.com
So you’ll end up with https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/pl/640×360/BL7gVvi2qEnijw1x.m3u8
Download that file and open it in the text editor, and you’ll see something like:
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:6
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:0
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:3
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/0/3000/640×360/w6E2VRfAOOhWVScd.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/3000/6000/640×360/Fr9BwuNAeCqq8X4B.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/6000/9000/640×360/t64UKg9ZB9zDJvmN.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/9000/12000/640×360/VL2mf0n2TZ4WLug2.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/12000/15000/640×360/wroRmMk8kQez4AFJ.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/15000/18000/640×360/q8NK58B9leU5HNWf.ts
#EXTINF:2.125,
/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/18000/20125/640×360/vorjWf5wH9dKgmn0.ts
#EXT-X-ENDLIST
Again, take one of the /ext_tw_video lines and paste it onto the end of the same string as before. Higher bitrates are the ones at the bottom, I believe, so use one of those. You’ll end up with something like:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/18000/20125/640×360/vorjWf5wH9dKgmn0.ts
Download THAT file, and rename it to a .mpeg instead of a .ts. Then you should be able to play that file. It works in VLC, at least.
All in all this is about 20 steps of work for what usually turns out to be a 5 second video. Totally worth it.
(The video I used in this example does have a curse word, making it slightly NSFW, so bear that in mind)
Major correction:
In that final .m3u8 file, what you actually have is a PLAYLIST of sorts. It’s not a selection of bitrates like I originally thought, it’s actually a series of files that you have to download and play in sequence.
In other words, in my previous example, where I said you should download one of the videos later on in the list for a higher bitrate, you’d instead actually have to download ALL 7 files:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/0/3000/640×360/w6E2VRfAOOhWVScd.ts
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/3000/6000/640×360/Fr9BwuNAeCqq8X4B.ts
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/6000/9000/640×360/t64UKg9ZB9zDJvmN.ts
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/9000/12000/640×360/VL2mf0n2TZ4WLug2.ts
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/12000/15000/640×360/wroRmMk8kQez4AFJ.ts
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/15000/18000/640×360/q8NK58B9leU5HNWf.ts
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/774539875072684032/pu/vid/18000/20125/640×360/vorjWf5wH9dKgmn0.ts
Download ALL of them, and then play ALL of them in sequence to see the full video that would have been on Twitter.
Obviously, it’s still completely worth it.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
Major correction:
That final .m3u8 file is NOT a choice between files like I originally thought. It’s a full playlist. In the example I provided, you’d have to download ALL 7 files, and then play ALL of them, in sequence, to see the original video as it should have been played on Twitter.