17 ms·

Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

310 points by abraham 13y ago

epa 13y ago
While it may be true that there are some outstanding ISP issues that lead to slow internet, I think the more pressing issue is the behaviour of the new(ish) youtube player acting erratic. For instance, you cannot fully load a video anymore, it will only load a portion as you continue watching. If you wish to rewind the video, for some reason youtube will want you to rebuffer the entire from where you have rewinded to. This is terrible when dealing with slow connections. I have found that since youtube has implemented three specific things, 1) new player, 2) changing of related videos, 3) google account requirements, the user experience has gone way down hill.
- _frog 13y ago
  There's a lot of issues with the new player. Even if you've buffered the video ahead, when you try to skip to a buffered segment the video starts loading again. On top of that I've had lots of issues where changing the video resolution just flat out doesn't work and greys out the option.
  - JoshuaRedmond 13y ago
    There seems to be quite a few issues with video resolution. I had one video suddenly switch from 1080p full-screen down to 144p[1] in full-screen... [1] - Apparently they added this quite recently http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/06/youtube-introduces-ultra-low-bandwidth-144p-video-quality-mode/ http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/06/youtube-introduces-ultra-lo...
    - est 13y ago
      Yeah that's annoying as hell. You know you have fucked up player when congestion control http requests spam more than video stream itself.
  - skore 13y ago
    > Even if you've buffered the video ahead, when you try to skip to a buffered segment the video starts loading again. It makes no logical sense for the player to reload something that was already loaded since that would handily double their traffic (if only in this situation). Which makes me think they don't actually buffer anymore. The bar just shows a standard, imaginary amount of buffering by default and nobody really cares.
    - nitid_name 13y ago
      >Which makes me think they don't actually buffer anymore. The bar just shows a standard, imaginary amount of buffering by default and nobody really cares. It makes me very uncomfortable how "true" that feels.
- bryans 13y ago
  Their player has always been abysmal, from day one. I've noticed a lot of A/B testing for the player recently, as well, and some of the things they're trying out just don't even begin to make sense. It is turning the simple act of watching a video into a legitimately irritating experience.
- SomeRandomUser 13y ago
  Failing to load HD versions of the video and then graying them out (reloading the page usually makes it work again), play the video in 320p and display the resolution as set to HD, SD to HD loading ad infinitum (or just display an error and stop playback), stop buffering after skipping (even to pre-buffered parts), really low streaming speeds (that fix after reloading the page), etc, etc. Making a general video host is so expensive and complicated that we may have to just resign to use YouTube for at least some more years... but it's easily one of the worst user experiences regarding online videos.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    For longer stuff, and when I know I will likely skip back and forth, I use a browser extension to download the video as mp4, and then VLC to watch it while it's still downloading.. so much nicer.
- fsck--off 13y ago
  > If you wish to rewind the video, for some reason youtube will want you to rebuffer the entire from where you have rewinded to. Netflix does this too and it drives me nuts, especially when I'm watching something in HD because it automatically switches to low definition for a few seconds until the high definition version is loaded.
- magicalist 13y ago
  Not buffering the entire video has happened for a long, long time. Years. There's various browser extensions out there that can help you if you want them. The resolution selection is still weird, though, and jumping forward or backward to what look like buffered times is definitely annoying. But the ISP makes a gigantic difference. I have the benefit of a great ISP (smallish in size, no surprise) and seeing all the youtube jokes about ads always working but not the videos themselves made me somewhat puzzled, as the very few times a video doesn't stream it's just as likely to be the ad that pauses as the main video, and that's super annoying because you can't skip ahead in an ad like you can the main video. I figured that other ISPs were worse, but there must be some exaggeration going on for comedic effect. Then recently I was at my parent's house for a while, where they are on Time Warner. I really had no idea how unusable it could be. Constant pausing of video for loading every 20 seconds or so, waiting at the very beginning of almost every video, not knowing if a video was loading or there was some kind of error and the page needed to be refreshed. I'm really used to checking youtube for how to do basic household tasks. Often you'll have to go through two or three to find a good video on a subject. You can't do that at all in that environment, as the waiting is just too much. I'd switch to 240p just to get the gist of a video to make sure I wanted to watch it, so definitely forget any movies you want to see with good quality video. I would queue up videos so at least something was buffered, which meant you have to plan ahead on what you want to watch, totally changing how you use the site. It's really like a totally different product. I think of youtube as the wikipedia of home repair and cooking (or maybe more ehow or whatever, but the point is that it has an expert video for everything) and I also use it for constant mindless browsing and watching interesting talk after interesting talk, quickly deciding if something is worth watching within 30 seconds by scrubbing around in the video a few times. You can't use it for either of those things, and the desire to pull out your hair while waiting for anything else taints any other use, too. If I was on that Time Warner connection, I wouldn't be making jokes about how ads always seem to buffer just fine, I would be completely puzzled how other people would think that Youtube was in any way worth using. It really felt like stepping back to dialup. My connection isn't especially fast, but maybe my ISP does the local CDN thing. People should try it out, because I suspect the transition the other way would be closer to a religious experience, or like stepping out of a time machine. Meanwhile Googlers working on the youtube player might want to all get a Time Warner connection, as maybe designing for that (as opposed to more specific bandwidth or latency limitations) might make for a better player for the many suffering people out there.
