5 ms·

This is an obvious thing for them to do, but the surprising part about it to me is that half the time youtube is too slow to play a video clip I choose. It's ve

by dangero 16y ago

This is an obvious thing for them to do, but the surprising part about it to me is that half the time youtube is too slow to play a video clip I choose. It's very unreliable, so it will be interesting to see how well the streams work.

ludwigvan 16y ago
That's my experience too, here in Turkey. I wonder if it's the same for US or Europe, though.
- ch0wn 16y ago
  It's definitely the case for Germany. It seems to depend on the particular video, though. I had some videos not loading at all at 360p, while others loaded perfectly fine at 720p.
  - dangero 16y ago
    Yeah I've found the same thing. It must depend on something back end, like the encoding used when the file was uploaded, or whether the servers holding that particular file are busy at the time. It's very frustrating.
- JeremyHerrman 16y ago
  I'm in the US on a fiber connection and I constantly wait for buffering. It's only gotten worse over the past year.
- city41 16y ago
  It often is now the case in the US. A couple years of go YouTube's streaming was pretty much flawless. I don't think they've managed to keep up with demand.
  - RickHull 16y ago
    > I don't think they've managed to keep up with demand. They, or our ISP overlords, perhaps.
- citricsquid 16y ago
  I'm in England with ~15mbps down, 1mbps up, never noticed any slow down with Youtube. I can't recall ever not being able to stream without buffering, always been good for me.
- AndrewHampton 16y ago
  I'm in Virginia, and this happened all the time to me while I was on Comcast, but since switching to another ISP, I never encountered this problem.
jrsmith1279 16y ago
Have you ever noticed that you never have a problem playing ads, but yet the video following the ad doesn't work half the time? That's one thing that's irked me about youtube for a while.
- chadcf 16y ago
  Heh, yeah, I get that. Oddly enough on hulu the video generally plays fine, but sometimes the ads pause to buffer...
  - Qz 16y ago
    Recently AdBlock seems to have completely zapped Hulu ads (you still have to wait, but nothing ever shows up).
- dangero 16y ago
  Yeah, and this is exactly how I know that the problem isn't on my end. The commercials work great!
- jrockway 16y ago
  Youtube has ads?
- JshWright 16y ago
  The ad is likely being served by a CDN server much closer to you than the server the video itself is coming from.
  - brianpan 16y ago
    Should that irk me more? Or less? :)
  - baddox 16y ago
    And the bitrate of the advertisements is always very low.
- barrkel 16y ago
capstone 16y ago
It could be YouTube, or it could be your ISP "shaping" the traffic. You can use Glasnost (http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest-mlab.php http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest-mlab.php) to test the latter.
- MediaBehavior 16y ago
  Similarly awful is (usually) my youtube experience over DSL :( However: just now watching eyepatchentertainment's test broadcast I find it remarkable. Sharp picture. Perfectly synced sound. Smooth scroll of live comments. Unknown fps, but it has no jerkiness to video. I worry for what this will do re" jacquesm's ww.com. Looks like youtube-live will be setting the standard for streaming vid.
phlux 16y ago
I'm to the point that I dont try to watch anything on youtube directly. I use keepvid to grab it and play in VLC.
- pyre 16y ago
  There's also get_flash_videos which works on a number of sites as well: http://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/ http://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/
- rkudeshi 16y ago
  You can also try playing it in VLC directly. Just use VLC's "Open Network File" menu command and paste the YouTube URL. Plays at highest resolution possible. Works great for me.
barrkel 16y ago
YouTube uses some kind of bursting heuristic that is marginal in certain scenarios. What it does is it loads the first chunk of a request to start playing with high bandwidth, but it then throttles the connection to approximately the bitrate of the video stream. The idea is that YouTube reduces the costs (bandwidth, CPU, routing etc.) of transferring bits that are never actually consumed, because the user stopped watching the video before it finished playing. The quickest way to get a YouTube video is to download it with a download manager that sends multiple requests. Those requests ought to trigger the initial burstiness, and if you have enough of them either the initial burst will be sufficient to cover the whole file or the total bandwidth (even though throttled) across all simultaneous downloads will reach your own download bandwidth.
nitrogen 16y ago
I noticed once that my traffic to various geographic locations was being routed through non-obvious other locations first, such as going through Texas to get to California (I'm in Utah). My link to California was saturated, so anything hosted there ran terribly slow. A CDN that uses naive geolocation to select a server might not be aware of these bizarre routing situations, picking a less-than-optimal server.

