5 ms·

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) you

by 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.

by epa 13y ago

_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.