- Spittie 13y ago
  ViewTube: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011 It replaces the YouTube player with the standard html5 video player. This alone made my experience on YouTube way better. My connection is slow, so many times I'll just open a YouTube video in a background tab, and leave it loading for a while. With this, I can just preload the whole video. And seeking doesn't make the video reload. A side bonus, also, is that every video will use the html5 player, so making flash useless on YouTube (one of the few sites that make me keep flash installed). It will also remove the ads, so it might not be your thing for moral/ethical reasons.
  - zanny 13y ago
    This thing is amazing, thanks for the script link! My slow 1.5mbps Internet has had awful youtube experience since the player change. I have been downloading most of the videos directly to avoid using it.
    - chii 13y ago
      how do you download the video? is it a browser plugin? I use chrome, and the old youtube downloader extension no longer works after their UI revamp (and the extension is no longer updated as far as i know).
      - voltagex_ 13y ago
        The best, non-scumware script is: http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/
      - zanny 13y ago
        I use(d) http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25105 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25105.
      - kawsper 13y ago
        I have used Keepvid.com before, it is simple and works good. Sometimes it requires the use of an Applet (which seems very suspicious to me) so I deny it access.
- kissickas 13y ago
  Do you have your cache for Flash video on Youtube set to unlimited, or more than 4kb or whatever the ridiculous default is? I changed mine a week ago in the flash settings (right click on a video) and entire videos load fine now.
- reledi 13y ago
  > you cannot fully load a video anymore, it will only load a portion as you continue watching I noticed that they introduced this feature around the same time they removed the right-click option to stop downloading the video.
- noselasd 13y ago
  This is driving me crazy. I've only a 1mbit connection, so I frequently used to pre-buffer as much as possible of a video. And I could watch the video without hitches and pauses at a good quality as it was already downloaded. Moreover, the little that is prebuffered seems to behave oddly, you skip forward well within the indicated area that have been buffered, yet the player seems to reset and start re-downloading that part -> unueably slow.
- conradfr 13y ago
  I use the SmartVideo add-on. It helped a lot, especially when YT was slow as hell on Free in France.
adrr 13y ago
Content is King. Youtube should be copying the model of local TV stations. Charge the cable companies for the privilege of accessing content. It shouldn't be reversed.
- Cameron_D 13y ago
  For things like YouTube, that could work, but if Netflix tried to do something like that the cable compaines would just start their own services for their customers instead (a la Verizon's Redbox Instant)
- aidenn0 13y ago
  Except it doesn't work that way because nobody who uses Comcast knows that Comcast charges content providers for peering. If you use Comcast, then you aren't the customer, you're the product.
revelation 13y ago
This is just one of the many fights surrounding net neutrality. We desperately need to break up ISP monopolies and enact strict net neutrality regulation and bandwidth (even latency/routing) guarantees. The idea that a single ISP is in a position to charge both YouTube and its customers is bizarre. By any basic reasoning, an ISP that doesn't enable access to YouTube should be out of customers within a few months. That this doesn't happen is testament to the broken market surrounding internet access, and a bad sign for the fights that await us. (Google needs to start naming and shaming the ISPs that do not want to peer with them on reasonable conditions or with sufficient capacity when they detect bad performance on YouTube. They have been doing this locally, e.g. they delisted french news sites from Google News when these lobbied for protectionist laws, and they have been stating the parties that forbid them from showing copyrighted content, e.g. the GEMA in Germany.)
- ams6110 13y ago
  Providing internet service requires a lot of physical infrastructure, e.g. cables run to every home, all the attendant routing and switching gear, a fleet of trucks and maintenance workers available 24/7, etc. Right now the ISPs (phone and/or cable company) provides this. Are you saying that the physical infrastructure should be separated from the ISP function? Who owns the physical infrastructure then?
  - kbar13 13y ago
    municipalities?
  - zanny 13y ago
    The public (ie, local or state government). Like the roads. Like the sewers. Like (some) power lines. Like the phone and coax lines (depending on time period, they have passed between private and public owners, but were always state subsidized in their deployment).
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      Thanks, but no thanks. Have you seen the roads around here? They've been repaving / widening / narrowing / re-routing the main drag near my apartment for something like a year now and it still isn't done, and the design makes traffic far worse than it was before. No way do I want the same people who run the local highway department having anything (more than already) to do with my broadband access. It's not a perfect analogy, but as the old saying goes... "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert, in 5 years there would be a shortage of sand".
rossjudson 13y ago
Step one here is transparency. Before we impose new mechanisms by legislating, we should allow detailed study of the ones that are in place. To do that we may need legislation that states simply: All such peering agreements, including all of the technical and financial terms, shall be filed as public documents with the FCC at least 7 days prior to taking effect. This accomplishes two things: It allows third-party analysis, and it provides early warning of change to affected parties.
nivla 13y ago
So its basically ISPs acting as CDNs, infact the best one money can buy. Does this mean no one will every be a true competitor to Youtube or match its performance unless they pay all the local ISPs?
- Qantourisc 13y ago
  ISP's have always delivered content/bytes. They just stopped treating all bytes equal.
- muyuu 13y ago
  Potentially. Once net neutrality is broken, the market is also broken.
jimmaswell 13y ago
I prefer to download videos with an extension and watch the file as it downloads in VLC instead, for longer videos.
x0054 13y ago
