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Poor YouTube performance: Who is to blame?

deannnnn

deannnnn

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 4, 2007
2,097
637
New York City
Hey guys,

I've been frustrated about my poor YouTube performance and was wondering if anyone here may have some insight on it.

I have Verizon FiOS, which is considered to be one of the best and fastest ISPs in America. I have the 50/25 plan (50 Mbps up, 25 down), which is one of their lower end plans but still more than powerful enough to handle pretty much any internet usage.

Overall the service is good, but I have a lot of trouble with YouTube. I'm using a rMBP so I always try to load videos in 1080p, but they frequently take forever to load, or buffer frequently. It's inconsistent too. Sometimes it is able to load 1080p videos in a second, but other times (especially during peak traffic times) it struggles and loads so slowly that I give up and close the video.

Speed tests show consistently high speeds. Never lower than the 40's, but right now (Sunday at 10pm, peak hours) I'm trying to stream the Ultra Music Festival on YouTube and it can't play more than a couple of seconds at 720p. So I'm streaming at 480p and it has STILL stopped to buffer several times already. I mean, this is ridiculous.

So who is to blame here? Is YouTube just overloaded? Does FiOS throttle YouTube? Or am I just getting bad service from FiOS and bogus speed test results? I mean, I streamed this same music festival a year ago at 720p on my parents' 20 Mbps Comcast connection with no difficulties.

Do other people have trouble with YouTube like this? Or is this exclusive to me? I am in New York City so there's obviously a lot of demand for bandwidth here.

Just looking for opinions and advice.
Thanks!
 
It's likely flash and it's buffering. Right click on a youtube video > click the folder > slide to the far right (unlimited) > uncheck the box > close. See if that helps.

deannnnn said:
Hey guys,

I've been frustrated about my poor YouTube performance and was wondering if anyone here may have some insight on it.

I have Verizon FiOS, which is considered to be one of the best and fastest ISPs in America. I have the 50/25 plan (50 Mbps up, 25 down), which is one of their lower end plans but still more than powerful enough to handle pretty much any internet usage.

Overall the service is good, but I have a lot of trouble with YouTube. I'm using a rMBP so I always try to load videos in 1080p, but they frequently take forever to load, or buffer frequently. It's inconsistent too. Sometimes it is able to load 1080p videos in a second, but other times (especially during peak traffic times) it struggles and loads so slowly that I give up and close the video.

Speed tests show consistently high speeds. Never lower than the 40's, but right now (Sunday at 10pm, peak hours) I'm trying to stream the Ultra Music Festival on YouTube and it can't play more than a couple of seconds at 720p. So I'm streaming at 480p and it has STILL stopped to buffer several times already. I mean, this is ridiculous.

So who is to blame here? Is YouTube just overloaded? Does FiOS throttle YouTube? Or am I just getting bad service from FiOS and bogus speed test results? I mean, I streamed this same music festival a year ago at 720p on my parents' 20 Mbps Comcast connection with no difficulties.

Do other people have trouble with YouTube like this? Or is this exclusive to me? I am in New York City so there's obviously a lot of demand for bandwidth here.

Just looking for opinions and advice.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
 
Svend said:
It's likely flash and it's buffering. Right click on a youtube video > click the folder > slide to the far right (unlimited) > uncheck the box > close. See if that helps.
Click to expand...

I noticed I have zero issues in chrome so safari definitely is more edgy around flash.
 
YouTube's 1080p performance sucks for me too despite having more than fast enough speeds for it (I don't have FIOS) so I don't think it's your ISP.
 
I'm using Uverse at much lower bandwidth than the OP. I have no problem streaming HD video in Chrome or through Netflix, but Firefox is dreadfully slow at almost any resolution. I don't think it's an ISP issue, either.
 
Tomorrow said:
I'm using Uverse at much lower bandwidth than the OP. I have no problem streaming HD video in Chrome or through Netflix, but Firefox is dreadfully slow at almost any resolution. I don't think it's an ISP issue, either.
Click to expand...

