What the f***'s up with youtube?

[black_biff_stadler]

Every time I've tried to watch a video on it today the playback has stuttered as badly as Max Headroom and has slowed down like a 16-bit system trying to display too many simultaneous on-screen sprites. It's been doing this a lot for me over the last few months but today I can't get anything to play right. I've cleared my cache and history as well as checked how other sites play and the other ones seem to be doing just fine. What the hell's going on?

[Orbert]

I've been having similar problems for most of the past couple of days.  Videos play, but the little circle of dots (the "loading" thing) never goes away, and it has to keep stopping to buffer more.  I generally have no problem getting enough bandwidth to buffer several minutes ahead of whatever I'm watching.

No idea.

[black_biff_stadler]

God do we ever need a new video site to emerge and do it right. Basically a pre-Google buyout youtube. That site has become an atrocity in the years since the buyout:

1. Ads all over the goddamn place.

2. Most music vids make you watch an ad for either 5 seconds ("Skip this ad" ones) or worse, 30 seconds.

3. Popups within the media player which now aren't just at the beginning but sometimes pop up several seconds into watching it. This basically ruins any < 30-second clip you're seeing by killing the initial impact if it's a clip whose entertainment value is based on humor, the element of surprise, or shock value since you partially see/hear the video while trying to kill off the popup and then have to rewind it but on the second viewing you're already vaguely familiar with what's about to happen.

4. Anything involving the letter cluster "WMG."

5. "Related" videos that somehow try to bogusly proclaim that there's anything whatsoever related between obscure metal and current top 40 artists.

[Adami]

Yea, it was doing that to me a while ago, never figured out why. Luckily it mostly stopped. However now it loads SOOOOOOO slowly. Like a 1 minute vid I have to keep paused for 2-3 minutes to load.

[SeRoX]

My only problem with youtube is: sometimes when the video is about load, suddenly it says the video is no longer available. But by doing refresh the page it's been fixed.

[rumborak]

Obama. Clearly. Or the Syrians who also caused Sandy.

[Pols Voice]

God do we ever need a new video site to emerge and do it right. Basically a pre-Google buyout youtube. That site has become an atrocity in the years since the buyout:

I haven't had the problem you're having, but I totally agree with this. Don't forget the forced change of the channel design to a dull style with less features, one of their many "improvements" to the site which just make it harder to use.

[jingle.boy]

@BF... god forbid a company try to get a return on their investment.  I believe the price we pay for YT is the sum total of Fuck All.  I think the cost for Google to run YT is slightly more than that.  I think we are starting to expect way too much for way too little.  We don't bitch at the TV for 'ads all over the goddamn place', and we actually PAY for cable/satellite.  So why do we bitch for 5-30 seconds on YT?  Yeah they're annoying, and yeah the pop-ups in the video are annoying (I believe that is the owner trying to make money), but I just remember the old saying ... you get what you pay for.

[black_biff_stadler]

Many people like myself use the internet as an alternative to TV. Outside of me having my hand forced to get Sunday Ticket so I won't miss Saints games since I'm stuck living 1000 miles from New Orleans for a bit, I've only had pay TV for less than 6 months out of the last 5 years because of how appallingly overpriced it is and from what I've seen there's an ever-growing army of people doing likewise (defecting for Netflix, etc.)

The thing about the internet and why youtube's saturation of ads is unacceptable is because of several reasons:

1. Google waltzed into a pre-made giant by buying an already-beyond-well-established youtube several years ago. Youtube managed to get to that point (pre-Google) with not even 25% of the ads Google now has. You can play the "Yeah but they were violating copyright laws by permitting tons of uploads of copyright-protected material" if you want but that doesn't fly since most of the music on there is still stuff uploaded by casual fans (studio versions, live, or any other format you can think of.)

2. Unlike TV, you don't get continuous entertainment online. You need to constantly search for new clips or playlists instead of the programming being automatically broadcast in a continuous manner and also have to put up with lagging due to occasional bandwidth constraints and also the fact that it's not as ideal for viewing on a small monitor/laptop screen rather than your TV screen.

3. Despite all of these limitations, internet access has exploded to now frequently being north of $50 per month just to provide the same speed we already had a decade ago when broadband first became a widespread thing. Funny thing is, a decade ago, cable was barely more than $50 a month unless you had extravagant add-on packages and that same internet was maybe $30.

4. It seems bizarre for you to be this passionate about having Google's back on this right after your recent lengthy post criticizing Sigz' stance of supporting Starbucks' priceyness compared to store-bought coffee despite all the similarities in their operating costs. Do you really think that youtube operated at a loss for all those years before selling to Google? What extra operating costs did youtube incur after Google bought them since their bread and butter remains being the end-all be-all for quick and easily accessed music and a massive chunk of that is still presumably skirting copyright laws?

