YouTube links not always working (on iPads and iPhones)?

John Scanlon · Post by **John Scanlon** » 25 Feb 2014 5:26 pm

It was brought to my attention that my long sticky post about Mickey Adams's YouTube video index had a lot of broken or non-functional links. (Brought to my attention around here: http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopi ... 98#2207398, or you can go to that original post by clicking on its title in my signature.) I checked it at home on my iPad, and confirmed it appeared true.

However, I just went back through all 193 of them now, and they all work perfectly. The only difference is that I was using my Windows machine at work.

Any ideas what's going on?

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 25 Feb 2014 6:25 pm

Some YouTube videos are probably still flash (.flv) files. I know my ex-girlfriend could not play the flash files on her iPhone and I heard the same about iPads that they didn't support flash. Don't know for sure if this is the problem, but it sounds like it.

John Scanlon · Post by **John Scanlon** » 25 Feb 2014 6:38 pm

Interesting. Apple handheld products do have issues with Flash. Hadn't thought of that, but many of the supposed dead links are newer. Would it make a difference if I have the YouTube iPad app? Surely they all work through it.

Notice if a link on my post doesn't take you there, you can still go in and type the video name in and get there that way. So it does seem they can still play.

John Scanlon · Post by **John Scanlon** » 25 Feb 2014 6:50 pm

Same problems on iPhone. Maybe the YT app itself is the problem.

John Scanlon · Post by **John Scanlon** » 25 Feb 2014 8:24 pm

After deleting the app on my iPhone, I tried it again so it should have opened the link on the YT site in the web browser. This time I got an error message: "an error occurred during validation."

Still digging.

John Scanlon · Post by **John Scanlon** » 26 Feb 2014 12:12 pm

Works fine on desktop iMac. Still confused.

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 26 Feb 2014 5:28 pm

iOS doesn't support Flash. OS X does.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 27 Feb 2014 10:11 am

The only way you can playback YouTube videos on an iphone, iPad, or iPod, etc, is if the video has already been converted to play in HTML 5.0 format. This is either done by YouTube software, or the person uploading the video.

iMac desktop computers have Flash if you use a browser that supports Flash (e.g. Firefox). Apple Corp's official position is to NOT support Adobe's Flash.

Greg Cutshaw · Post by **Greg Cutshaw** » 27 Feb 2014 2:28 pm

I play back flash content on my IPAD using the Photon app available from the App Store.

John Scanlon · Post by **John Scanlon** » 2 Mar 2014 8:45 pm

Two things to add.

First off, there are Flash-supported browsers available: http://ipadnerds.com/flash-for-ipad-all-gens/.

Second, it's not like you can't watch these vids on YT on an iPad - you can. It's simply that the links don't take you there directly. For example, this link seems not to work: 1-7-4 1-2-4-5-1 Pedal Steel Guitar Intro. However, you can go to YT online on your iPad or by using the YT app, search for this by title, and it pops up for easy viewing. Thus, I'm not sure this purely a Flash-on-an-iPad issue.

EDIT
Ok, three things to add - this link did sometimes seem to work: http://youtu.be/pkalsTHxOdU That's odd. Also odd is that it's only sometimes (for me, it works from my post in the testing section, but not here - and it's the identical link). The other one above is from my original post. This one I just copied that minute on the YT app on my iPad using the "copy link" button. But you can still view the actual vid, regardless.

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 2 Mar 2014 9:54 pm

On the files that work, are you sure they are flash files (.flv) and not HTML 5 videos, which should play on iPads and iPhones. You Tube is packed with files in both formats. I had heard that YouTube was going to convert all the files to HTML 5. Don't know for sure that they are. Sounds like too big of an undertaking, unless they use some software to do a batch conversion. Still, that would take forever.

John Scanlon · Post by **John Scanlon** » 3 Mar 2014 10:31 am

Richard Sinkler wrote:On the files that work, are you sure they are flash files (.flv) and not HTML 5 videos, which should play on iPads and iPhones.

No, I am not sure at all of anything. I'd actually guess they *aren't* flash files because, as I say, they do actually play on iPads and iPhones - it's just that the old links from my original post no longer work on iPads, but do work on other computers. Thus, I don't think it is a flash issue after all.