"Some" Youtube videos won't play all the way through with Safari

[beeduul]

similar problem here. every youtube video plays 1-2 seconds then stops. it doesn't matter if i wait for the entire video to download (let the red bar fill up). both in firefox 2 & safari. i tried re-installing old versions of flash to no avail.

i just updated firefox to v3 beta 5 and youtube seems to be playing ok.

no idea where the problem is coming from. hopefully the new firefox will not succumb as well.

 

[decksnap]

I know this thread is kind of old, but am still looking for a solution. Desperately. It's my parents' Intel iMac - 10.4.11 or whatever the latest Tiger is.

Sometimes they can watch video no problem, other times they stop ten seconds in - Hulu, Youtube, NBC, CBS. All the same, though less so with Youtube. My poor dad is barely computer literate as it is so it makes me sad that I can't fix this for him!

I am personally thinking it's an ISP issue, but I wouldn't know how to go about solving it. They have cable internet.

 

[beeduul]

i'm pretty sure it's a bug in flash, not an os-specific or ISP problem... but not 100% sure. i've had it occur on both windows and mac, on the mac it's happened in multiple browsers. i am running a beta of flash 10, running os x 10.5.2, but it has happened in previous versions of flash as well. my solution is to quit the browser and relaunch. the stopped videos always play after relaunch. not an ideal solution, but it works for me. it'll be interesting to see if google chrome exhibits the problem, too.

it's such a pain in the butt bug. it makes me say curse words.

 

[gusious]

Mine's working fine. Never had that problem...

 

[ultrilord2000]

i have the same exact problem you should try seeing if
other videos sites work, if they do then youtube.com has
problems because i dont know what else to do....

sites to look at:
metacafe.com
veoh.com

 

[ebel3003]

Old thread, I know, but to reiterate what others are saying, it seems to be a bug in YouTube's player. It happens from time to time on both my Macs and my Windows-based PC.

 

[Mass Hysteria]

does anyone know a solution to this?

I'm not sure what it is either. Every youtube video I play pauses three quarters of the way through.

This applies no matter how long the video is (2 seconds or 8 minutes), and whether I let the video load completely first or not, it always pauses at the same point on the timeline.

This has happened since the recent system updates. I just put it down to the fact I have an old G4 1.33 powerbook, that was until it started to happen on the iMac 24" 3GHz at work.

So I guess it's not a specific mac thing but a leopard, firefox, flash, or youtube thing.

I've also noticed that the player pauses if i try and skip past the 'pause point'.

It only pauses on the first time the video is played, not the second time. The only work around I can find is to let the video load, skip past the three quarter mark on the timeline, let it do the spinny beachball thing, then I can play the video all the way through without interruption!

 

[beegie]

Update from my 12/27/2007 Post

Glad this thread is still alive, not that I have the "solution to end all solutions."

I posted back on Dec. 27, 2007, having the same problem as others describe.

I have a white iBook G4, Tiger OS 10.4.11, and in 12/2007 I had Brighthouse broadband cable internet. Since May 2008 I have ATT DSL, currently 3.0 Speed, in a whole new city.

And Safari v.3.2.1 browser is the browser I use.

Back in December 2007 or January 2008 (can't believe it's been that long ago!), the problem finally went away w/the youtube videos, but unfortunately I don't remember HOW or WHY it went away. I know I "did something" (following tips I read in various google results for this issue). I was so happy the problem went away I just forgot about it thinking it was a "done deal forevermore."

Wrong.

For about the past 2-3 weeks (now March 2009) youtube videos are acting up again. They will start to play for a few seconds and then **SNAG** or get **HUNG UP** right near the beginning. Last week I stayed up all night playing a variety of music videos I have gathered and saved at my youtube channel, and ALL of them did the same thing. ALL of them. And there are a LOT of them from a variety of sources.

And it is irritating as all get out that they START to play normal, and then within a few seconds, SNAG SNAG SNAG. After the SNAG which lingers for about 6-10 seconds, then they continue to play all the way through.

The ONLY thing I could think that I had done at my end, was that there was another of those Apple "security update" thingies that Software Update tells me I need to download once in awhile. So at this point, I'm thinking it is some screwball Apple thing in their "security updates" that screws up youtube.

(But I have no idea, of course. Just guessing because I had done nothing "new" at my end except that).

Anyhoo, this is no help as a solution to everyone's problems, but I SHARE YOUR PAIN! It's a real drag.

