I’m surfing around on the internet and end up on YouTube. I select a video and I get a message saying “You are off line. Check your connection”. If I use the “try again” button nothing changes. I refresh and it plays, no problem.
I’m on reddit/twitter and click on a video. It plays fine. I try to enlarge/full screen it and it goes black but the audio keeps playing. This never happens on Youtube.
Other videos on various sites intermittently and temporarily (a few seconds), go nearly black while audio continues. These are mostly (all?) links from whatever page on to the video.
I’m pretty computer illiterate but I don’t think that’s causing the problem. Video card?
Start by seeing if you can replicate these things with a different browser.
Playing with your browser’s hardware acceleration settings could fix things (or maybe make them worse?).
If you have any adblockers (uBlock, uBlockOrigin, Adaware, SponserBlock, Pihole etc), turn them all off and see if that helps. I’ve had plenty of times where something somewhere changes and until ad blockers update their software, wonky things can happen, like videos not properly playing.
Since they are all related to playing video in your browser, I’d say they probably are related.
Also, take a look at any installed/running add-ons. Try disabling them all and trying to recreate the problem.
Yeah, the whole no video, but sound playing seems to be a pretty clear indication that it’s browser or security related to me.
Try using Edge or another browser to do the same things. If they don’t happen, I’d start looking at Chrome and seeing if it was fully updated, or if it has any weird add-ons. If the other browser behaves the same, I’d start looking at whatever security (antivirus/antispam/anti-malware) apps you have running.