Improving video playback

[Skater]

Although I make an effort not to visit websites like YouTube, there are some circumstances when I need to playback video on my computer. This could be from YouTube, the BBC website, or sometimes film trailers from various others.

Sometimes the playback is very stop-start and needs to "Buffer" a lot. Is there a way of improving the quality of the playback of online videos?

 

[siddharth2002]

It all depends on your Internet connection, You can perhaps increase the buffering time limit in Windows Media Player (Options - performance) but that will only effect sites which use Windows media streaming. Nothing much can be done regarding others which has their own customised media players.

 

[MattW]

On YouTube just press play, then pause it immediately, it will load the video while it is paused so after a while there will be a full red bar and that will mean as soon as you click play the video will play right through without stopping to buffer. This works with pretty much all flash based videos/audio but sites that use Windows Media or Real Player for the most part can't do this (you will pause and it will stop downloading). Another advantage is you can go and look at some other websites while waiting for it to load

 

[siddharth2002]

That's what I would do but that's exactly what put me off from watching streaming videos, they should start playing instantly without any buffering during playback. Now I just live with it singing praises for Telecom NZ everyday for showering us with broadband that is at least faster than dial-up or I think might have to confirm that too.

 

[pingusten]

You could give Download Accelerator Plus a go. It really helps to not only optimize download speeds, but I've found that it helps to stream YouTube videos better.

Also remember that Youtube servers are often very busy. Quite often I get lag in videos even with 7.5MB broadband, just becuase so many people are trying to watch the same thing.