Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Online video is becoming more and more popular, but it often assumes you have a fast connection. If you don't, video playback can be affected.
I would like to view YouTube without the stops and starts. What causes that and can it be corrected?
•
It's typically a sign of a slow or overloaded internet connection, or just a slow server out at YouTube.
The good news is that there are a couple of ways to approach the problem.
•
Watching a streaming video on a service like YouTube is really just a special form of downloading the file that contains the video.
Normally when you download a file from a web site it's downloaded completely into a temporary location or a location that you specify. Once the download is complete the application that's used to operate on that file is launched and it then has the entire file available to it, ready to play with.
With a service such as YouTube the idea is the same only with one important twist: the video viewing program is launched and begins playing before the download is finished. In essence, it begins playing from the "front" of the file while the download process keeps adding to the "back" of the file.
The problem that you're experiencing is what happens when the download of the file can't keep up with the playback. Playback reaches the point where the video is currently being downloaded and has to stop and wait for more of the file to be downloaded before it can continue playing. Hence the repeated stops and starts.
You can actually see the progress of both when you view a YouTube video:
Here you can see the progress mid way in one of my videos. The red bar indicates the amount of the video that has been downloaded so far. The circular progress indicator shows you where playback is. As long as the red download progress bar remains ahead of the circular playback indicator, you should be fine. That means the file is downloading faster than you're playing it back.
On the other hand, if you rarely or never see the red bar extend from the right of the playback progress indicator, your download speed is probably not fast enough to watch videos while they're being downloaded.
The solution is simple: press pause and wait for a while. Pause is the button on the far left, in the example above. When you press pause, playback stops, but the download continues. Wait a while until the download progress bar has completely filled out to the right indicating that the download is complete. One complete hit play and you should have smooth playback of the video.
Note that this tip works for other video players such as Google video as well, though the controls may look different. Look for that download progress indicator and see how it behaves compared to the playback indicator. If the download's not keeping up, just press pause and wait for more of the video to be downloaded before you watch it.
Article C2981 - April 2, 2007
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
Pausing stop and start videos only helps for 5minutes, is there enything else I can do?
Posted by: Gabriele at March 22, 2011 5:30 PMI'm using Firefox 5.0 (however problem has been in every version)
I allow video to load completely and audio continues while video stops and starts after a few seconds. Even as I type this it's delaying some of my words. I wait and it auto fills if I keep typing.
I'm using osx 10.6.7 All add-ons disabled.
Posted by: ddrt at June 29, 2011 7:19 PM@Ddrt
Posted by: Mark J at June 29, 2011 11:01 PMSounds like you might have more programs running than your computer can handle which might be slowing it down. More RAM might help, or you might try stopping some programs that start up with your computer that you don't need.
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_determine_what_i_absolutely_need_to_load_at_startup.html
Oops, I just noticed that you use OSX, I don't know what the procedure is to stop programs from starting up on a Mac, someone who reads this might have an answer.
My dsl downstream rate was 765 and up was 132.
They were upgraded to 7036 and 508 respectively and I had no problem w/starts&stops of video.
For some unknown reason the rates have reverted to the lower nbrs and I now have that prob. again.
How can I change the rates back to the higher nbrs from the Broadband DSL Line Diagnostics page?
05-Sep-2011
Posted by: Don deB. at September 4, 2011 11:55 PM
I've been trying to watch videos from a site called Paper Crafters Library. I do what you say, but its still an extremely slow process. At times I can let it spool in for ages, but when I click play I still only get a very short time, sometimes only seconds, before it stops again. I tried Videobox but the makers of that said the site uses streaming videos and Videobox will not work. Is there anything else? I've spoken to our provider and they say its all ok there. I can watch Youtubes with no problems. Thank you.
Posted by: Jan at October 17, 2011 1:42 PM