InformAction Forums

I've recently been experiencing a problem with NoScript and YouTube html5 video. When I click on the placeholder for an embedded video served from googlevideo.com to youtube.com, instead of unblocking the element, the page seems to reload and the video remains blocked.

Steps to reproduce ...

Firefox 38.0.5 with a fresh profile
NoScript 2.6.9.26 with default settings
check "Apply these restrictions to whitelisted sites too"
go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muLfJWOfqGQ
click the placeholder
click "OK"

Instead of unblocking the video, the page seems to reload and the video remains blocked.

Yeah, that's due to the design of YouTube. The video is made up of several pieces each with dynamic URLs so unblocking a single one of those then reloading the page doesn't get anywhere.

You'll need to go to the Blocked Objects menu and pick one of the options below the separator.

I tried unchecking "Automatically reload affected pages when permissions change", but the page still reloads, which as you noted now results in a new dynamic URL ... when clicking a blocked element, shouldn't just that one element be loaded instead of reloading the page? This would prevent the issue with dynamic URLs.

That would actually not stop the issue, unless you're OK with the video stopping and borking every so often when NoScript has to ask about another dynamic URL - in which case, you may have to reload the page depending how the player takes sudden interruptions like that.

So probably the reloading is needed in some form anyway, so NoScript does it for you. I don't know the details though.
(I suppose some of whether the reloading takes place may depend on autoplay settings of the element. Or maybe it's needed for <video> but not <audio> - I know at least not all <audio> trigger NoScript to reload when the element is unblocked.)

Did you try going to NoScript menu > Blocked Objects, and choosing one of the options below the separator?

barbaz wrote:That would actually not stop the issue, unless you're OK with the video stopping and borking every so often when NoScript has to ask about another dynamic URL - in which case, you may have to reload the page depending how the player takes sudden interruptions like that.

If nothing else, it would be an improvement over the current behavior, which results in no video working at all when clicking the blocked element placeholder in order to enable a specific URL on YouTube. (This is the way I've always done it, because I prefer not to have the NoScript button in my toolbar, etc., and because I prefer more fine-grained control, rather than allowing an entire domain rather than a specific URL.)

I'm not sure you are correct about the videos being divided into pieces anyway, as I have not seen evidence of this so far in my use of YouTube since this issue started (a couple weeks ago?). As a workaround, I have been right-clicking on the blocked element and opening the file directly in a new tab, and I have not found any video which is only a piece to this point.

barbaz wrote:Did you try going to NoScript menu > Blocked Objects, and choosing one of the options below the separator?

Yes, but that does not allow the same level of fine-grained exceptions.

RobertDrew wrote:If nothing else, it would be an improvement over the current behavior, which results in no video working at all when clicking the blocked element placeholder in order to enable a specific URL on YouTube. (This is the way I've always done it, because I prefer not to have the NoScript button in my toolbar, etc., and because I prefer more fine-grained control, rather than allowing an entire domain rather than a specific URL.)

Hmm. This help?

https://noscript.net/changelog#1.9.9.98rc1 wrote:+ Automatic reload on permission change setting now affects pages
containing embeddings which change status too, whose reload can be also
forced through the noscript.autoReload.embedders preference:
0 - never reload
1 - inherit the noscript.autoReload setting
2 - force reload

If not, try messing about with other about:config > noscript.autoReload.* prefs?

RobertDrew wrote:I'm not sure you are correct about the videos being divided into pieces anyway, as I have not seen evidence of this so far in my use of YouTube since this issue started (a couple weeks ago?). As a workaround, I have been right-clicking on the blocked element and opening the file directly in a new tab, and I have not found any video which is only a piece to this point.

I'm definitely correct about it because that's consistently how it is (and how it's been for several years) for me.
I have no idea how you are managing to get YouTube to give you the video in one piece.

Those about:config entries did not have the desired effect, but the issue is no longer relevant in my case since the fix for video / audio tags blocked even though not set to forbid

barbaz wrote:I have no idea how you are managing to get YouTube to give you the video in one piece.

If this is an issue for you, you might check to see if disabling media source extensions changes YouTube's behavior in this respect?

RobertDrew wrote:the issue is no longer relevant in my case since the fix for video / audio tags blocked even though not set to forbid

Cool, I'll mark this resolved.

RobertDrew wrote:If this is an issue for you, you might check to see if disabling media source extensions changes YouTube's behavior in this respect?

It's not a problem for me, since all I care about is that it plays; but I had previously tried that out of curiosity and it just meant that the video was divided into 2-4 pieces (depending on the video) instead of many pieces.