[jingle.boy]

My apologies if my understanding that Google would like to participate in capitalism by making YT profitable as 'having their back'.  I don't.  I'm not an investor, just a guy who understands that there is nothing wrong with any company or anyone making a profit - which was also my point on the Starbucks issue... Sigz turned it into a defense of Starbuck's costs, I only critiqued that based on the fact that a cup of coffee can be equated to pennies a cup.  My criticism of Sigz was how he missed the real point.

Couple of other counter points to your list.

- not sure how copyright laws play into anything on your original rant on advertising and bandwidth
- bandwidth capabilities provided by ISPs and YT's growth in advertising aren't related.
- there are lots of ways of viewing YT on your TV screen - Apple TV; PS3, Wii, HDMI cable from your laptop to TV.

- I disagree that YT is not continuous entertainment.  With TV, the programming is always there - it's also always there with YT.  With TV, you have to change the station to pick what you want, no different than clicking a different video.  The only difference is TV is delivered in 30/60 minute blocks, whereas YT is delivered in any sized block.  Don't blur those lines to say the cable companies are providing continuous entertainment and TY isn't.

- YT followed the usual internet business model of 'give shit away for free that consumers want, hook them, then monetize them once they're hooked'.  YT never turned a profit on their own, only after Google bought them did they become profitable.  I'd have to guess that 90%+ of internet startups are unprofitable for years.  Case in point Groupon, Zynga... huge internet companies; never turned an annual profit. Skype was only profitable once before being bought by Microsoft.  All these companies have a great product/service with a need in the market, and get funded on the premise of turning a profit, which they eventually have to do.
- no extra costs.  Are you serious?  It's estimated YT grows at 25 Petabytes a month - 25,000 Terabytes.  I'll defer to Barry on how much he thinks it costs in power alone, not to mention people, real estate, network capacity and the price of the hardware and software to house said storage capacity.

Maybe I'm not passionate about YT, but I do work in this industry, and think it's unrealistic for the general public just to think that this stuff just 'happens', or if something was free once, it should always be free (not to mention expectations of improvement). 

You've got every right to rant, and I don't have an issue with it.  Just pointing out the other side of the equation.

Like I said, you get what you pay for.

[jsem]

Haven't had any issues lately.

[HarlequinForest]

YouTube was losing money before it became ad-supported.  Can't really blame them. 

[alirocker08]

The only problem I'm having with Youtube at the minute is that it keeps on deciding to switch to 240p

[El Barto]

Never see any ads, and I'm not having any trouble that I don't always have with their crappy-ass servers.  What I have found is that if it's loading too slowly, often times you just refresh and the reconnect will be blazing fast.  There are certainly times when it'll take 5 minutes to DL a 2.5 minute video, but generally that's the exception.

[The King in Crimson]

1. Google waltzed into a pre-made giant by buying an already-beyond-well-established youtube several years ago. Youtube managed to get to that point (pre-Google) with not even 25% of the ads Google now has. You can play the "Yeah but they were violating copyright laws by permitting tons of uploads of copyright-protected material" if you want but that doesn't fly since most of the music on there is still stuff uploaded by casual fans (studio versions, live, or any other format you can think of.)

Youtube was also hemorrhaging money before Google.  It was one of those situations where the inventors had a great idea but no real way to make money off of it.

I consider occasional ads a minor annoyance, but one worth dealing with when you look at the services YT offers, it really doesn't bother me.

Now, YT's service being consistently shitty would (as Hulu often is for me).

4. It seems bizarre for you to be this passionate about having Google's back on this right after your recent lengthy post criticizing Sigz' stance of supporting Starbucks' priceyness compared to store-bought coffee despite all the similarities in their operating costs. Do you really think that youtube operated at a loss for all those years before selling to Google? What extra operating costs did youtube incur after Google bought them since their bread and butter remains being the end-all be-all for quick and easily accessed music and a massive chunk of that is still presumably skirting copyright laws?

Streaming of video constitutes one of the biggest usages of bandwidth today.  I'd say it's also one of the reasons cell phone companies no longer offer unlimited data packages, but I have no actual data to back that up.

[pogoowner]

Never see any ads, and I'm not having any trouble that I don't always have with their crappy-ass servers.  What I have found is that if it's loading too slowly, often times you just refresh and the reconnect will be blazing fast.  There are certainly times when it'll take 5 minutes to DL a 2.5 minute video, but generally that's the exception.

Yeah, I don't get ads either. There are very simple ways around most of that. For the most part it works fine for me, though it does slow down sometimes as you mentioned.