----------------------------------------------

On a side note: My Dad has a PC on the same premises here, and I've never been able to get youtube videos to PLAY NORMALLY on his PC, with IE for PC. I thought it was that miserable "AV" antivirus freebie scanning program on his PC that was interfering with youtube videos playing normally. But I don't know. I am NOT a PC person (I don't know anything about them or their software and don't want to know), and would only try to share a video w/Dad once in awhile, but it was such a miserable experience how the vids would stop snag start snag stop snag start snag, etc., that I would just quit out of youtube and forget it. This problem w/his PC has been going on for quite some time, I'd say since I first got here in May 2008 whenever I would try to share a youtube vid w/him once in awhile, on his PC. (My Dad is 80 so he doesn't know squat about his own PC and neither do I. He used to be a Mac person, yeah a "traitor," lol, but he switched to PC several years ago for business reasons or whatever).
---------------------------

Anyway, either:

• Youtube Sucks

and/or

• PC's suck

and/or

• Apple Safari/Security Updates suck

and/or
I have no idea.

 

[charlesbronsen]

I've just noticed this on megavidea. It's very random and could happen 20 mins into the video or two. On 10.5.6 BTW

 

[ilovelucy]

No, I don't have the answer but registered

and we're experiencing the same problem. Run my old pc and am not used to the imac, daughter and grandson like to play youtube videos, have been having this problem for maybe 3 wks to 1 mo now. I emptied the cache, emptied the trash, don't know what version or what else to do. She was also having probs logging in to her aol email which she likes to do first when she comes over. I think I got that much figured out on the imac for her, she wasn't clearing back the url window all the way before typing in the url for youtube.

I've been able to get into her mail just fine, and all videos play fine on my pc with the latest version of Firefox. Only problem I'm having is buffering takes longer on weekends/holidays. Usually if that wheel starts going, while it is still playing, I stop it and watch the red bar to see that is fully loaded. Then it plays smoothly to the end. Sometimes they play fine on my pc without the extra fussing. Can also easily dl the videos to save if I use my IE8 browser if I play them all the way thru w/that. I usually try to open the video search results in a new tab on my pc but can't figure out how to do that yet with the imac mouse, thought I had that configured to work like my pc mouse, but doesn't exactly.

So the problem has got to be something with the imac or imac and youtube together with the imac. But adding in the aol to the mix, that points to the imac. If I close aol and then open Safari again, it doesn't make any difference, hangs or just plays audio and no video, scroll bar sometimes won't work. I was get one video to play on the imac, then no more, other odd stuff happens if I click wrong. I've got a bunch of updates to do on the imac but don't like to start all that until I'm more confident what I'm doing. Don't know where I am with Safari and other updates, think I've not upgraded to Leopard but Tiger?

Hope this helps to narrow it down. It can't be my isp and it can't be my pc. Both are connected to the same router but usually we can do a lot of things on each puter simultaneously, not sure we can both watch many videos at the same time because I am on a dsl line and not cable.

 

[Pooh Bear]

Are you using Wifi?

I had the same problem. I am connected to the Internet via wifi.

The only solution I have found was to disable the Airport iPv6 (Network Preferences, TCP/IP, choose "Desactivate" next to "Configure iPv6").

Since then I have never had this issue anymore... Just don't ask me the reason why: I haven't got a single clue!

Let me know if this solution worked for you.

 

[chrono1081]

This is driving me up a wall....it's not Youtube...it's Leopard. Because the same thing happens on both Safari and Firefox on my Mac. I'll click on a video and sometimes it will play all the way through, other times it won't.

If I get a video that won't play, it won't play no matter what. But a few days later if I go back, it will play all of a sudden. This never ever happened to me with Tiger.

Oh, and there's no specific video I can point to...as I said sometimes they will work, other times they won't. If one video won't work, I can click on something else and it can play no problem...or not.

Oh, also, if a video won't play all the way through on Leopard, Windows XP with Firefox will have no problems playing it.

UPDATE: I have a feeling it's a certain site that's screwing up Leopard/Safari/Flash when I watch videos through it. It's Videosift.

If I go straight to Youtube and watch videos, I don't think I have much problems. But if I go through and watch videos through Videosift, i think it screws something up with Flash. It's the only thing I can figure out.

Its definitely youtube. I get this on Mac, Windows 7, Windows XP, and Linux on different networks. It just happens sometimes.

EDIT: Oh ya, this may be mentioned but disable IPv6. This usually clears up internet weirdness.