YouTube stutter/frame-drop on MeFi February 8, 2012 12:03 PM   Subscribe

Anyone else suddenly getting stuttering/frame-drop in the MeFi YouTube overlay?

Within the past week, I've started getting stuttering a huge frame-drops in the MeFi YouTube popup/overlay. Nothing's changed on my end. I'm not getting it in any Vimeo overlays that I can recall. The YouTube videos all play perfectly if I view them at YouTube.

Anyone else?
posted by Thorzdad to Bugs at 12:03 PM (20 comments total)

I've been getting either a loss of video (not audio) or a complete freeze recently. I figured it was my platform: Chrome OS on a CR-48 netbook. Stuttering is de rigueur on this little under-powered beastie...
posted by jim in austin at 12:44 PM on February 8, 2012


YouTube has been sucky for me on all devices for the past week or two. I guess I took for granted how great it has been working the last year or two, everything used to play instantly and you could track to any point in a video and it would start in less than a second.

I've been getting buffering stutters for the past week especially on my desktop, and nothing has really changed. I suppose this could be a YouTube uptime/capacity issue on their end?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:46 PM on February 8, 2012


Maybe it's a Chrome problem? Their stable release on Jan 23 has some complaints about how the changes affect Flash.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:00 PM on February 8, 2012


Glad to see I'm not alone.
FWIW, I'm on FF9/Mac. The YouTube overlay has always been rock-solid for me until the past week.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:02 PM on February 8, 2012


Don't know if this is related but I've had all kinds of problems with YouTube the past weeks. Stuff like buttons not working and not being able to re-launch full-screen mode.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:15 PM on February 8, 2012


I got a stutter problem on Youtube yesterday using Chrome (recent beta) on OS X. I assumed it was the twenty-seven kajillion tabs I had open, or a flash issue. I killed the flash task in Chrome's task manager but that didn't solve it. Closing the browser (not just the tab) and reopening it did.
posted by zippy at 1:17 PM on February 8, 2012


See Google? You go messing with your privacy policies and the next thing you know Youtube is pooping all over the internet.
posted by Grither at 1:18 PM on February 8, 2012


So...Maybe chalk any problems up to the further Googleizing of YouTube? That last re-design of YT, for instance, was especially Google-riffic. Lord knows what the Goog is doing to YT behind the scenes.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:19 PM on February 8, 2012


FF 9.0.1, stuttering in the overlay, and some (but less) elsewhere (like on embedded players in web pages, but not in overlays).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 2:39 PM on February 8, 2012


pb: Maybe it's a Chrome problem? Their stable release on Jan 23 has some complaints about how the changes affect Flash.

Yeah, I've been having lots of problems with Flash. I'm on the brink of switching back to Firefox. Does anyone know if the memory-eating problem of Firefox has been fixed?
posted by Kattullus at 4:12 PM on February 8, 2012


I went to close my YouTube account as I work toward my G-vorce, and after clicking "are you sure you want to close your account, blah, blah" I was immediately logged in via my Google account. Fuckers.
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 6:22 PM on February 8, 2012


Lord knows what the Goog is doing to YT behind the scenes.

Well, he's not the only one :)

The simple answer is we have not made any big changes recently, nor have there been any large-scale disruptions.

Tomorrow I can see if there is anything weird with the embeds from metafilter in the logs.

The only change I can think of would mostly affect Chrome users, and that is increased use of HTML5 (which you can see if you right-click the player, if it doesnt have the Flash stuff in the menu ("About Adobe Flash", etc) then you're in HTML5.
posted by wildcrdj at 11:50 PM on February 8, 2012


I figured it was my platform: Chrome OS on a CR-48 netbook. Stuttering is de rigueur on this little under-powered beastie...

This, however, is quite likely. I like my Chromebook for reading MeFi and such, but it's not a great video player sadly.
posted by wildcrdj at 11:52 PM on February 8, 2012


I don't know if this is how it's behaving for everyone, but for me, YouTube videos just stop loading, both inline on MeFi and on the homepage. If I pause the video, it stops loading (or starts loading very, very slowly) and doesn't get back to normal loading speed unless I start playing the video again. My connection speed can fluctuate over the course of the day, so sometimes I have to pause the video to let the video load. I used to be able to do that, but as of a few weeks ago, YouTube doesn't let me do that anymore. I just checked, it behaves the same on Firefox (I'm using Win 7, I normally use Chrome). I tried Vimeo* and videos on The Guardian's website, and videos there load at an even speed, even when the video is paused.

* I have Vimeo set to use the Flash player, not HTML5.
posted by Kattullus at 5:42 AM on February 9, 2012


The Chrome update philosophy: "sure shit may break randomly, but it will be fixed randomly too!"
posted by smackfu at 6:25 AM on February 9, 2012


Also youtube is stealing more of my keyboard shortcuts lately -- Ctrl-Tab (and Ctrl-Shift-Tab) to cycle through tabs on Firefox breaks when on a lot of youtube pages. Super annoying.
posted by inigo2 at 9:30 AM on February 9, 2012


May or not be related, but I've had issues all week with youtube getting stuck on loading the flash player and getting stuck on 'Sending Request to Server' for quite a while.
posted by xorry at 1:51 PM on February 9, 2012


Well, poking around some shows that overall embeds are getting average load times / playback performance. Not saying the issues people are finding aren't real, but there does not appear to be anything specifically wrong with Metafilter or with the embed code used here (at least one time in the past there was something like this, so I wanted to make sure).

For those with problems specifically with the embed player but NOT the normal player... odd, certainly, although there are some potential differences (monetization / Flash v HTML5 / etc) that could occur between the two types of playback.

Might find something else, but at the moment I'm doubtful there's a single cause behind all of this.

I used to be able to do that, but as of a few weeks ago, YouTube doesn't let me do that anymore.

Buffering behavior is subject to change and there are all sorts of ongoing experiments and changes related to it, so this is probably related to that.
posted by wildcrdj at 2:05 PM on February 9, 2012


Ah, well, I guess I have to hope they change the buffering back. It's sort of annoying to have to watch half a video, then wait until it buffers again, but honestly, on my personal whine-o-meter it barely registers as a whimper.
posted by Kattullus at 6:15 PM on February 9, 2012


Thanks for taking a look at it from your end, wildcrdj.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:49 PM on February 9, 2012


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