The VideoLAN Forums

Hello.
Today I updated from VLC 2.1.3 to 2.1.4. I'm an active VLC user, and I use it to play YouTube videos, as the tools that it gives me to do so are amazing.
However, after today's update, I've been unable to play YouTube videos using HTTPS.

I've read that HTTPS support on Windows is sketchy (though that could've been outdated), and yes, if I remove the "s" in "https", I can watch the video just fine.
But my problem is that prior to the update, if I were to copy an https URL, and paste it on VLC, it would play without a single problem. Suddenly, after the update, I'm unable to do the same, and have to manually remove the s every time. More than just an annoyance (it's really convenient going to my subscriptions, right-clicking a video, copy link location, and then pasting on VLC and sitting back; now I have to edit every single URL I paste), it makes me wonder if there's some sort of problem somewhere. This thought is backed up due to the fact that I tried downloading and installing 2.1.3 again, from the archives, but I cannot get the https-paste to work again.

Any idea on what's going on?

Yo, Espyo! :]
In all technicality, even though YouTube videos can be loaded as https in VLC, it appears they are not actually streamed over https unless through a proxy or VPN of some kind; VLC simply translates the https header to http. This can be observed by starting a YouTube video and press CTRL+I. Under "Location", the string always begins with "http://..." even if started from an https YouTube video.

With that said, the inability to start YouTube videos containing the https header may only be a temporary issue specific to VLC v2.1.4 as nightly builds appear to work correctly with them. Perhaps a fix may be available in the next version or maybe someone may devise a workaround for the current version.

Sorry if CloudStalker could not be more helpful. :[

Hello!

Thanks for the reply. I see what you mean, but I still find it weird that I couldn't get the old behavior back when I reverted to 2.1.3...
Either way, I managed to get by for now with a Greasmonkey script. Every two seconds, it checks a list of all video thumbnails on the subscriptions page, and when it finds an href starting with "https", it just replaces it with "http". It works for what I want.

Don't know what the policy here is regarding including short code in your post, so I won't add it. But if it's ok, I guess I'll add the code to my silly script, to help other people with the same problem as me.

Cool beans. CloudStalker is glad that you found something that works for you. :]
If you happen to upgrade to the next VLC version when it becomes available, let us know if the problem persists.

There was an update today, that fixed a security problem with something related to PNG files. The new version is still called 2.1.4. Anyway, the https problem still exists.

Forgot to say: I completely uninstalled VLC, losing my preferences in the process (but not before pointing them down so I wouldn't forget them), deleted VLC's content from AppData, re-installed, updated the YouTube VLC Lua script, and everything's working perfectly now! Not only can it load https videos as if it were nothing, but it also loads them fine each time, which is a problem I was having as of late! (I had to try playing the video like ten times in a row to get it to actually start.)

As of the time of writing this, the most recent script is here: http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=bl ... ua;hb=HEAD