If you have a Mac, try a free program called YouView. Google YouView Mac. It gives you YouTube experience, but uses the MP4 files YouTube hosts for the mobile platforms. I never have a problem with YouView. Some times it's slow, but at least you can download the entire movie before watching. Also, it uses a lot less resources, 5-10% CPU vs 30%+ if played via browser. This means better battery life. I think something like that must exist for windows and Linux, but I could not find anything free.
- homeomorphic 13y ago
  youtube-dl (http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) is a nice cross-platform solution. It also works with vimeo and a bunch of other services.
baddox 13y ago
You should try to stream live content from twitch.tv. Pretty much everyone complains about how bad their service is, and twitch has been very clear that they're doing everything they can but that it mostly comes down to these deals with the big Internet infrastructure guys.
codecool 13y ago
Here I was cursing my ISP for ridiculous connection but I should have been cursing them for entirely different reasons! What is the use of taking costly high speed plans when the sites that require high speed (youtube, other video streaming) are still going to be slow?
Qantourisc 13y ago
The internet used to be ran by engineers. Now it's ran by suits ... The former does what needs to be done, and all pitch in to move traffic. Suits on the other hand only see $$$. As for the suits: either your are overselling your bandwidth and you don't have enough money to make the necessary changes REGARDLESS of where the traffic is going/coming from. Or your just being greedy ! To fight this, I think it's best to get review ISP by their real speed. Then getting this information out to the public. So people can select the best ISP, and natural selection of the fittest(fairest ISP) will occur.
- jaynos 13y ago
  Not sure if that last part will work. I can definitely see Comcast allowing speed test to work to it's fullest and then buffering youtube and other sites where performance matters.
  - estebank 13y ago
    What stops speed tests being done that use real sites for their tests? I could envision using a random YouTube/Netflix/Hulu video for a test to be done across several providers at the same time. Add some legal torrent and FTP servers as you're at it. That way you get results that can be compared directly. For end user results, you really don't need to be that thorough when comparing results (after all, if you're doing at different times on different you are already adding unhandled variables) you just use any random video from one of those providers.
- arbitrage 13y ago
  There's more to judge an ISP by than just raw speed.
- wmf 13y ago
  Here's the latest FCC report on broadband ISP speeds: http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america/2013/February http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america/2013/February Unfortunately it doesn't measure real content providers so it may not detect peering problems.
leke 13y ago
I thought this idea was actually quite good, although sometimes the buffering issue is there. About 50% of videos I've watched, I've tuned of within 1 minute because it wasn't what I expected. The old system would have buffered about 10 minutes worth by then. The new system only buffers about 15 seconds. This is a huge bandwidth saving when you think of it on a mass scale.
GhotiFish 13y ago
Youtube has a very poor connection around my area in Canada. Video connections are unreliable, unexpectedly dropping or just being slow. Slower than the Kbps of the video I'm trying to watch. For youtube's client side player this is completely intolerable. Which is why you don't depend on youtube's clientside player for anything. Use SMplayers downloader, or youtube-dl, or videodownloadhelper. These make use of more dependable protocols for downloading the video, and they will download 100% of the video. You can buffer several videos up and watch effectively. My user experience is so much better than what people experience through official channels. How can that be? I hacked my user experience together with bits of string and duct tape. Why should my experience be so miserable on official channels when so many manhours have supposedly went into making that experience the best? Should you really be losing out to bits of string and duct tape? What the ISP's are doing to youtube isn't fair, but the ISP's are clearly not the only ones at fault.
- gregsadetsky 13y ago
  What area? What ISP? Let's start naming and shaming.. ;) I had a pathetic experience with an ISP "reselling" Bell's DSL service. The ISP's name is Distributel. YouTube would not, at "peak times" (6pm - 9pm on weekdays, most times on weekends), work at 1080. The download speed forced you to wait for the entire clip to pre-buffer before it would be possible to play it. What was frustrating was that opening an SSH proxy to a US server (hosted at Linode) and going through that proxy would allow you to watch 1080 clips with plenty of pre-buffering headroom. I tried to explain this to tech support (with bandwidth measurements, etc) to no avail. I finally switched over to TekSavvy who have always had their shit down. They truly rock (the tech support is amazing).
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    Shaw. lower mainland. Also I can't get out of using shaw, Telus isn't competing with them, and there are no other lines into our complex. I am stuck with them, I have no choice. I want to leave. I wish I had TekSavvy. I really do. Next time I move I'm checking which telecoms I have access to. If it's only shaw or telus, I'm demanding discounts.
Dewie 13y ago
I remember the glory days when YouTube would buffer the whole video from where you started, at a very uniform speed. If you wanted to jump to somewhere in the video and it was buffered, there was no rebuffering. ISP's or not, it is infuriating for me as a user to see a website get significantly worse as it gets bigger and bigger.
bane 13y ago
Youtube was almost unwatchable on my 50/30 FiOS till I did this http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/how-to-stop-youtube-sucking-windows-guide/ http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/how-to-stop-youtube-sucking-wi.... This completely transformed my youtube experience to one that's fine compared to waiting 10 minutes for a 1 minute 240p video to buffer enough I could watch it all the way through. Now the only problems I have are with the semi-broken new player, fast forwards and rewinds are often broken, full screen doesn't always full screen etc.
IgorPartola 13y ago
As a temporary workaround I access YouTube over an IPv6 tunnel through Hurricane Electric. Since I set it up almost two years ago I have had no issues with YouTube. The only downside has been the IRS's quarterly tax site which seems to be misconfigured for IPv6 access but works if r over IPv4 (/etc/hosts FTW).