I have U-verse and I can stream HD with no problem from anywhere besides YouTube which is terrible in any browser. So I definitely think it's a YouTube problem.

You get what you pay for.
 
OP:

Nope, certainly not limited to you.

I'm on Comcast and they're generally good where I am (unless something breaks), and I get 55mbps down during speedtests.

Having said that, I've seen all of the behavior that you mention. Sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's better. There are times I can get a full 55mbps download of a 1080p file from Japan, but I can't even get 100kbps for a 240p postage-stamp sized video from here.

There have been some thoughts floating around that ISPs have been throttling YouTube, but I think it's just crummy routes.

If you're really hot for good YouTube performance, you might try a VPN to see if things get better.

Also, I recommend click-to-flash; you'll get H.264 videos instead of Flash. No ads in the H.264 either.
 
Having same issues as you as are many others if you Google it. Google says it Verizon's end and Verizon says it's on Google's end. :rolleyes:
 
I'm having the same issue on my iMac. Which I actually just bought yesterday. Earlier today I was already getting frustrated, it being a day old. But before getting carried away in my thoughts- I uninstalled/reinstalled the latest flash version. Have tried both Chrome and Safari, and still getting horrible Youtube performance. I tried watching a few vids on my MBP I bought mid last year- to make sure it wasn't my new iMac, and surprisingly the issue is existent on the MBP as well. So... now what? I tried adjusting the "local storage" to unlimited, and it seemed to work for a few seconds, cause 1080p started buffering away. But tested a different video afterwards, and nothing happened. This is uh.. kinda frustrating.. :(
 
Thanks for the responses everyone, glad to see it's not just me.

Svend said:
It's likely flash and it's buffering. Right click on a youtube video > click the folder > slide to the far right (unlimited) > uncheck the box > close. See if that helps.
Click to expand...

Svend: I tried this, and amazingly it seems to have made a pretty huge difference. I purposely waited several days to respond because I thought it was a coincidence, but I'm getting crazy fast load times on 1080p videos now.

I really have no idea why this setting should make a difference. If I have a fast connection, why would the Flash local storage amount matter? And why was I getting such random performance before changing this?

Regardless, thanks so much. You're the best.

I'll absolutely report back if this was in fact a coincidence and this turns out not to be a long term fix.

Also, just for the record, I'm using Chrome.
 
Glad to see that it helped. I have Fios and also use Chrome. I guess it's something with the fast connection and not limiting how much youtube can buffer, so it just buffers alot of the video.

deannnnn said:
Thanks for the responses everyone, glad to see it's not just me.



Svend: I tried this, and amazingly it seems to have made a pretty huge difference. I purposely waited several days to respond because I thought it was a coincidence, but I'm getting crazy fast load times on 1080p videos now.

I really have no idea why this setting should make a difference. If I have a fast connection, why would the Flash local storage amount matter? And why was I getting such random performance before changing this?

Regardless, thanks so much. You're the best.

I'll absolutely report back if this was in fact a coincidence and this turns out not to be a long term fix.

Also, just for the record, I'm using Chrome.
Click to expand...
 
Not Just Mac

I the same issue with YouTube and Verizon Fios on a PC with various browsers. Lately YouTube is unwatchable. Bandwidth tests show that raw bandwidth is not the problem.
 
Svend said:
It's likely flash and it's buffering. Right click on a youtube video > click the folder > slide to the far right (unlimited) > uncheck the box > close. See if that helps.
Click to expand...

You are the man! I've struggled with this issue for months and this was the fix.

Edit: Now I'm not too sure. It's stalling again.
 
Last edited:
Tomorrow said:
I'm using Uverse at much lower bandwidth than the OP. I have no problem streaming HD video in Chrome or through Netflix, but Firefox is dreadfully slow at almost any resolution. I don't think it's an ISP issue, either.
Click to expand...

Firefox (ver 15) is horrible with youtube videos for me. Running on FIOS. If I go to youtube I use safari or chrome.
 
I blame YouTube (google since they now own them). Amazing how the commercials stream fine and then the vid I actually wanted to watch never seems to buffer well.
 
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