Weird YouTube play button caching bug? November 8, 2010 5:05 PM   Subscribe

Did I find a bug or is something wacked out with my system? Weirdness with vids and caching...maybe?

I started on the front page of the blue, and everything I'm describing happened from the little 'play' button links on the blue (that is, I didn't go to the post pages themselves to watch the vids, even though I link to them for reference). First I watched the Speedflying vid (http://www.metafilter.com/97422/Just-Dont-Catch-a-Ski-on-a-Tree). Then I clicked on the Evolution of the Line Rider play button (http://www.metafilter.com/97415/Rabid-Squirrel-and-Future-Quirk). That started showing me the Speedflying vid. When I went to the Line Rider page itself though, the vid was fine...although for some reason popped up in a new tab/window, not the nice overlay you usually see. Weird. The whole thing is weird.

Note I never tried to go TO YouTube on any of these; never left the site.

I feel like my system has been a bit wonky lately so maybe it's not at all MetaFilter, or maybe it's YouTube related. But either way thought I'd throw it out there to see if anyone else could duplicate it.

I'm using Safari 5.0.2 on Mac OS X 10.6.4. I should probably run system update now that I think of it...
posted by dubitable to Bugs at 5:05 PM (17 comments total)

We just did an update of the inline video player, so you're probably seeing some random wonkiness related to the update. Try a hard refresh in your browser and see if that clears everything up. (Here are some instructions for a hard refresh in various browsers.)

With the update we moved to YouTube's beta HTML5/Flash player, so there could be some weirdness on their end there too.
posted by pb (staff) at 5:09 PM on November 8, 2010


Ah...that would make sense. Sorry if this is noise then, although maybe it can serve as a heads up for other folks who may be seeing similar weirdness.

Thanks pb!
posted by dubitable at 5:10 PM on November 8, 2010


<hug target="pb" id="html5-thanks" />
<label for="html5-thanks">Thanks for the HTML5 goodness!</label>

posted by !Jim at 5:31 PM on November 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


The same thing is happening to me, but if I shift-refresh the page, I get the videos as intended. It's weird, and something on YouTube's end from what I can tell.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:33 PM on November 8, 2010


Oh, thanks for using iframe embeds pb!

I'm looking at this issue now, will update.
posted by wildcrdj at 6:31 PM on November 8, 2010


mathowie -- are you also on Safari/OSX?

I'm trying to repro but so far have been unable to (on Safari/OSX, Chrome/OSX, Chrome/Linux, Chrome/Windows, etc). If anyone does repro and knows how to use Safari / Chrome /whatever dev tools, look at the request for the iframe (youtube.com/embed) and check the cache headers. They seem to be set OK as far as I can tell...

(also, those seeing the issue -- I assume you're using Flash? Or are these HTML5 views? We will serve Flash by default so you'd have to have opted in to HTML5 or be using beta/dev Chrome)
posted by wildcrdj at 6:41 PM on November 8, 2010


I watched the same video like, 6 times in the surfing thread this morning. I had no idea what was going on.

admittedly, though, I'm kinda dumb.
posted by elmer benson at 6:51 PM on November 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


After looking at this a bit I am a little confused. The URL is different for every embed (not just URL params). So unless your browser is doing something stupendously weird it shouldn't be a caching issue with the iframe itself.

Is it possible the lightbox/whatever stuff you're wrapping the iframe with is having an issue? If anyone can repro the issue, try doing an Inspect Element or w/e on the player box and see what the embed URL is. Does the video ID match the video ID of the URL itself (meaning the link, not the embed player button)?

The iframe URLs look like: http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZqF9yPSoywQ?autoplay=1 and should always match the video ID of the youtube URL (in that case, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqF9yPSoywQ&t=1m0s ). If they don't match then something on metafilter's end is wonky. If they match but the video isn't the right video I am confused, since the browser shouldn't be caching across URLs (obviously).
posted by wildcrdj at 6:54 PM on November 8, 2010


Sorry to be so spammy: I think I found the issue and I actually believe it is on MeFi's end. Memailing pb about it, I think this can be resolved but getting wayyy too technical for metatalk.

However, anyone who can repro and hasnt already posted their browser/OS where they see the issue please still do that.
posted by wildcrdj at 7:03 PM on November 8, 2010


Thanks for taking a look at this on your end wildcrdj! It's still a mystery to me and it sounds like it's not on your end so I'll keep digging around here.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:17 PM on November 8, 2010


Not related to the main issue, but it seems with the new embedded player, the title of the video no longer shows up when you hover along the top of the vid. I assume that's something on Youtube's side, so there's not much to be done? The Google giveth, and the Google taketh away.
posted by kmz at 10:42 PM on November 8, 2010


Blessed be the name of the Google!
posted by Jahaza at 4:05 AM on November 9, 2010


Yeah kmz, that's a feature of the new embedded player. It's fairly new so I expect they'll add titles or the option for titles before they make that the default embed option. Maybe if we ask wildcrdj nicely he'll put in a good word for us on that.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:04 AM on November 9, 2010


This isn't happening to me with Metafilter today, but the exact same thing happened on The Browser, and their video sidebar a few days ago. They're using some version of lightbox to overlay the videos being played, and no matter what unique url I clicked (according to the status bar) it played the same video.

I'm Safari 4.0.3/OSX 10.6
posted by fontophilic at 7:35 AM on November 9, 2010


Looks like The Browser is using the older Flash player embed so this is looking more and more like a Lightbox problem. We're in the process of switching to a new system for handling modal windows, so that might clear this up and/or introduce a new batch of problems to deal with.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:00 AM on November 9, 2010


I was getting that (Safari 5/ Mac OS 10.6) the other day, but things seem to be working fine now.
posted by JiBB at 4:08 PM on November 9, 2010


Hey, not sure if this is going to be useful at this point but this happened with me, today, on Chrome 6.0.472.62 / Mac OS 10.6.4
posted by soy bean at 11:41 AM on November 15, 2010


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