Vimeo is one of the top video sharing websites after YouTube attracting millions of users worldwide. It’s a site I turn to when I wish to see some tutorials or a product demo.
Many filmmakers, celebrities and lot of startups seem to prefer using Vimeo to promote their products.
Lets get straight into the topic about the issue I was facing in Vimeo site. For a while I have been having this problem of videos on Vimeo being unplayable when using Firefox browser [Browser version: 24.0; OS: Windows XP].
But the very same videos plays flawlessly on other browsers. When using Firefox all I see is the first frame of the video without any player controls thus making it impossible to play. Even embedded Vimeo videos don’t seem to play on Firefox.
Simple search on the web shows that I am not the only one who is facing such a problem. Many people seem to have raised this concern on official Vimeo forums. Here are some suggestions given by the staffs.
1. Disabling add-ons and starting Firefox browser in safe mode.
2. Clearing all cookies and restarting the browser.
None of the above suggestions helped me fix the problem, I even tried via private browsing. So if you are in the same situation go ahead and read on.
Why Vimeo Videos Does Not Play on Firefox?
Some Insights:
In Chrome, Vimeo serves video via HTML5 instead of using Flash but in Firefox it is served using Flash since H.264 video format is not supported in it currently.
Firefox since version 3 started using an approach to isolate certain plugins from the browser process so that crashing of those plugin will not impact the entire process. It’s called out-of-process plugins(OOPP) crash protection.
In our case the culprit seems to be Real Player plugin. Disabling crash protection of it seems to fix the issue.
How to Resolve this Problem?
1. Type about:config in address bar and hit enter.
2. Click ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’ button.
3. Type dom.ipc.plugins.enabled
4. If it’s already set to true leave it as it is else double click on it to toggle the value.
5. Now right click, select New->Boolean then in preference name enter dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nppl3260.dll and click OK then select false as value and press OK again.
6. Close all windows and restart the browser.
7. Go to the concerned video. You should be seeing all player controls and will be able to play the videos unlike before.
So did the fix work for you? Are you to able to see Vimeo videos again on Firefox? Confused with the instruction or stuck in some step? Please feel free to drop in your queries.
[Hat Tip: JJ333]
That fixed it for me! Thanks, I never new about about:config 🙂
Defacto Design,
You are most welcome and do share this article on the web 🙂
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled does not exist on my computer.
MacPro running 10.9.5
Shunmugha, this is a great fix for me on my machine, but when running a marketing campaign and need the video to play on other users FF browser it doesn’t help. Wish I could find a solution through Vimeo.
Chad,
You are most welcome. Yes it does not! Vimeo should come up with a fix. But you can always mention this article in FAQ section 😉
Do share this article if it helped you out, cheers!
Sadly didn’t make any difference for me…
Didn’t work for me. Sadly, I’ve had to switch to using Opera now. Can’t believe Mozilla won’t come up for a fix for this.
Did you try about:config fix. It worked for many of us. Ya Mozilla and even Vimeo seems to not mind about this problem. They suggest to clear all cache, cookie and give it a try.
Bonus tip: Create a new profile in Firefox and try via that.
Having the dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nppl3260.dll on “false” caused all youtube video’s have their sounds unsynchronized. Turning it back to “true” again fixed this. Sorry, I’m using youtube more than vimeo so it stays on
Melora,
That’s something new. Will try reproducing it and will let you know if there’s a workaround. Thanks!
Vimeo still doesn’t work for me in Firefox, sorry.
The nppl3260.dll fix didn’t work for me either. The Vimeo video screen shows as if the video is starting but it stays at 0:00. The video is not paused or anything… it is just not playing in Firefox 33.0 (but it plays in Internet Explorer 11). No matter how many times I push the play/pause button, nothing happens. 🙁
Thank you! this worked for me, on a mac running Yosemite 10.10.2 and firefox 36.0.1
That’s great 🙂 Please do spread the word.
This did not fix it for me. I have continually had this problem with FF and Vimeo for
atleast a year or more. Lost track of how long. I have year old win7 system and high bandwidth. I see vimeo on this system fine in Chrome so it should not be the system or internet connection. Its something with FF. It plays and I hear audio fine but the playing is got a constant shivering or shuttering jerky look to it. Hard to describe.
Would love to figure it out. Thanks! For now I just use chrome to watch Vimeo films.
Yosemite 10.10.4 (14E46) & Firefox 39.0
Did not work 🙁
Can I undo the change?
Instructions?
Just delete those keys or toggle there value.
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled is not part of my configuration. No joy.
Not even close. The line dom.ipc.plugins.enabled doesn’t exist in my config files.
If it’s not there try adding it by clicking New.
Thanks but the word “New” is not available to me, is not on the config page
+Shunmugha Sundaram
Just an observation about your instructions:-
You say that when adding the new value, ie dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nppl3260.dll, to add it as a Boolean. Yet your screenshot shows it as a String.
I’ve tried both but neither worked for me.
Oh well…
My bad. It should be Boolean.
Worked for me, thank you!
Great! Do spread the word 🙂
the string “dom.ipc.plugins.enabled” does not exist in Firefox 51.0.1
I added “dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nppl3260.dll” as instructed but there is still no joy.
I also didn’t have the dom.ipc.plugins.enabled listed. I added it but still could not play Vimeo video in FF. I updated to FF 52, still nothing improved. This has been a problem, as others have stated, for a very long time.
I don’t want to switch over to Chrome, but I may have to. I may try Pale Moon browser first, as I understand it’s very similar to FF.
When I try to play a Vimeo video, I get a fraction of a second of sound, but that’s all…I can click on a different place in the playback bar and I get another stutter of sound, and that’s it. That’s typically the point that I switch over to Chrome to see the video.
It’s SO frustrating.
Like Helium, I do not have the string “dom.ipc.plugins.enabled” in Firefox 52. I cannot play vimeo videos.
I’m on FFv54.0 & Windows 7-64bit. I’ve tried safe mode and disabling ‘use hardware acceleration’. But Vimeo has never worked for me. The first frame has preview. If you click the play button, the second frame will appear and then freeze. No audio at all.
I discovered that I could partially fix this by using the extension ‘right to click’. When you apply it on the vimeo’s preview page, you can right click and get a drop down with console commands. It will then play from there. If you stop the stream and try to restart it freezes again and you have to reload the page back to the preview (first frame) and apply the ‘right to click’ script again then right click to get the drop-down commands.
After months of frustration and no Vimeo I got this fix to work first time
Like bblack4jc I did not have the string “dom.ipc.plugins.enabled” in my older Macbook but I inserted this in config first in the same way shown for step two
Worked straight away after restarting Firefox
Thanks Shunmugha
My pleasure. Do share the article 🙂
Don’t have a Mac. Windows vista with firefox. I do not have enough to go adding a string to “config”, and ignoring all the warnings. I might type in a file name that causes all computers to self destruct so I think I am better to error on safe side and stop using firefox. I did have high hopes for it since Microsoft sold us out. Google Chrome works fine.
Didn’t work for me. I can’t believe that Firefox ignore this. I might just go back to Chrome.