- drbawb 13y ago
  Interesting, thanks for the idea. I've just finished setting up an IPv6tunnel w/ sixxs.net, so I'll have to see if IPv6 connectivity provides a better YouTube experience on my network. YouTube usually works quite well on my network (TimeWarner Cable in SE Wisconsin, US), but occasionally I'll be completely unable to receive HD streams of certain content, so I have to select 480/320p to buffer the video at all.
incision 13y ago
Just the other day I had a non-technical friend ask me if upgrading his 50Mb connection to 75 as suggested by Verizon would get rid of his YouTube buffering problems. I wonder how prevalent and successful such fraudulent upselling is?
marquis 13y ago
I watch http://www.internethealthreport.com http://www.internethealthreport.com out of interest - it shows just how clearly the peering is skewed for US tier 1s.
umsm 13y ago
There was a similar discussion on HN a few weeks ago regarding a similar issue about ISPs buffering the CDN (I think). I dug up a link that I saved: http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/time-warner-cable-sucks-for-youtube-twitchtv/ http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/time-warner-cable-sucks-for-yo... Here is the fix: sudo ipfw add reject src-ip 173.194.55.0/24 in sudo ipfw add reject src-ip 206.111.0.0/16 in
300bps 13y ago
The reality is that major ISPs like Verizon and Comcast want Netflix to DIE because it is a major competitor of theirs. How many people have cut their cable TV service because Netflix is "good enough?" So Verizon and Comcast can compete with Netflix, or they can attempt to cut off their knees. "Nice streaming service you got there. Be a shame if it was so slow your users got frustrated and cancelled their service." This is why Verizon and Comcast don't take Netflix up on their offer to provide caching servers, create peering agreements and take other actions that actually decrease the ISP's cost. Because Verizon and Comcast want Netflix DEAD.
- recursive 13y ago
  Good enough? It's better. There are no ads.
  - 300bps 13y ago
    ...yet
    - darknezz19 13y ago
      gotta see denison on the banjels loose this wednesday.
    - recursive 13y ago
      There are no ads now, which is when I'm using it. When they add them, I'm out.
rgbrgb 13y ago
Given this discussion, what's the best resource for choosing a new ISP? I'm moving to SF in a week and I want to get a really nice connection for my apartment?
shoxty 13y ago
This peering issue has affected me a lot. I watch a lot of gaming streams online and during peek hours Twitch.tv has becomes unusable. During a major tournament this is very unfortunate. Another example of this peering dispute affecting me is with the game League of Legends. Almost everyone who is on Comcast (myself included) during peek times experiences lag that makes the game unplayable. Your character "skates" along the map and usually when it buffers and catches up to you you'll find yourself dead. My friends and I got together to play over the weekend and ended up having to stop due to the lag. Heres a thread where the guys at Riot are trying to identify the issue. It wasn't until 7/22 that they identified the problem everyone has been having was due to a peering dispute between Verizon and other vendors. To fix the problem they are having to make changes with their provider to route traffic to bypass problematic junctions. http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3521364 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3521364 Its been very eye opening to me. I have a 50mb connection and I always thought that as long as I had a faster connection I wouldn't have lag issues. It was disappointing to learn that regardless of your connection you can still be throttled by ISPs and their vendors.
- cpncrunch 13y ago
  Can you not change to a better ISP? It's ridiculous to be paying good money for high speed internet if your ISP can't handle the load. I've been using shaw.ca for years with zero problems since they upgraded their network to fibre, and we have two other pretty decent providers to choose from as well. I'm sure you must have a decent ISP somewhere down in the states. If not, perhaps you just need to wait for google to do it.
  - shoxty 13y ago
    The way I understand it is that my internet traffic is like a little dog that wants to get from my yard to Netflix's yard to play. To do that, the poor pup has to cross 6 other yards to get there. Some of the yards are nice and friendly with pretty flowers to sniff along the way. Other yards are owned by mean people that don't want to let the dog through unless it's owner (your ISP) pays them more money. If the owner doesn't pay more money, the mean yard owners will make the pup sit there and wait for a long time until they say it's okay to go (LAG). And sometimes, the mean owner have so many dogs waiting in his yard, he decides to throw them into the street, where they are never seen nor heard from again (packet loss). Most people could definitely change ISPs and avoid the troublesome vendors their ISP is currently peered with but I live in a town (low population) and unfortunately Comcast is about as good as it gets. One way to get around it is to route my traffic through a proxy to bypass the troublesome vendors but that would degrade my bitrate which is frustrating since what I really want is to just get what I am paying for 50/mb and wish the internet providers would just work it out.
osth 13y ago
Sounds like mirroring and ftp servers (or even bittorrent) would work just fine for distributing copyright-cleared video. Indeed that's how I remember it being done before YouTube and Netflix existed. Today, with the explosion of online video, the copyright-clearance step could be administered by companies (as it already is, e.g., YouTube), but the servers providing distribution to the users at the network edge do not have to be run by companies. 1. Recall that storage is quite inexpensive and users are today quite capable of providing their own at home or on-the-go storage for terabytes or gigabytes of video. 2. Recall the "content-centric" networking idea Van Jacobsen has presented to Googlers. Does it really matter where the user gets the content? No. What is important is that it is authentic (and copyright-cleared).
Oculus 13y ago
This article just brought a whole new meaning to Google Fibre. I think Google is seriously considering becoming an ISP which would make a lot of sense seeing as how they make up 25% of North America's traffic already[1]. 1 - http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/07/google-internet-traffic/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/07/google-internet...

