A Strange YouTube Problem - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 01:45:34 pm
content: When viewing EEVBlog videos (plus others) through YouTube I have a strange problem:1) After clicking on the link the 'loading' icon with the spinning dots appears for about thirty seconds but the video does not load.2) After the attempt fails I get the error message " An error occurred. Please try again later.Learn More" Clicking on the link just gives the standard YouTube help page.3) The background of the error screen has 'snow' similar to an analog TV without an antenna and a hum bar that slowly passes down the video window.4) Clicking reload on the browser at this point always successfully loads the video.Normally I would put this down to a browser problem but the snow and the hum bar makes it more interesting. Does anyone have any ideas? Note that this issue does NOT occur when viewing videos on the EEVBlog web page.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 02:15:31 pm
content: I get that from time to time. I think possibly it is trying to load and advert from an ad server and for some reason the ad server is unresponsive. Reloading the video may cause a different ad to be chosen and then it works.

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 04:12:15 pm
content: yea, i have seen that before, it's a youtube problem, will just disappear after a few days when one of googles umpa lumpa slaves gets around to fixing itits frustrating but it does go away

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 04:14:31 pm
content: I get that sometimes also. I have the ads blocked, so that may indeed be part of the problem. Another issue I have is when it auto switches from 480p to "HD" after the video has started. That frequently causes the video to freeze, forcing a reload.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 06:30:18 pm
content: OK,but can anybody explain the hum bar and the snow on the picture? Everything now is supposed to be digital and it's not something I would expect to see.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 06:41:21 pm
content: Hum bar and snow is just the background error image that the YT player screen uses as a background. In normal use it is overlaid by the video, either HTML5 or via the flash plugin. Player barfs or the HTML5 engine dies and this background will be shown, along with the error message.

author: Deathwish
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 06:42:26 pm
content: It's trying to take you to the dark side of youtube .. I always seem to end up there somehow or other looking at things I would rather not see.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 06:42:50 pm
content: Quote from: German_EE on June 23, 2015, 06:30:18 pmIt's done deliberately, for effect. Someone wrote code to emulate analog noise.

author: electr_peter
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 07:59:42 pm
content: Quote from: German_EE on June 23, 2015, 01:45:34 pm5) If you keep YouTube window with "snow" for longer time, sometimes it starts playing only the sound of the video. Strange.I have seen such effect on my PC very frequently before, but now all is fine. YouTube has a complex loader and original cause of problem is not clear.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 12:00:48 am
content: I think it depends on how popular the videos are. YouTube has a content distribution network that caches videos on local servers close to where people are viewing them. Rarely watched videos may not be on a local server and may have to be copied down from a remote server before you can watch them, which would cause some small delay before they start playing. This may also be why some videos start out low definition and then switch to HD part way through.

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 12:26:20 am
content: I only use one computer for the internet with nothing on it other than emails, Ebay stuff and the forum, the serious machines never go online, I use a LG smart tv for the forum and Youtube and after a recent firmware upgrade have lost the ability to disable flash, nearly every page I now view a popup flick starts playing, it's driving me bonkers, also I have now noticed that Youtube only has either 360 and 720 as viewing options, before I would only use 480 not a big deal really, the autoplay on Youtube really annoys me to say the least although I rarely if ever sign in to watch a video, cannot clear cache on the TV so it remembers history and passwords even in chrome settings when signed in.Going to set up another PC for flash and Youtube only, the smart TV thing has become a nightmare particularly when typing I get margin and spelling errors, the grammar mistakes are all mine by the way. Also cant link, save or post pictures from the TV.In regards to the issue at hand this has been discussed before on the forum whereby videos if they started at all would begin in low resolution and then either freeze or step up and continue as normal, I had this issue on just about every video regardless of the content or provider generally with a popup link referring back to the ISP, currently all is good and we are not seeing these issues whatsoever but only a few months ago the refresh icon was getting hammered as pointed out by others, alignment of the planets could be to blame, what goes around comes around.Muttley

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2015, 03:41:18 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on June 23, 2015, 04:14:31 pmOne good way to diagnose browser issues is to view the page in incognito mode. By default, it remove all the extensions, blockers and cookies that may interfere with that page.