by dangero 16y ago

ludwigvan 16y ago

That's my experience too, here in Turkey. I wonder if it's the same for US or Europe, though.

ch0wn 16y ago
It's definitely the case for Germany. It seems to depend on the particular video, though. I had some videos not loading at all at 360p, while others loaded perfectly fine at 720p.
- dangero 16y ago
  Yeah I've found the same thing. It must depend on something back end, like the encoding used when the file was uploaded, or whether the servers holding that particular file are busy at the time. It's very frustrating.
JeremyHerrman 16y ago
I'm in the US on a fiber connection and I constantly wait for buffering. It's only gotten worse over the past year.
city41 16y ago
It often is now the case in the US. A couple years of go YouTube's streaming was pretty much flawless. I don't think they've managed to keep up with demand.
- RickHull 16y ago
  > I don't think they've managed to keep up with demand. They, or our ISP overlords, perhaps.
citricsquid 16y ago
I'm in England with ~15mbps down, 1mbps up, never noticed any slow down with Youtube. I can't recall ever not being able to stream without buffering, always been good for me.
AndrewHampton 16y ago
I'm in Virginia, and this happened all the time to me while I was on Comcast, but since switching to another ISP, I never encountered this problem.

jrsmith1279 16y ago

Have you ever noticed that you never have a problem playing ads, but yet the video following the ad doesn't work half the time? That's one thing that's irked me about youtube for a while.

chadcf 16y ago
Heh, yeah, I get that. Oddly enough on hulu the video generally plays fine, but sometimes the ads pause to buffer...
- Qz 16y ago
  Recently AdBlock seems to have completely zapped Hulu ads (you still have to wait, but nothing ever shows up).
dangero 16y ago
Yeah, and this is exactly how I know that the problem isn't on my end. The commercials work great!
jrockway 16y ago
Youtube has ads?
JshWright 16y ago
The ad is likely being served by a CDN server much closer to you than the server the video itself is coming from.
- brianpan 16y ago
  Should that irk me more? Or less? :)
- baddox 16y ago
  And the bitrate of the advertisements is always very low.
barrkel 16y ago

capstone 16y ago

It could be YouTube, or it could be your ISP "shaping" the traffic. You can use Glasnost (http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest-mlab.php http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest-mlab.php) to test the latter.

MediaBehavior 16y ago
Similarly awful is (usually) my youtube experience over DSL :( However: just now watching eyepatchentertainment's test broadcast I find it remarkable. Sharp picture. Perfectly synced sound. Smooth scroll of live comments. Unknown fps, but it has no jerkiness to video. I worry for what this will do re" jacquesm's ww.com. Looks like youtube-live will be setting the standard for streaming vid.

phlux 16y ago

I'm to the point that I dont try to watch anything on youtube directly. I use keepvid to grab it and play in VLC.

pyre 16y ago
There's also get_flash_videos which works on a number of sites as well: http://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/ http://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/
rkudeshi 16y ago
You can also try playing it in VLC directly. Just use VLC's "Open Network File" menu command and paste the YouTube URL. Plays at highest resolution possible. Works great for me.

barrkel 16y ago

YouTube uses some kind of bursting heuristic that is marginal in certain scenarios. What it does is it loads the first chunk of a request to start playing with high bandwidth, but it then throttles the connection to approximately the bitrate of the video stream. The idea is that YouTube reduces the costs (bandwidth, CPU, routing etc.) of transferring bits that are never actually consumed, because the user stopped watching the video before it finished playing. The quickest way to get a YouTube video is to download it with a download manager that sends multiple requests. Those requests ought to trigger the initial burstiness, and if you have enough of them either the initial burst will be sufficient to cover the whole file or the total bandwidth (even though throttled) across all simultaneous downloads will reach your own download bandwidth.

nitrogen 16y ago

I noticed once that my traffic to various geographic locations was being routed through non-obvious other locations first, such as going through Texas to get to California (I'm in Utah). My link to California was saturated, so anything hosted there ran terribly slow. A CDN that uses naive geolocation to select a server might not be aware of these bizarre routing situations, picking a less-than-optimal server.