Youtube buffers, everything else is fine?!??!

[bigben6]

Recently i get CONSTANT buffering from youtube... be it 780p or 420... it does not really matter.... it is terrible, but if i grab a torrent i can get 2.0mb/s DL rates.... anyone else noticing this, any ideas on how to address it or fix it?

 

[Neuromancer]

If the video is not popular it seems to get delegated to slower servers. I see it kind of often.

Very rarely do I notice it on videos with thousands of views.

 

[bigben6]

I'm talking Day9, Husky Starcraft, everything really.... though i will see if your theory pans out and begin paying attention to views/likes i guess

 

[Pinky]

First, youtube is a notoriously poor streaming website. I've done tests at work, home, on various operating systems using various browsers at different times of the day. It's hit/miss regardless of what we do on our end.

Second, for a while now I've started using google dns servers for streaming devices. I discovered this when Hulu would have issues constantly on my playstation 3. Added 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as my two dns entries in the playstation's dns settings and RARELY have any issues now. 99% of the time I have flawless playback, where it was 50/50 whether I could even get through a video before. The culprit were crappy time warner (roadrunner) dns servers. Lord knows how they maintain routing tables, but google obviously does better.

I'd suggest using the google dns entries and see if this helps. Might not cure the youtube issues, but might improve things like it did for me with Hulu.

 

[habbajabba]

Just use the unplug addon for firefox. It allows you to choose the size or format that you want from utubes servers. Instead of worrying about the server just down it and watch it normally. I always have streaming issues with them and got tired of it too.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unplug/

 

[bigben6]

ill try that thank you.... can i watch while it is DLing? like a stream or do i have to DL entierly first

 

[su root]

Could be a problem between your ISP and Youtube.

Try a speedtest with youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/my_speed

 

[habbajabba]

The unplug addon simply grabs whatever video or audio for that matter is available and yes it must be downed first. My normal browsers are either palemoon portable in windows, or firefox in linux, and neither one is allowed to play youtube though both can browse it. If I watch it streaming I usually am using midori in private browsing mode in linux.
You could also try Minitube but it is only free for linux but still fun even if your on a mac or a windows os.
http://flavio.tordini.org/minitube