WTF with Youtube?

June 6, 2008 10:45 AM

Why has Youtube started plaing in Flash? I am on a dialup, so if there is anything I want to see, I know it is a matter of clicking, minimizing, and waiting a half hour to hit view again. This morning, it started playing in flash mode, the little circle of dots going round, and even if I let it load all the way and hit watch again, its starts loading again. My computer?, or just changes at YT?
posted by timsteil to science & nature (17 comments total)

It's always been a flash based player.
posted by delmoi at 10:50 AM on June 6, 2008

Agreed. That's primarily what made it so popular in the first place -- no messy plug-ins or encoders to mess with.

So, to answer your question: The very first day it opened.
posted by tcv at 11:03 AM on June 6, 2008

I'm not sure, but I think that the poster is saying that while YouTube videos previously loaded only after clicking the play button, they now load immediately.
posted by box at 11:06 AM on June 6, 2008

Oops--replace 'load' with 'start playing' in my above post. Is that what you mean, timsteil?
posted by box at 11:07 AM on June 6, 2008

I think timsteil means that it seems to only buffer a certain amount of the video instead of just trying to preload the whole thing, so instead of the progress bar showing how much has actually been downloaded, it's now a mysterious thing that doesn't mean much of anything.

Instead of the video just stopping when it gets further than the download (as measured by the nice little light-red bar), it will stop at some place which seems arbitrary and brings up the little swirly dots.
posted by that girl at 11:18 AM on June 6, 2008

It used to be that when the youtube video player was struggling to load a video and didn't have enough to play (buffering), you could hit the pause button and go away, then come back later and find the video all loaded and ready to play. They recently changed it so that you can't pause the video when it's buffering, so if you leave the player alone while it keeps loading, it'll keep trying to play the video in fits and starts. I bet this is what timsteil is experiencing. It bugs me too.

My partial solution is to hit play, and then keep poking the pause button until by chance it pauses successfully. Then I can ignore the window for as long as I want and it'll be ready when I come back to it.

Sometimes when you are viewing a video on youtube.com there will be a little link under the video that says "use the old player." I keep thinking I should try that and see if it helps, but somehow I never got around to it. You could try it. It's not available if you're viewing a video embedded in somebody else's web page.
posted by moonmilk at 11:23 AM on June 6, 2008

Try this:

Make a new bookmark.

Paste the javascript below into the "url field" of the bookmark. Name the bookmark whatever you like; mine's called "get YouTube Video". Be sure to copy all the javascript.


javascript:if%20(document.getElementById('download-youtube-video')==null%20&&%20!!(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)))%20{var%20yt_mp4_path='http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=18&video_id='+swfArgs['video_id']+'&t='+swfArgs['t'];%20var%20div_embed=document.getElementById('watch-embed-div');div_embed.innerHTML=div_embed.innerHTML+'
%20Download%20as%20MP4%20(right-click%20and%20select%20Save%20'+%20(navigator.appName=='Microsoft%20Internet%20Explorer'?'target':'link')%20+'%20as)';}void(0);

Most YouTube selections are also available as an mp4. The javascript bookmarklet will cause a url to appear on the sidebar where the "More Info" is. You can click it and have an opportunity to download and view at your leisure.

It's also a higher quality vid than the flash interface.
posted by reflecked at 11:34 AM on June 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh no.

I broke the appearance of AskMe. :(
posted by reflecked at 11:35 AM on June 6, 2008

Thanks guys

just seemed weird...before, I could just hit the link, and while it took forever to load ( about 3 seconds at a time) , once it was done I could watch the clip smoothly. Now it is loading as flash, and even if I let it load, when I hit replay, it goes back to loading.

I just tried something in full screen mode, and it was as before. Almost like it was two different players (i.e. different locations for the volume etc) Only reason I asked was, I watched something yesterday and it was as usual, today it looked like flash...just wondered wtf

whatever.....

thanks again
posted by timsteil at 11:51 AM on June 6, 2008

there was a new version of Flash Player released in the last few days- did you do an update from Adobe?
posted by drjimmy11 at 12:00 PM on June 6, 2008

I've seen this too. I'm guessing it saves Youtube a lot of bandwidth, especially on pages with multiple embedded videos that people may or many not watch.
posted by wongcorgi at 12:36 PM on June 6, 2008

timsteil, I'm curious: what do you mean "it looked like Flash"? I understand your problem in general terms, but as others have noted, YouTube has ALWAYS loaded "as flash."
posted by grumblebee at 1:44 PM on June 6, 2008

then keep poking the pause button until by chance it pauses successfully

I do this too, but: the pause button starts working after the video starts loading, not by chance. So you have to just wait until the first few frames of video have downloaded, rather than stabbing the pause button repeatedly.
posted by ook at 1:56 PM on June 6, 2008

You know, I just thought of something.

Over the last couple of weeks, I had been seeing Youtube pause while loading moving or, in general, just get behind, causing a lot of rebuffering. I saw it on all of my systems until I updated Flash.

Just a thought...
posted by tcv at 2:59 PM on June 6, 2008

timsteil, I'm curious: what do you mean "it looked like Flash"?

That it had the little circle of dots going round and round in the image, instead of the red line getting longer, and eventually finishing, after which I could just hit view again, and it would play smoothly
posted by timsteil at 3:01 PM on June 6, 2008

I've just noticed today that the player is really wonky. The videos play for me (since I have broadband) but the buffer thing and the scroller don't work at all. It's pretty weird
posted by delmoi at 10:50 PM on June 6, 2008

Hey, timsteil, I was having a problem with youtube and hulu earlier (my problem was different, but possibly related), so I searched the archives to see if it had been addressed--and found this. And then I found an answer on my own. The latest version of Flash has some bugs. See if this works:

-Right-click on the player and select "Settings".
-Click to the first tab in the settings window and uncheck the "Enable hardware acceleration" box.
-Click "Close" and see how it goes.


Hope that helps.
posted by phunniemee at 2:54 AM on June 7, 2008