310 points by abraham 13y ago

epa 13y ago

While it may be true that there are some outstanding ISP issues that lead to slow internet, I think the more pressing issue is the behaviour of the new(ish) youtube player acting erratic. For instance, you cannot fully load a video anymore, it will only load a portion as you continue watching. If you wish to rewind the video, for some reason youtube will want you to rebuffer the entire from where you have rewinded to. This is terrible when dealing with slow connections. I have found that since youtube has implemented three specific things, 1) new player, 2) changing of related videos, 3) google account requirements, the user experience has gone way down hill.

_frog 13y ago
There's a lot of issues with the new player. Even if you've buffered the video ahead, when you try to skip to a buffered segment the video starts loading again. On top of that I've had lots of issues where changing the video resolution just flat out doesn't work and greys out the option.
- JoshuaRedmond 13y ago
  There seems to be quite a few issues with video resolution. I had one video suddenly switch from 1080p full-screen down to 144p[1] in full-screen... [1] - Apparently they added this quite recently http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/06/youtube-introduces-ultra-low-bandwidth-144p-video-quality-mode/ http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/06/youtube-introduces-ultra-lo...
  - est 13y ago
    Yeah that's annoying as hell. You know you have fucked up player when congestion control http requests spam more than video stream itself.
- skore 13y ago
  > Even if you've buffered the video ahead, when you try to skip to a buffered segment the video starts loading again. It makes no logical sense for the player to reload something that was already loaded since that would handily double their traffic (if only in this situation). Which makes me think they don't actually buffer anymore. The bar just shows a standard, imaginary amount of buffering by default and nobody really cares.
  - nitid_name 13y ago
    >Which makes me think they don't actually buffer anymore. The bar just shows a standard, imaginary amount of buffering by default and nobody really cares. It makes me very uncomfortable how "true" that feels.
bryans 13y ago
Their player has always been abysmal, from day one. I've noticed a lot of A/B testing for the player recently, as well, and some of the things they're trying out just don't even begin to make sense. It is turning the simple act of watching a video into a legitimately irritating experience.
SomeRandomUser 13y ago
Failing to load HD versions of the video and then graying them out (reloading the page usually makes it work again), play the video in 320p and display the resolution as set to HD, SD to HD loading ad infinitum (or just display an error and stop playback), stop buffering after skipping (even to pre-buffered parts), really low streaming speeds (that fix after reloading the page), etc, etc. Making a general video host is so expensive and complicated that we may have to just resign to use YouTube for at least some more years... but it's easily one of the worst user experiences regarding online videos.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  For longer stuff, and when I know I will likely skip back and forth, I use a browser extension to download the video as mp4, and then VLC to watch it while it's still downloading.. so much nicer.
fsck--off 13y ago
> If you wish to rewind the video, for some reason youtube will want you to rebuffer the entire from where you have rewinded to. Netflix does this too and it drives me nuts, especially when I'm watching something in HD because it automatically switches to low definition for a few seconds until the high definition version is loaded.
magicalist 13y ago
Not buffering the entire video has happened for a long, long time. Years. There's various browser extensions out there that can help you if you want them. The resolution selection is still weird, though, and jumping forward or backward to what look like buffered times is definitely annoying. But the ISP makes a gigantic difference. I have the benefit of a great ISP (smallish in size, no surprise) and seeing all the youtube jokes about ads always working but not the videos themselves made me somewhat puzzled, as the very few times a video doesn't stream it's just as likely to be the ad that pauses as the main video, and that's super annoying because you can't skip ahead in an ad like you can the main video. I figured that other ISPs were worse, but there must be some exaggeration going on for comedic effect. Then recently I was at my parent's house for a while, where they are on Time Warner. I really had no idea how unusable it could be. Constant pausing of video for loading every 20 seconds or so, waiting at the very beginning of almost every video, not knowing if a video was loading or there was some kind of error and the page needed to be refreshed. I'm really used to checking youtube for how to do basic household tasks. Often you'll have to go through two or three to find a good video on a subject. You can't do that at all in that environment, as the waiting is just too much. I'd switch to 240p just to get the gist of a video to make sure I wanted to watch it, so definitely forget any movies you want to see with good quality video. I would queue up videos so at least something was buffered, which meant you have to plan ahead on what you want to watch, totally changing how you use the site. It's really like a totally different product. I think of youtube as the wikipedia of home repair and cooking (or maybe more ehow or whatever, but the point is that it has an expert video for everything) and I also use it for constant mindless browsing and watching interesting talk after interesting talk, quickly deciding if something is worth watching within 30 seconds by scrubbing around in the video a few times. You can't use it for either of those things, and the desire to pull out your hair while waiting for anything else taints any other use, too. If I was on that Time Warner connection, I wouldn't be making jokes about how ads always seem to buffer just fine, I would be completely puzzled how other people would think that Youtube was in any way worth using. It really felt like stepping back to dialup. My connection isn't especially fast, but maybe my ISP does the local CDN thing. People should try it out, because I suspect the transition the other way would be closer to a religious experience, or like stepping out of a time machine. Meanwhile Googlers working on the youtube player might want to all get a Time Warner connection, as maybe designing for that (as opposed to more specific bandwidth or latency limitations) might make for a better player for the many suffering people out there.
Spittie 13y ago
ViewTube: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011 It replaces the YouTube player with the standard html5 video player. This alone made my experience on YouTube way better. My connection is slow, so many times I'll just open a YouTube video in a background tab, and leave it loading for a while. With this, I can just preload the whole video. And seeking doesn't make the video reload. A side bonus, also, is that every video will use the html5 player, so making flash useless on YouTube (one of the few sites that make me keep flash installed). It will also remove the ads, so it might not be your thing for moral/ethical reasons.
- zanny 13y ago
  This thing is amazing, thanks for the script link! My slow 1.5mbps Internet has had awful youtube experience since the player change. I have been downloading most of the videos directly to avoid using it.
  - chii 13y ago
    how do you download the video? is it a browser plugin? I use chrome, and the old youtube downloader extension no longer works after their UI revamp (and the extension is no longer updated as far as i know).
    - voltagex_ 13y ago
      The best, non-scumware script is: http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/
    - zanny 13y ago
      I use(d) http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25105 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25105.
    - kawsper 13y ago
      I have used Keepvid.com before, it is simple and works good. Sometimes it requires the use of an Applet (which seems very suspicious to me) so I deny it access.
kissickas 13y ago
Do you have your cache for Flash video on Youtube set to unlimited, or more than 4kb or whatever the ridiculous default is? I changed mine a week ago in the flash settings (right click on a video) and entire videos load fine now.
reledi 13y ago
> you cannot fully load a video anymore, it will only load a portion as you continue watching I noticed that they introduced this feature around the same time they removed the right-click option to stop downloading the video.
noselasd 13y ago
This is driving me crazy. I've only a 1mbit connection, so I frequently used to pre-buffer as much as possible of a video. And I could watch the video without hitches and pauses at a good quality as it was already downloaded. Moreover, the little that is prebuffered seems to behave oddly, you skip forward well within the indicated area that have been buffered, yet the player seems to reset and start re-downloading that part -> unueably slow.
conradfr 13y ago
I use the SmartVideo add-on. It helped a lot, especially when YT was slow as hell on Free in France.

