In the past people with slow connections who tried to watch YouTube videos often had their patience tested. Playback often caught up with the buffer, leading to annoying pauses--and leading many to give up entirely on watching Youtube videos.Things have changed for the better, reports the Google Operating System blog. YouTube videos are now held in the browser's cache by default, allowing people to watch them again and again without pauses once they have been downloaded.
Youtube even has helpful advice for people with slow connections: "Still rockin' the 56k? No problem. As you may already know, a slower connection simply means slower delivery of services. You only need a little more time and patience than with a faster connection. For best results, you may want to start the video player and then click on the PAUSE button immediately. Then, wait until the red progress bar has reached the end of the video before playing it. Allowing the entire video buffer lets you watch it without interruption. Remember, the shorter the video, the shorter the amount of time it takes to buffer."
Even if you have got a fast connection, you may want to make use of this trick if your network seems slow.
There is, of course, nothing strange about the idea of caching Flash SWF files, even though the Google Operating System blog says that "YouTube managed to achieve something incredible" here. It seems rather to be a decision on YouTube's part to allow the (legal?) caching of videos by default.
The benefits are clear, however: better enjoyment of the YouTube videos you want to watch once or more than once, whether you have a slow or fast connection, and the ability to close and re-open the browser and then watch those videos again without having to download them a second time. Just remember, if you want to start caching large numbers of YouTube videos, you will want to make sure your browser cache size is big enough to accommodate them.
And one more thing, this new "functionality" also works for YouTube videos embedded in web pages on other sites, such as here on Neowin!
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/49366
It automatically pauses the video allowing it to buffer.
BeeJAyP was asking if users who's web connection comes via a proxy server (corporate users for instance) would benefit from the videos being cacheable by the proxy server. Seems like a valid question to me.
Our company uses YouTube extensively for product launch videos, demonstrations, etc. Having that content cached by the proxy server could save hundreds of megabytes of bandwidth on our internet connection if indeed this stuff is cacheable at the proxy server and not just the client.
YouTube has always been cacheable at the proxy level -- we've done so for years.
Huh? Is this supposed to be something new? I used to do the same three years back when I was on a 256 kbps line. Still do it on an EVDO connection.
thanks mate, now thats a protip.
thanks mate, now thats a protip.
My thoughts exactly when I read the article.
Pure genius.
thanks mate, now thats a protip.
Your sarcasm seems to imply you are assuming all people on the web have common sense. That is a grave mistake.
Set your browser to only use X amount of MB to cache.
the new thing is that you dont have to redownload the video if you leave its page...
It was the same once, they changed it and now back.
I set it so YouTube plays them in HD (if available) and find it takes forever to load - initially the player won't even start playing for a few minutes! Then when I skip in HD, half the time it messes up the video and I have to refresh/restart. I thought this was perhaps the HD setting, though sometimes I find the search results page shows up perfectly but the video pages take a long time. Right now it's OK but it seems to be incredibly temperamental and my only guess is ISPs throttling, though if this is the case it's totally out of order because they may as well just block YouTube with the limits I sometimes find...
Any other UK (or other countries I guess) users ever find this?
I set it so YouTube plays them in HD (if available) and find it takes forever to load - initially the player won't even start playing for a few minutes! Then when I skip in HD, half the time it messes up the video and I have to refresh/restart. I thought this was perhaps the HD setting, though sometimes I find the search results page shows up perfectly but the video pages take a long time. Right now it's OK but it seems to be incredibly temperamental and my only guess is ISPs throttling, though if this is the case it's totally out of order because they may as well just block YouTube with the limits I sometimes find...
Any other UK (or other countries I guess) users ever find this?
Never happens for me in Belgium (with a very fast connection though).
Youtube's performance just got a lot poorer in recent months :/
Your browser should limit the amount of temporary files anyways.
Except for video editors, 3D artists, etc. drive space became a non issue ten years ago.
You can buy a TB drive (that's a 1,000 gigabytes) for as low as $100 now.
Except for video editors, 3D artists, etc. drive space became a non issue ten years ago.
You can buy a TB drive (that's a 1,000 gigabytes) for as low as $100 now.
Drive space is very much an issue, especially for those of us with laptops that have other things to spend money on, and SSD users.
i remember those days of grief when i accidentally closed the browser or one of its tabs containing that youtube video which i spent the last few hours downloading
im curious as to if it also caches incompletely downloaded videos, but i dont really feel like trying it out right now...
i remember those days of grief when i accidentally closed the browser or one of its tabs containing that youtube video which i spent the last few hours downloading
im curious as to if it also caches incompletely downloaded videos, but i dont really feel like trying it out right now...
Not it doesn't, it only caches fully bufferd videos.
How exactly does one "rock" a connection that slow?
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