Old videos just playing a black screen?

I was watching pre-Fandom videos and today they're only playing a black screen? The play triangle loads up (behind is a pulsing "loading" message) and when I click the image the sound plays but there is no video. Also there is no video player UI. Just a black square. Is it only me?

I had this issue last night/early this morning. Clearing my cache and cookie history seemed to fix it.

Unfortunately that did not work. Thanks for trying though!

Yeah, I'm having the same issue.

Same issue with me.

I also ran into this exact issue. Clearing the cache for the site then logging back in fixed it for me. I'm using Safari on the latest version of MacOS.

There is something wrong with the site. I've tried multiple browsers and os' (chrome, FF and E) and all I get is a black box. If I clear the cache it will sometimes work but it's not guaranteed in my experience.

Way to go Fandom. You're really shitting the bed here.

Having the same issue all of a sudden.

Same issue on Chrome. Firefox works.

EDIT: Clearing cache and cookies worked.

Also having this issue. using chrome

clearing cookies and cache did NOT work

I'm trying to watch Choose Our Own Adventure!: 10/20/2015 (Life is Strange) and I'm getting error 232500 with the new player.

A quick update: I've found using Firefox and Chrome that clearing the cache and cookies may work but only temporarily. I was able to watch 1 episode of Metal Gear Scanlon before the problem came back again.

Hate to bug you but is there any traction on this issue @rorie?

@axl159: Let me poke around! Sorry! If you have the option to switch between players some of these will likely work in YouTube but I'll see if I can find the root cause for this.

@rorie You just gave me a brain wave! I checked and it only seems to be effecting old premium series. The old free videos still work fine. Maybe it has something to do with the new player rollout?

Just adding that I had the problem in Microsoft Edge (I know, I know). Cleared up after a cookie/cache clear and full exit and restart of the browser. The problem with the black screen is that it doesn't have any options, so you can't switch the player. If you click it, it starts playing audio but no video or control UI comes up. Hope this helps!

It's definitely related to Premium videos and the new video player in some way from what I can see. When I cleared the cache and re-signed in, it went back to the old player with the extra options and red progress bar. When that happens, everything works as it should. It's been whenever the site has tried using the new player to play Premium videos that these issues pop up for me.

Yea, this is crap for me as well. Some won't even play at all.

@cory1981940: I think now some are playing muted by default so it's playing but you can't see or hear it. It's a new feature in our Fandom Hell.

This is still broken. Happening for me on this video https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/thursday-night-throwdown-052412/2970-18386/premium-video

I've been trying to watch old I Love Mondays and the only way to get it to work is to explicitly open a new page for a video (right click on link to the video's page, open in new tab) -- using the carousel to go to another video doesn't work.

This is great...lol.

@dtoast Could we get a status update on this issue? It might not be high priority for Fandom, but it's very important to this community.

@eccentrix: Yeah let me check to see if Rorie logged a ticket. Edit: Logged a ticket with the engineers.

@dtoast It looks like the specific cookies causing this issue are __gamesVideoPlayer and AMCV_[a bunch of letters and numbers]

If I delete those and refresh the page the old player works again without having to delete *all* cookies and log back in

@nicolenomicon Thanks for sharing that awesome tip! I thought all the old videos were just broken but that clear cookies and sign-in solution solved for me and now videos even resume progress again.

Is there any update on a permanent fix for the player for this issue? It would be nice to not have to clear the cache almost every time to play old UPF's or Playdates.

Even clearing my cache and cookies isn't fixing the videos. I've been trying to watch mario party party and no matter what I do MPP 4 part 1 wont start. Really frustrating to spend money on a subscription to watch old premium videos when I literally can't watch the old premium videos.

If y'all aren't going to fix the player you better be ready to refund me. I gave you my money so I could watch specific content, and I am literally unable to watch that content.

I’m getting this issue this afternoon. I get “loading video” message and sound plays in background.

How is this still broken? Do I have to download everything and host my own plex server???? How much time are you going to waste on a bad idea Fandom? Please just let us use the old player until a miracle happens and your player works.

Reporting in that this issue still plagues me as well. I can't even click the play button to load the player at this stage :(

It has been a goddamn year and nothing has been done still.

Don't suppose anyone found a fix for this? Old premium videos were working fine for me until a couple weeks ago, but now I just get the reported black screen but with audio playing.

Only way I can actually watch these video is if I click the download link at the bottom, but that doesn't save my progress.

@enfo: Honestly at this point, just download the video like you said. I don't think this issue will ever be fixed.

Videos havent worked for a fucking year, and likely never will.

@farristhewheel: Appreciate the suggestion. But at this point I wonder how big a hard drive I would need to download all the premium content I'd like to keep forever.

Back to the topic, this issue seems to be fixed for me? I've been able to watch some old happy hours and UPFs fine with the embedded player, and it's been saving my progress too.

Has this fix been communicated anywhere? Although I think today or yesterday my Chrome was updated, so maybe that had something to do with it? Either way I'm happy about it.

If you're actually curious I think the actual answer to this is something like 8ish terabytes? I've read ranges anywhere from 7 to 10 terabytes if you want the best quality versions of every single premium thing that isn't a video podcast. All videos ever put out on the site is just under 30 terabytes (though if you subtract video versions of podcasts it's more like 20). Most videos from like 2013 and earlier are relatively small since they're mostly 720p or lower in resolution. Anything from 2010 and earlier is equivalent to either 360p or 480p.

But yeah the player has been fixed for a bit now. I find it weird they didn't mention it on the site anywhere. They also fixed the whole "every video being posted to the site is suddenly tagged as premium" thing that was happening for a bit recently. There's been a fair number of small fixes done to the site in the past few weeks.

This is news to me and dtoast. I knew the issues with old premium videos not working or playing had been addressed. Good to know nonetheless.

If this is about the new videos being tagged as premium when posted thing, it appears those videos were re-added or changed in the CMS somehow. The old versions had comments asking why the videos required premium and the new videos don't have those comments anymore and the date they were added to the site has changed. It was only a few videos from Monday to Wednesday of this past week and was fixed within a day of someone posting about it. Videos since Wednesday have been fine and all of those videos now appear to not be premium so it should be fixed.

My guess is someone accidentally flagged them as premium and then re-added them without the flag.

So the whole reason I re-subbed was to watch old premium content; is this just permanently busted at this point?

@pandaloons It was a tough decision for me to make not to re-sub last year when the site broke down and didn't get fixed. It still doesn't work for me (the free videos at least, anyway). The best advise I can give is; just shift over to paying for YouTube Premium to stop using work arounds and getting hit by frustrations.

@zombiepie: I saw a couple comments on this - I'll say I also get the black screen on all videos; e.g. I'm working through vinnyvania. The work around for me is to hit the Download tab and play that way.

@chucktowski: What browser? Could you please send in a support ticket with more details.

@dtoast: hi, could you tell me how to submit a ticket? this is Chrome 122 on Windows 11 - I systematically disabled my extensions one by one and I still click old content and it won't play. I swapped to Firefox and that worked straight away. I'm not getting any console logs, and no network requests on button click - I am seeing what look like JS error analytics events fired off a little bit later but unsure if it's related.

@chucktowski: Hey there, you can submit a ticket here https://giantbombhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new . I'll probably ask a couple more questions and then can make a new priority engineering ticket.

Videos still aren't working