adrr 13y ago

Content is King. Youtube should be copying the model of local TV stations. Charge the cable companies for the privilege of accessing content. It shouldn't be reversed.

Cameron_D 13y ago
For things like YouTube, that could work, but if Netflix tried to do something like that the cable compaines would just start their own services for their customers instead (a la Verizon's Redbox Instant)
aidenn0 13y ago
Except it doesn't work that way because nobody who uses Comcast knows that Comcast charges content providers for peering. If you use Comcast, then you aren't the customer, you're the product.

revelation 13y ago

This is just one of the many fights surrounding net neutrality. We desperately need to break up ISP monopolies and enact strict net neutrality regulation and bandwidth (even latency/routing) guarantees. The idea that a single ISP is in a position to charge both YouTube and its customers is bizarre. By any basic reasoning, an ISP that doesn't enable access to YouTube should be out of customers within a few months. That this doesn't happen is testament to the broken market surrounding internet access, and a bad sign for the fights that await us. (Google needs to start naming and shaming the ISPs that do not want to peer with them on reasonable conditions or with sufficient capacity when they detect bad performance on YouTube. They have been doing this locally, e.g. they delisted french news sites from Google News when these lobbied for protectionist laws, and they have been stating the parties that forbid them from showing copyrighted content, e.g. the GEMA in Germany.)

ams6110 13y ago
Providing internet service requires a lot of physical infrastructure, e.g. cables run to every home, all the attendant routing and switching gear, a fleet of trucks and maintenance workers available 24/7, etc. Right now the ISPs (phone and/or cable company) provides this. Are you saying that the physical infrastructure should be separated from the ISP function? Who owns the physical infrastructure then?
- kbar13 13y ago
  municipalities?
- zanny 13y ago
  The public (ie, local or state government). Like the roads. Like the sewers. Like (some) power lines. Like the phone and coax lines (depending on time period, they have passed between private and public owners, but were always state subsidized in their deployment).
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    Thanks, but no thanks. Have you seen the roads around here? They've been repaving / widening / narrowing / re-routing the main drag near my apartment for something like a year now and it still isn't done, and the design makes traffic far worse than it was before. No way do I want the same people who run the local highway department having anything (more than already) to do with my broadband access. It's not a perfect analogy, but as the old saying goes... "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert, in 5 years there would be a shortage of sand".

rossjudson 13y ago

Step one here is transparency. Before we impose new mechanisms by legislating, we should allow detailed study of the ones that are in place. To do that we may need legislation that states simply: All such peering agreements, including all of the technical and financial terms, shall be filed as public documents with the FCC at least 7 days prior to taking effect. This accomplishes two things: It allows third-party analysis, and it provides early warning of change to affected parties.

nivla 13y ago

So its basically ISPs acting as CDNs, infact the best one money can buy. Does this mean no one will every be a true competitor to Youtube or match its performance unless they pay all the local ISPs?

