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Mac/You Tube HD video Playback

Rhobes

Rhobes

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 28, 2004
357
7
Bigfork, MT
Hello All-

Hopefully you can understand my question. See my signature below for my system specifics (running FireFox 27.0.1) and I am using a GoPro Black Hero 3+. The video I mention is 1080p Wide format with the photo resolution set to 12MP wide, and Protune off.

The question deals with HD playback from You Tube (playback from the video card on the iMac is wonderfull HD-not using the YT download). Whenever I playback from YT and select the "GEAR" icon lower right to select the quality of playback eg.1080p it does not allow me to select quality settings, it always has me set at 360p which looks terrible. When I select the gear icon my choices are 360p or Auto only, selecting Auto leaves me at 360p.

IMMEDIATLEY after uploading a video to YT and I playback, and quickly select the gear icon I can select the full range of settings and therefore select 1080p. It will replay again and again in 1080p HD if I keep that window/tab open forever. If I close that video it reverts to the 360p(which is not HD) and I can never replay at 1080p again only Auto/360p, no gear drop box selections available. I don't understand it.

On my friends MacBook Air (FireFox 15.0.1; OS10.5.8)he can select the full range of settings, (all but 1080p) from the menu at any time, but it will allow to playback at real 720p HD and looks great. His Mac Air running 10.5.8.

My YT "playback" (YT Settings), are set to: 1) Always choose the best quality for my connection and player size. 2)Always play HD on fullscreen (when available). This makes no difference how it is set, I have also set it to: 3) I have a slow connection, never play higher-quality video. and it still plays at 360p non-HD.

Is there a way to enable the gear icon on the YT video player to allow me the full quality selections that are there? Allowing me to playback 1080p HD which has been uploaded? :confused:

P.S. I understand Fire Fox has an add-on called "YT High Definition", anyone know if this cures the problem: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-high-definition/
 
RCAFBrat said:
I suspect your internet connection is too slow to support HD playback:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/91449?hl=en

Could also be your wireless router that is the bottleneck I suppose.

When you upload your video, it is probably playing back from your HDD and not YouTube's server, that is the only sensible thing to account for different playback settings.
Click to expand...

I have Comcast 50Mbps download & 10Mbps Upload speed, the WiFi is 802.11n. From what I've read this should be sufficient speed for better then what I get from YT.

A cable comes in the house to a box and my iMac is connected to the box via ethernet, the Macbook Air mentioned above is connected via WiFi and gets 720p HD. My iMac connected via ethernet only receives 360p. I thought the ethernet connection would be better (need it to cut interference here).

I guess playing back from the HDD maybe why the iMac will play 1080p HD only moments after uploading a video to YT, sounds reasonable to me.
 
Last edited:
Rhobes said:
I have Comcast 50Mbps download & 10Mbps Upload speed, the WiFi is 802.11n. From what I've read this should be sufficient speed for better then what I get from YT.

A cable comes in the house to a box and my iMac is connected to the box via ethernet, the Macbook Air mentioned above is connected via WiFi and gets 720p HD. My iMac connected via ethernet only receives 360p. I thought the ethernet connection would be better (need it to cut interference here).
Click to expand...

Internet service should be plenty fast.

I assume your playback problem is not limited to videos you upload yourself (ie all YouTube videos are limited to 360p). Do you have any issues with speed when browsing with your iMac, watching video content from say vimeo, cnn, etc?

Suggest doing a speed test of your connection; try connected via cable and then without the cable connected (late 2009 iMac has built in 802.11n as I understand it so try with WiFi connection instead).

Perhaps an issue with your cable although I assume that even CAT3 would be adequate.


Edit: Not sure what your comment about cutting interference meant, can't imagine that there would be an issue connecting to the router if it is next to your iMac.
 
Are you running the latest Flash player?

It takes some time after uploading video for YouTube to process HD videos (they first put up SD, then higher quality). That might be the problem you are seeing.

Try a different browser. I find that Firefox uses the most resources when playing flash videos.
 
RCAFBrat said:
Internet service should be plenty fast.

I assume your playback problem is not limited to videos you upload yourself (ie all YouTube videos are limited to 360p). Do you have any issues with speed when browsing with your iMac, watching video content from say vimeo, cnn, etc?

Suggest doing a speed test of your connection; try connected via cable and then without the cable connected (late 2009 iMac has built in 802.11n as I understand it so try with WiFi connection instead).

Perhaps an issue with your cable although I assume that even CAT3 would be adequate.

Edit: Not sure what your comment about cutting interference meant, can't imagine that there would be an issue connecting to the router if it is next to your iMac.
Click to expand...

***Same problem when viewing any type of video on YT mine or not,I have searched for 1080p HD video and played back from YT and not showing HD & no gear icon selection available. No speed issues at all, I get HD from Vimeo but Vimeo players don't have the gear icon that I've seen.

***I did the speed tests with the ethernet and WiFi connections independently. Ethernet= 54.7 Mbps DN, 9.4 Mbps UP. WiFi= 55.3 Mbps DN 10.4 Mbps UP.

***My ethernet cables are CAT 6.

***I went to cable after I was having some sort of audio advertisements (possibly from a radio station or T.V.) break into the computer whether I was on line or not, only partial advertisements then it would disappear after 5s or so. Haven't had that problem anymore.

***Since I've checked Vimeo by your suggestion, maybe I should just use that site, just that there are many YT video's that will just never work for watching
 
Consultant said:
Are you running the latest Flash player?

It takes some time after uploading video for YouTube to process HD videos (they first put up SD, then higher quality). That might be the problem you are seeing.

Try a different browser. I find that Firefox uses the most resources when playing flash videos.
Click to expand...

Hello-

I have Flash v. 12.0.0.70

I know about the time lag on recent uploads to YT, it doesn't matter for me, there is no HD anywhere and no choice of playback resolution no matter whose or how old the video is from YT.

Well, I've had issues with Safari and those were corrected with FireFox. This is my only problem with fireFox, if it's a firefox problem-I don't know. Either case I have so much time vested into reading all my Google searches (on this problem) & trouble shooting Firefox that I'll just move on and if I never work it out I'll probably move to Vimeo for my uploads.

Firefox has an add-on for macs to always playback in HD. I'm going to try that now....
 
Hey!!

I figured it out. So, in YT I was set to use the "HTML5 Player". You must select the "Default Player" in order to playback any HD.

I first loaded the Firefox extension "You Tube High Definition 7.5" to my iMac. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-high-definition/

When I selected 1080p from the Firefox Add-Ons drop down window I got a pop-up window from You Tube saying something like "you cannot change resolution when using the You Tube HTML5 Mode player". I then entered this link: http://www.youtube.com/html5 to change to the "Default " You Tube player.

All is well..., now I can select any of the playback resolutions from the gear or from the Firefox add-on "HD button". I got beautiful HD playback now...

Thanks everyone for your suggestions- :D
 
Good to see that you sorted the problem by changing the HTML5 preference on YouToube. I guess Google abandoned the beta.

It seems that in the past few days Google changed YouTube backend again, so many plugins such as video downloaders and HTML5 video loader are not working.
 
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