Videos in Safari are barely playable

[jfeathe]

I'm having several significant issues playing videos in Safari and I was wondering if anyone had any fixes. I have a 5s and have iOS 8.1.2:

1) The loading animation has disappeared in iOS 8. I remember in iOS 7 that once you hit the play button, there would be a loading animation that would indicate that you're video is actually loading. Now, I never know if a video is broken or simply loading.

2) Scrubbing is broken. In iOS 7, I used to be able to effectively use the different scrubbing speeds perfectly to go to the exact time in a video. Now, when I try to scrub, the time indicator bounces around wildly. Additionally, whenever I go to a different point in a video, the video freezes for up to 30 seconds before playing again.

I NEVER had video issues before iOS 8. I found video playback to be nearly perfect on iOS 7. I even had a better experience with videos back in the day on my 3GS on iOS 5 and 6.

I took until 8.1.2 for my Wi-Fi to be fixed and I'm praying hard that 8.1.3 will fix this issue for good. But if it doesn't I'm willing to try anything...

 

[dannyyankou]

It's so weird seeing a join date say "2015".

Anyway, I agree with you. Scrubbing is very difficult unless you enter full screen mode. But if you're not in full screen, you can't do fine scrubbing.

 

[oneshotpro]

basically with iOS8, apple said let's make the 2014 version of internet explorer 6.

 

[I7guy]

I'm having several significant issues playing videos in Safari and I was wondering if anyone had any fixes. I have a 5s and have iOS 8.1.2:

1) The loading animation has disappeared in iOS 8. I remember in iOS 7 that once you hit the play button, there would be a loading animation that would indicate that you're video is actually loading. Now, I never know if a video is broken or simply loading.

2) Scrubbing is broken. In iOS 7, I used to be able to effectively use the different scrubbing speeds perfectly to go to the exact time in a video. Now, when I try to scrub, the time indicator bounces around wildly. Additionally, whenever I go to a different point in a video, the video freezes for up to 30 seconds before playing again.

I NEVER had video issues before iOS 8. I found video playback to be nearly perfect on iOS 7. I even had a better experience with videos back in the day on my 3GS on iOS 5 and 6.

I took until 8.1.2 for my Wi-Fi to be fixed and I'm praying hard that 8.1.3 will fix this issue for good. But if it doesn't I'm willing to try anything...

Welcome aboard!

Scrubbing in portrait on my iphone 4(7.1.2) and 5s(8.1.2) is terrible. Neither operating system on either phone offers me precise control in portrait. Landscape scrubbing is fine.

But other than the scrubbing no other playback issues on 8.1.2 using Safari.

 

[jfeathe]

Thank you for the welcomes and confirming that I'm not alone in my troubles. I hope there are some improvements with the update next week, but if not, I'll start looking for a better browser.

 

[mangomind]

Thank you for the welcomes and confirming that I'm not alone in my troubles. I hope there are some improvements with the update next week, but if not, I'll start looking for a better browser.

I've looked and haven't found a different browser that changes the video player and makes it work better.

 

[FreeState]

I've looked and haven't found a different browser that changes the video player and makes it work better.

I don't think you will either, short of jailbreaking your phone. I think, I could be wrong, that Apple only allows developers to use their API for playback via a browser.

 

[NoHo]

Watching videos in iOS 8 is really awful.

It's impossible to know how much of the video has loaded. There isn't any progress bar anymore. If you have a video you want to skip around in, you can't really do that very well anymore.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with iOS 8, the only thing that I think is terrible is video playback.

 

[mangomind]

I don't think you will either, short of jailbreaking your phone. I think, I could be wrong, that Apple only allows developers to use their API for playback via a browser.

Yes, this is what I thought.