Qantourisc 13y ago
ISP's have always delivered content/bytes. They just stopped treating all bytes equal.
muyuu 13y ago
Potentially. Once net neutrality is broken, the market is also broken.

jimmaswell 13y ago

I prefer to download videos with an extension and watch the file as it downloads in VLC instead, for longer videos.

x0054 13y ago

If you have a Mac, try a free program called YouView. Google YouView Mac. It gives you YouTube experience, but uses the MP4 files YouTube hosts for the mobile platforms. I never have a problem with YouView. Some times it's slow, but at least you can download the entire movie before watching. Also, it uses a lot less resources, 5-10% CPU vs 30%+ if played via browser. This means better battery life. I think something like that must exist for windows and Linux, but I could not find anything free.

homeomorphic 13y ago
youtube-dl (http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) is a nice cross-platform solution. It also works with vimeo and a bunch of other services.

baddox 13y ago

You should try to stream live content from twitch.tv. Pretty much everyone complains about how bad their service is, and twitch has been very clear that they're doing everything they can but that it mostly comes down to these deals with the big Internet infrastructure guys.

codecool 13y ago

Here I was cursing my ISP for ridiculous connection but I should have been cursing them for entirely different reasons! What is the use of taking costly high speed plans when the sites that require high speed (youtube, other video streaming) are still going to be slow?

Qantourisc 13y ago

The internet used to be ran by engineers. Now it's ran by suits ... The former does what needs to be done, and all pitch in to move traffic. Suits on the other hand only see $$$. As for the suits: either your are overselling your bandwidth and you don't have enough money to make the necessary changes REGARDLESS of where the traffic is going/coming from. Or your just being greedy ! To fight this, I think it's best to get review ISP by their real speed. Then getting this information out to the public. So people can select the best ISP, and natural selection of the fittest(fairest ISP) will occur.

jaynos 13y ago
Not sure if that last part will work. I can definitely see Comcast allowing speed test to work to it's fullest and then buffering youtube and other sites where performance matters.
- estebank 13y ago
  What stops speed tests being done that use real sites for their tests? I could envision using a random YouTube/Netflix/Hulu video for a test to be done across several providers at the same time. Add some legal torrent and FTP servers as you're at it. That way you get results that can be compared directly. For end user results, you really don't need to be that thorough when comparing results (after all, if you're doing at different times on different you are already adding unhandled variables) you just use any random video from one of those providers.
arbitrage 13y ago
There's more to judge an ISP by than just raw speed.
wmf 13y ago
Here's the latest FCC report on broadband ISP speeds: http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america/2013/February http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america/2013/February Unfortunately it doesn't measure real content providers so it may not detect peering problems.

leke 13y ago

I thought this idea was actually quite good, although sometimes the buffering issue is there. About 50% of videos I've watched, I've tuned of within 1 minute because it wasn't what I expected. The old system would have buffered about 10 minutes worth by then. The new system only buffers about 15 seconds. This is a huge bandwidth saving when you think of it on a mass scale.

GhotiFish 13y ago

Youtube has a very poor connection around my area in Canada. Video connections are unreliable, unexpectedly dropping or just being slow. Slower than the Kbps of the video I'm trying to watch. For youtube's client side player this is completely intolerable. Which is why you don't depend on youtube's clientside player for anything. Use SMplayers downloader, or youtube-dl, or videodownloadhelper. These make use of more dependable protocols for downloading the video, and they will download 100% of the video. You can buffer several videos up and watch effectively. My user experience is so much better than what people experience through official channels. How can that be? I hacked my user experience together with bits of string and duct tape. Why should my experience be so miserable on official channels when so many manhours have supposedly went into making that experience the best? Should you really be losing out to bits of string and duct tape? What the ISP's are doing to youtube isn't fair, but the ISP's are clearly not the only ones at fault.

gregsadetsky 13y ago
What area? What ISP? Let's start naming and shaming.. ;) I had a pathetic experience with an ISP "reselling" Bell's DSL service. The ISP's name is Distributel. YouTube would not, at "peak times" (6pm - 9pm on weekdays, most times on weekends), work at 1080. The download speed forced you to wait for the entire clip to pre-buffer before it would be possible to play it. What was frustrating was that opening an SSH proxy to a US server (hosted at Linode) and going through that proxy would allow you to watch 1080 clips with plenty of pre-buffering headroom. I tried to explain this to tech support (with bandwidth measurements, etc) to no avail. I finally switched over to TekSavvy who have always had their shit down. They truly rock (the tech support is amazing).
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  Shaw. lower mainland. Also I can't get out of using shaw, Telus isn't competing with them, and there are no other lines into our complex. I am stuck with them, I have no choice. I want to leave. I wish I had TekSavvy. I really do. Next time I move I'm checking which telecoms I have access to. If it's only shaw or telus, I'm demanding discounts.

Dewie 13y ago

I remember the glory days when YouTube would buffer the whole video from where you started, at a very uniform speed. If you wanted to jump to somewhere in the video and it was buffered, there was no rebuffering. ISP's or not, it is infuriating for me as a user to see a website get significantly worse as it gets bigger and bigger.

bane 13y ago

Youtube was almost unwatchable on my 50/30 FiOS till I did this http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/how-to-stop-youtube-sucking-windows-guide/ http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/how-to-stop-youtube-sucking-wi.... This completely transformed my youtube experience to one that's fine compared to waiting 10 minutes for a 1 minute 240p video to buffer enough I could watch it all the way through. Now the only problems I have are with the semi-broken new player, fast forwards and rewinds are often broken, full screen doesn't always full screen etc.