[TioJorge]

I'm okay with the ads, and I haven't had a lick of trouble from Youtube recently; and I've been using it a bit more than usual lately (granted, I've been streaming music and watching music videos). Yeah, the wait between ads gets pretty annoying if you're watching many sponsored videos, but it beats having to sign-up for some 'premium' bullshit to watch all the videos they have to offer. Also, there's very few ads I see that cannot be skipped after five seconds, and that's no wait at all. Maybe I'm just getting lucky though, it seems that the ability to skip ads comes and goes at random, or depends on who is sponsoring them and what the commercial is. Either way, Youtube is alright for the time-being and it's served me well over the years; I can wait a few seconds or a minute or two before my videos after watching hundreds upon hundreds of videos with absolutely no wait, pay, ad-watching, etc. since their inception.P.S. a video in a video in a video.

[DebraKadabra]

I haven't had TOO many problems with ads but the slow loading times have been more of a problem - it's almost like I'm back on dial up when we have a really fast broadband connection.

The Firefox Ad Blocker add-on MAY help, but it's kind of hit and miss with ads embedded in videos.

[rumborak]

100% with jingleboy on this. It's a free video service; how do you expect to make money with it?

[alirocker08]

Also, I'm content with the amount of ads I get, mainly because I watch a lot of self-funded, user created content and the advertising on their videos goes towards their salary. For example, I watch a lot of Vlogbrothers videos, one of them is a bestselling YA author and another does...I don't know what he does asides from make a lot of music. Because of their success and the additional revenue that they got from advertising on the Vlogbrothers channel, they were able to establish Crash Course with the help of a grant from YT. They've just finished a well written, professional summary course on World History, have an ongoing Biology course, and are just beginning a short course on literature. Not only that, but one of the brothers has created one of the (In my opinion) best modern adaptations of Pride and Prejudice that was initially haemorrhaging money- That especially is kept going through advertising revenue alone, it was on the verge of being cancelled at one point because of how high the production costs were.

They've also established DFTBA records, allowing Youtube content creators a place to easily create and sell their own work, Vid-Con, and Project for Awesome, a huge charity event across Youtube that raises thousands for charity. I doubt they would have been able to do half of this without the advertising revenue that they get through Youtube. Honestly? It's a necessary evil.

Vlogbrothers channel
Crash Course
Lizzie Bennet Diaries

[Ħ]

The ads are okay. The only time they're annoying is if you're watching a bunch of videos in one sitting from a high-ranking user, where virtually all their videos have ads.

[5]

I've installed adblock and I see hardly any ads on YT. That being said, the playback speed/quality of the player itself has been pretty wonky recently.

[Pols Voice]

Man, the new layout is terrible. Where is the tab to easily find other videos by the uploader? I used that all the time, especially when watching Let's Plays...

Also, the avatars in the comments look junky and everything's smashed over to the left side of the screen.

[SeRoX]

Yes, it is really bad.

The main page looks like facebook which really sucks.

[DebraKadabra]

Every time I've tried to watch a video on it today the playback has stuttered as badly as Max Headroom and has slowed down like a 16-bit system trying to display too many simultaneous on-screen sprites. It's been doing this a lot for me over the last few months but today I can't get anything to play right. I've cleared my cache and history as well as checked how other sites play and the other ones seem to be doing just fine. What the hell's going on?

When was the last time you updated Adobe Flash Player?
 
Reason I asked is that YT slowed considerably for me with Firefox 17.0.1, and a Flash update fixed the sluggishness.
 
Sorry for only just now bumping the OP.

[Fuzzboy]

yeah new layout is totally shit.

[Nel]

"Hi, we're YouTube! Before you can get to your subscriptions, here's what we think you should watch!"

UghhahdashasAAAGHHHH! I just want my default page to be my subscriptions! Uploads only! Why the hell is the default a suggestions page?! Why is there so much white? That much unused space is hideous. And when you enlarge the video screen (not full screen), it doesn't center anymore. How annoying.

[SeRoX]

Why is there so much white?

Yes this really annoys, my eyes are hurting.

If I'm not mistaken there was a "turn the lights off" option on youtube while ago. It seems it disappeared.

[Nel]

I thought that "lights off" option was just for Earth Day? Unless I missed them putting it in as a regular option. At any rate, I loved that, and wish they'd bring it back.

[TioJorge]

Yes, yes, and yes. I really want that option to be a permanent one and I'm not sure why it wasn't included to begin with. But it's even more aggravating and moronic to have it there temporarily for a day that doesn't mean shit. We're killing the Earth no matter what. Earth day....what a fucking crock. Oops.

[jcmistat]

I have trouble loading 360p videos sometimes. Sure I could upgrade internet but it was never a problem in the past. YouTube has declined over the years and I always hate how websites change their layout. I hate mainstreaming things if there's nothing wrong with it don't fuss around.