Advice On Playing Videos
For most desktop browsers, click anywhere on a video to start; click again (maybe twice) to pause and again to continue. Leaving the page should cause the video to stop.
After the video has been started, playback speed, sound volume control, picture quality, full screen display and other playing options are available at the bottom of each video.
Note that PLAYBACK SPEED is found under the cogwheel button labelled 'Settings' below each video alongside subtitles and picture quality, while the other controls are served by intuitive buttons. Playback speed is a very important tool when trying to understand the intricacies of some Footwork or an especially Complex Figure.
Some browsers, notably Chrome and Safari on iPhone and Android, only allow playback of HTML5 videos when initiated by a user interaction. This is to prevent hearing damage which may be caused by web pages starting videos automatically.
For this reason, (particularly on many touch-screen devices), it may be necessary to click a video more than once to start or stop it, and you may even have to use the playing options available at the bottom of each video to stop the video.
Some browsers, notably Inernet Explorer, restrict pages from running scripts, and so the videos appear blacked out. Clicking the 'Allow Blocked Content' button, if available, should make the videos appear on the page.
If all the videos, on many pages, appear blacked out and no controls are available on the screen to make them appear, we suggest that to view our videos you will need to change to a different browser, or device.
At the bottom right hand side of every embedded YouTube (or Vimeo) video on this site you will find the YouTube (or Vimeo) logo; clicking this will take you directly to that video on the YouTube (or Vimeo) site.
If the videos play as you expect but you would like more information about these videos, see Scottish Dancing Videos Explained.
If You Cannot Find A Video
While the most likely reason is that we don't have one (only about 40% of dances for which we have a crib or a crib diagram also have a video), you may have fallen foul of your browser's attempt to be helpful in speeding the loading of web pages by saving previously viewed pages in a cache on your device or system. We are continually updating pages on this site to make additions and improvements. If you see something that looks wrong or appears to be missing from an index, first make sure that you are looking at the current page by clicking on the Refresh symbol in your browser.Unless you have a very slow or unreliable Internet connection, it's well worthwhile to make sure that your browser is set to clear the cached history when it closes; that way you will always get only current pages when you start your browser.
See How to Clear The Cache in Every Major Browser - Lifewire for a good explanation of the problem and the detailed solutions.
If The Videos Do Not Play
If you don't even get a picture (just a large black box) on the video pages, then the chances are you are using a browser from Microsoft like Windows Internet Explorer 9 (onwards).The problem is this. Often Windows Internet Explorer has disabled the playing of embedded YouTube videos by default (because Microsoft doesn't like Google!). It is possible to get Windows Internet Explorer to play embedded videos (if you fiddle with the settings) but, because there are so many versions of I.E. including all the mobile devices, it is far too difficult to explain here. Google it, or...
The simplest thing for you to do is to use another browser like Firefox or Google Chrome. These browsers are excellent (and free) and can be run alongside your existing Internet Explorer browser and so you don't even have to get rid of Internet Explorer first. This is most likely to solve the problem because both Firefox and Google Chrome browsers are very friendly to embedded videos. Google owns YouTube.
If you don't get a picture (just the large black box) on the video pages and if you are using any browser other than Internet Explorer, then you probably have JavaScript disabled on your browser. You must also have a recent version of Adobe Flash Player turned on in order to play these videos. Search Google for how to install it and turn it on for your particular browser.
If videos previously worked correctly and have now stopped doing so, it may be that your browser has (in order to speed up loading) saved some of our code which no longer works; browsers aren't clever enough to detect code changes and so clearing the cache as explained in the Lifewire link above should resolve it.
If the videos usually work for you but a particular video has a warning like 'This video has been disabled...', then it won't play straight from the page; you may be able to get it to play by going direct to YouTube (or Vimeo) to play it.
If the videos usually work for you but a particular video has a warning like 'This video is private', then it can only be played if you have authority from the video owner.
If the videos usually work for you but a particular video has the warning 'This video has been removed...', then all is lost. Someone has removed the video from YouTube (or Vimeo) and so it is not available to anyone, even on YouTube (or Vimeo). Please let us know and we will remove all reference to it from this site.
You will have been redirected to this paragraph if you had kept a link to a video page which we have had to take down because the only video on it has been removed. There are many potential reasons for that removal: anyone appearing in it, even a member of the audience, may object to being shown publicly; any performer (a dancer or a musician) may object to his/her performance being made public; a copyright owner (the deviser of the dance or the composer of the music) may object to the performance; or the recorder of the video may be dissatisfied with the quality. Sadly, there is nothing that we can do to remedy this until an alternative video becomes available.
If you can play most of the embedded videos on this site but just the odd one won't play, then there is every chance that a mistake has been made at this end. Please Contact us and we will try to correct any fault.
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