I solved the problem! For me it was only pulling the power on my wireless router and cable modem. Problem Solved. The only thing that worked and continues to solve the problem every few months. Very frustrating until I used the simple solution. Supposedly it has something to do with the way your isp serves up the stuff.

I have strong 8Mbit connection (no wifi) and I have this problem! (Estonia, not USA)
I have this problem everywhere I use youtube. BUT! In my case I notice this problem only when I try to watch video in Embed mode. Maybe this is about new law which is restrict some videos to view in other than USA countries? I have video, which is were available 1-2 weeks ago and I embed it to my forum. Now it shows me "We're sorry, this video is no longer available" and when I try open it in youtube site I'v got "This video is not allowed to watch in your country". But before that I hade "jumping" videos too (one moment it shows, second its not)

I think a hefty component of the Youtube database is a random number generator. I've got a long subscription list and lately I've been clicking on the individual components only to be told there were no videos owned by that user. No problem think I, delete that subscription as they have most likely deactivated that ID.

There is a problem though, as I've discovered the IDs are not only still there, but so are their videos. They just don't show up as parts of subscriptions.

I think Youtube grew too fast for the programmers to keep up with. If it is being integrated in with the rest of the Google database structure, obviously things are not going without a hitch.

It can be connected with geo targeting too, i wonder whether guy which sent complain to you had constant or dynamic IP address. Maybe IP given by his ISP to him was connected with wrong country in youtube bases.

I am the guy who is having the problem, who sent the email to Philipp Lensen (Blogoscoped.com).

I was reading your comments and they are very interesting. 2 of you blamed this on my ISP which could be true but I do not think so, as this problem is too wide spread around the world (just google it and you will get a feeling that many around the world have the same problem). The only common element I can think of is Youtube itself.

Yesterday it happened just once on a single video for example, then I just refreshed once and the same video was shown normally. Very strange!!

I have a dynamic IP provided by my ISP (Melita Ltd, Malta) btw.

Thanks for all the comments and response, any other thoughts would be great. Hopefully Youtube get this and solve it.

What search query are you using to find thousands of people around the world with this problem? That error message is shown for dozens of reasons (embedding disabled, video removed, user account banned, etc etc) so I am not surprised people are talking about it. It seems impossible to know how many people are incorrectly getting the error message.

I assure you the engineers working on the flash players (myself included) don't suspect anything to be wrong with the players right now. Of course, this is only because we have never run into the problem ourselves.

I can also say that the team has done a lot of ground work which will allow us to give more useful error messages. If you consider yourself technically capable (you use firefox and know what firebug is) email me at philharnishyoutube.com and I'll help troubleshoot the problem. Strange bugs like this cannot be resolved unless we have help from someone who can produce them in the first place :)

If I encounter this error, it's usually gone on the page reload. So it must be something on the Youtube side. Most probably a part of Google's distributed database is offline at the moment of viewing.

a *ugly* solution is using http://keepvid.com, like I'm doing.

PS: not affiliated with keepvid ;)

It is a network speed problem only. If the network speed is low, and you watch anythying else with youtube video, it gives this error

A few months ago, I ever been facing this problem. From same PC through 1 transparent proxy server in 2 ip segment, #1 is ok but #2 is error. That PC never got error when going youtube directly and also when going through proxy manually (setup in web browser).

I left it (not trying to solve) for longer. Recently, I started redirecting http traffic through transparent proxy again (2 weeks ago). The problem don't occurred yet till now.

PS: Transparent Proxy Implementation Objective is to block some YouTube vdo clips.

This is a response to Phil Harnish. Thanks for taking notice and posting btw.

I will certainly email you once I get the error again with the required details. Sometimes it takes days or even weeks for the error to come again though.

I estimated that there were many people having this problem, because when I typed the error as a query in google, you get 52,000 results (552,000 without quotes). Each forum post or blog has numerous comments with people describing the same error. You can also judge by the type of response on this blog. I doubt that all these videos that these people are accessing have been deleted or have been blocked, etc

I understand your position though, that such a random error (with multiple symptoms), is impossible to identify and fix without direct troubleshooting from who is having the error like me. I will try to help you there, when I actually get the error again.

That said, more informative error messages in the flash player would surely be welcome from Youtube engineers. If there is a problem with a slow network, for example, then please make sure that the error describes that particular problem, if possible. An error like "Your network is too slow, don't be cheap and get a better service :)" would be better than “We’re Sorry, This video is no longer available”.

Great to see youtube are finally taking notice. Looking forward to hearing more comments.

Unplugging my cable and wifi connection for 15 seconds fixes it everytime. Here is a way to know it is you and not "them". Send an email with the url to a friend out of state, every time they are able to watch the video – at least that is my experience. Plug, unplug, watch!

Videos on you tube were fine until i was told my Adobe flash needed upgrading. Then after upgrading flash and Java , zilch.-Now I'm told java is off-wrong.Flash is wrong -wrong! All I've heard is problems ; any solutions?

I get this problem from time to time. I'm in US. Mostly on embedded videos, and/or if I open another tab and load the video but don't immediately start it (sometimes it is hours before I go to watch). Usually I have to refresh the page in order to watch the video, or I just give up. I do use No-Script, which probably both helps and hurts.

Sounds like a proxy problem.

In IE, goto Tools, Internet options, Connection, LAN Settings, make sure "Automaticly detect settings" is off.

Good luck.

it's very simple. youtube use referer string for checking from which site, or on which site is video embed. if this script not return correct datas, video will not work. you can test it with this addon for firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967.
just add modify rule for referer to something like '>"> or anything else what you want and you'll see. i report it to google, but as usually nothing happen.

Hello to all.
Me too experienced the same problem and particularly starting after the upgrade to last flash player on embedded video.
I had the same problem on 2 different laptop (mac) with 2 different broadband providers. Perhaps new flash player + embedded videos can give this strange problem?

When I enter youtube.com my download manager is saying: Would you like to download this video? (in deed I do).
But youtube is saying: Video isn't available.
So is interesting for me.
If I like see it I must download it first : D

Easy fix, for all windows vers. In internet explorer go into Tools/Internet Options/Connections Tab/Lan Setting. Once in Lan Settings, uncheck all boxes. ALL youtube videos will load now.
Pass it on.

So-called "Easy fix" that will load "ALL youtube videos" surprisingly ... does NOT work. Try it if you want, as it won"t hurt, but don't come crying after it failed for a refund.

Can not be solved by unchecking all boxes....

I had this problem with Youtube on Chrome (tho' not on my IE or Firefox). In my case at least It was due to an incompatibility with settings in Kaspersky AV as discussed on: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=7722152cb151490c&hl=en

Maybe even if you haven't got Kaspersky installed, if you tweak your antivirus settings ?

NB it also solve a problem I had of hanging on the New York Times website

alright, i'll try posting my problem here: i was having the issue that videos were freezing in 2 seconds, until i restarted firefox. no problems in IE.

so after doing some online research, i figured i should update flash; i'm now using flash 10. now i'm getting the "no longer available" message, but when i try the videos in IE, they work. i don't get the message all the time, but for most videos most of the time i do.

is there a flash version neither problem will happen with? i don't know which i was using before.