- Apr 17, 2014
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Hi folks, been having some problems with Youtube for a while now and cannot for the life of me figure out what the problem is, so I'm asking here in the hopes that someone else knows just what in seven hells is going on. Apologies in advance for the wall of text which follows.
Problem started some months ago. I couldn't say when, but I've been at my current address since July last year (2014) and definitely didn't experience this straight away. At first it was some videos buffering extremely slowly, or in sudden jumps at irregular intervals while other videos streamed just fine. There didn't appear to be any link between the occurrence of this issue and video length, selected size or playback quality. Some videos simply didn't work properly while others were absolutely fine.
Now the problem appears to apply to ALL YT videos, even super-short ones (just prior to posting this I tried to watch a 7-second clip which choked after 3). The issue has also become inconsistent in that, while every YT video appears to be problematic, the same video can experience a different issue from day-to-day (previously a video either worked properly or didn't). Take this video, for example. GF and I watched it Sunday evening, and it refused to buffer however long we stared at it, until I switched between my open tabs, which would inexplicably cause the video to buffer about 25%. The same appeared to be the case for all videos on Sunday. Tonight the same video starts playing after a few seconds and initially buffers ok to about 25% then doesn't buffer anymore until playback is approaching the point it's buffered to, at which point it very suddenly and quickly buffers up to about 50% at which point it sits until playback reaches that point and the video just freezes.
I have no problems with videos on other sites. Netflix runs everything fantastically, Vimeo buffers super-fast and even Dailymotion, which I've always found to be pretty crap in the past, is buffering more than quickly enough to watch uninterrupted. Hell, even Youtube videos that are embedded on other sites such as Facebook and various forums are no problem: this 52-second clip showed up on my FB feed and took less than 2 seconds to fully buffer, while trying to watch it on YT itself saw it choke after 14 seconds. I have no problems at all with watching the Youtube app on my smartphone with on the same WiFi network, which typically gets 30-40Mbps down, so a hell of a lot faster than the connection at my last residence where I didn't experience these problems despite only getting 2-4Mbps. But despite having all drivers up to date and trying everything mentioned on YT's help page related to buffering issues, the problem persists on the PC. I use Firefox almost exclusively, but tried out IE earlier and still encountered the same problems.
So, any ideas?
Problem started some months ago. I couldn't say when, but I've been at my current address since July last year (2014) and definitely didn't experience this straight away. At first it was some videos buffering extremely slowly, or in sudden jumps at irregular intervals while other videos streamed just fine. There didn't appear to be any link between the occurrence of this issue and video length, selected size or playback quality. Some videos simply didn't work properly while others were absolutely fine.
Now the problem appears to apply to ALL YT videos, even super-short ones (just prior to posting this I tried to watch a 7-second clip which choked after 3). The issue has also become inconsistent in that, while every YT video appears to be problematic, the same video can experience a different issue from day-to-day (previously a video either worked properly or didn't). Take this video, for example. GF and I watched it Sunday evening, and it refused to buffer however long we stared at it, until I switched between my open tabs, which would inexplicably cause the video to buffer about 25%. The same appeared to be the case for all videos on Sunday. Tonight the same video starts playing after a few seconds and initially buffers ok to about 25% then doesn't buffer anymore until playback is approaching the point it's buffered to, at which point it very suddenly and quickly buffers up to about 50% at which point it sits until playback reaches that point and the video just freezes.
I have no problems with videos on other sites. Netflix runs everything fantastically, Vimeo buffers super-fast and even Dailymotion, which I've always found to be pretty crap in the past, is buffering more than quickly enough to watch uninterrupted. Hell, even Youtube videos that are embedded on other sites such as Facebook and various forums are no problem: this 52-second clip showed up on my FB feed and took less than 2 seconds to fully buffer, while trying to watch it on YT itself saw it choke after 14 seconds. I have no problems at all with watching the Youtube app on my smartphone with on the same WiFi network, which typically gets 30-40Mbps down, so a hell of a lot faster than the connection at my last residence where I didn't experience these problems despite only getting 2-4Mbps. But despite having all drivers up to date and trying everything mentioned on YT's help page related to buffering issues, the problem persists on the PC. I use Firefox almost exclusively, but tried out IE earlier and still encountered the same problems.
So, any ideas?
). FireFox has yet to implement all the features that Youtube requires for use so that might be what's causing your buffering problems. Hope i could help 
/venturebeat.com/2015/03/31/firefox-37-arrives-with-improved-youtube-html5-playback-on-windows-faster-downloads-on-android/
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