IgorPartola 13y ago

As a temporary workaround I access YouTube over an IPv6 tunnel through Hurricane Electric. Since I set it up almost two years ago I have had no issues with YouTube. The only downside has been the IRS's quarterly tax site which seems to be misconfigured for IPv6 access but works if r over IPv4 (/etc/hosts FTW).

drbawb 13y ago
Interesting, thanks for the idea. I've just finished setting up an IPv6tunnel w/ sixxs.net, so I'll have to see if IPv6 connectivity provides a better YouTube experience on my network. YouTube usually works quite well on my network (TimeWarner Cable in SE Wisconsin, US), but occasionally I'll be completely unable to receive HD streams of certain content, so I have to select 480/320p to buffer the video at all.

incision 13y ago

Just the other day I had a non-technical friend ask me if upgrading his 50Mb connection to 75 as suggested by Verizon would get rid of his YouTube buffering problems. I wonder how prevalent and successful such fraudulent upselling is?

marquis 13y ago

I watch http://www.internethealthreport.com http://www.internethealthreport.com out of interest - it shows just how clearly the peering is skewed for US tier 1s.

umsm 13y ago

There was a similar discussion on HN a few weeks ago regarding a similar issue about ISPs buffering the CDN (I think). I dug up a link that I saved: http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/time-warner-cable-sucks-for-youtube-twitchtv/ http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/time-warner-cable-sucks-for-yo... Here is the fix: sudo ipfw add reject src-ip 173.194.55.0/24 in sudo ipfw add reject src-ip 206.111.0.0/16 in

300bps 13y ago

The reality is that major ISPs like Verizon and Comcast want Netflix to DIE because it is a major competitor of theirs. How many people have cut their cable TV service because Netflix is "good enough?" So Verizon and Comcast can compete with Netflix, or they can attempt to cut off their knees. "Nice streaming service you got there. Be a shame if it was so slow your users got frustrated and cancelled their service." This is why Verizon and Comcast don't take Netflix up on their offer to provide caching servers, create peering agreements and take other actions that actually decrease the ISP's cost. Because Verizon and Comcast want Netflix DEAD.

recursive 13y ago
Good enough? It's better. There are no ads.
- 300bps 13y ago
  ...yet
  - darknezz19 13y ago
    gotta see denison on the banjels loose this wednesday.
  - recursive 13y ago
    There are no ads now, which is when I'm using it. When they add them, I'm out.

rgbrgb 13y ago

Given this discussion, what's the best resource for choosing a new ISP? I'm moving to SF in a week and I want to get a really nice connection for my apartment?

shoxty 13y ago

This peering issue has affected me a lot. I watch a lot of gaming streams online and during peek hours Twitch.tv has becomes unusable. During a major tournament this is very unfortunate. Another example of this peering dispute affecting me is with the game League of Legends. Almost everyone who is on Comcast (myself included) during peek times experiences lag that makes the game unplayable. Your character "skates" along the map and usually when it buffers and catches up to you you'll find yourself dead. My friends and I got together to play over the weekend and ended up having to stop due to the lag. Heres a thread where the guys at Riot are trying to identify the issue. It wasn't until 7/22 that they identified the problem everyone has been having was due to a peering dispute between Verizon and other vendors. To fix the problem they are having to make changes with their provider to route traffic to bypass problematic junctions. http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3521364 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3521364 Its been very eye opening to me. I have a 50mb connection and I always thought that as long as I had a faster connection I wouldn't have lag issues. It was disappointing to learn that regardless of your connection you can still be throttled by ISPs and their vendors.

cpncrunch 13y ago
Can you not change to a better ISP? It's ridiculous to be paying good money for high speed internet if your ISP can't handle the load. I've been using shaw.ca for years with zero problems since they upgraded their network to fibre, and we have two other pretty decent providers to choose from as well. I'm sure you must have a decent ISP somewhere down in the states. If not, perhaps you just need to wait for google to do it.
- shoxty 13y ago
  The way I understand it is that my internet traffic is like a little dog that wants to get from my yard to Netflix's yard to play. To do that, the poor pup has to cross 6 other yards to get there. Some of the yards are nice and friendly with pretty flowers to sniff along the way. Other yards are owned by mean people that don't want to let the dog through unless it's owner (your ISP) pays them more money. If the owner doesn't pay more money, the mean yard owners will make the pup sit there and wait for a long time until they say it's okay to go (LAG). And sometimes, the mean owner have so many dogs waiting in his yard, he decides to throw them into the street, where they are never seen nor heard from again (packet loss). Most people could definitely change ISPs and avoid the troublesome vendors their ISP is currently peered with but I live in a town (low population) and unfortunately Comcast is about as good as it gets. One way to get around it is to route my traffic through a proxy to bypass the troublesome vendors but that would degrade my bitrate which is frustrating since what I really want is to just get what I am paying for 50/mb and wish the internet providers would just work it out.

osth 13y ago

Sounds like mirroring and ftp servers (or even bittorrent) would work just fine for distributing copyright-cleared video. Indeed that's how I remember it being done before YouTube and Netflix existed. Today, with the explosion of online video, the copyright-clearance step could be administered by companies (as it already is, e.g., YouTube), but the servers providing distribution to the users at the network edge do not have to be run by companies. 1. Recall that storage is quite inexpensive and users are today quite capable of providing their own at home or on-the-go storage for terabytes or gigabytes of video. 2. Recall the "content-centric" networking idea Van Jacobsen has presented to Googlers. Does it really matter where the user gets the content? No. What is important is that it is authentic (and copyright-cleared).

Oculus 13y ago

This article just brought a whole new meaning to Google Fibre. I think Google is seriously considering becoming an ISP which would make a lot of sense seeing as how they make up 25% of North America's traffic already[1]. 1 - http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/07/google-internet-traffic/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/07/google-internet...