Poll: So, let's vent about Youtube a bit.

[n00beffect]

Umm, well... I'm kind of afraid of speaking-up, since I don't have- any of the OP's problems, and if most of you do, I'll probably end-up sounding like a douche-nozzle. There is one little tech problem I have with YT, and that's when the video's playing, at one point, it kind of breaks-apart. I don't know how to describe it exactly, but it gets a bit blurry and disjointed, like mosaic-y, for a couple of seconds, and then goes back to normal. But that's pretty much it.

I see a lot of people ripping on the lay-out, which, to be fair is a bit of an ass to get around. I really didn't see the point of changing it, but ffff knows that innovation these days is not bred from need, but from peer pressure. I.e. 'other sites are doing it so we have to, too.' - bollocks, but whatever. I got used to it, now.

 

[Sir Christopher McFarlane]

There is one thing I can say I like about the newest change: the channels are better now than in their Cosmic Panda incarnation. Unfortunately, some peple still insist to use the CP, because it allows you to set your background. But it doesn't matter what you set as background image. Nothing will look good with that boring gray and black rectangle in the middle of it. So why bother? The new design lets you visualize more videos at once in the videos page. It's white and red instead of black and gray. That's a positive change.
It's still not as good as their old channel design though. That one you can still use on Zippcast.com.

Playback options: why is this shit so limited? Why can't I set which size I want all my videos to load in and their viewing quality? Why must the video I loaded reload in High Definition when I turn on fullscreen? Now this was partially corrected. If you select the viewing quality on your video, it won't automatically go HD when in fullscreen mode. But you still have to do it for every video.

Something that was a problem for a long time was how Youtube decided for no reason that your playlist settings for auto-play were irrelevant in fullscreen. Autoplay was the default option in fullscreen. And it was the worst possible option. They've fixed this recently.

My biggest pet-peeve right now is the video not being on the centre of the screen anymore.

And this:

Adding to the list of technical problems with Youtube, sometimes when loading a video it will instead give me a version of the video with reduced duration. Example: if I click on a 5 minute video it might give me a 20 second copy of that video which only plays the first 20 seconds of it. The page has to be refreshed a few times until you can watch the damn video.

... not to mention the design and look of the site has been getting worse and worse.

I have to agree with this, its not just whining about change either, the site has objectively become worse to navigate.

Useful tips, I think:
1)Use the page www.youtube.com/my_subcriptions as your homepage. Bookmark it because Youtube removed the links that used to lead to it.
2)Use Youtube High Definition app for Firefox and Youtube Options for Google Chrome to keep your video sized according to your tastes.

 

[ATRAYA]

I've never had any of those problems you're talking about... Now, I agree YouTube has its issues, but it's mostly in its web layout and a few other little quirks it has. :/

 

[MajorTomServo]

Aww, I thought we were going to vent about the youtube community. :[

I was so ready to rant about the comments on every video game video being one guy named "LeMasterTroll" with a trollface avatar leaving a comment saying "this game sucks CoD is better #yoloswag" and five pages of people saying "Kill yourself, you worthless ****."

 

[Musette]

Apart from its loading being problematic on my tablet, the biggest issue I've had with YouTube is whatever program it uses to detect "copyright infringement."

I have a video of myself performing a piece by my favorite composer. The composer himself introduced me in the video and after that performance, he verbally gave me permission to upload the piece online, so I did. Earlier this year, Universal tried to claim copyright on the song, even though the composer owns his own publishing company and has no ties to Universal. I had to contend the claim twice and expose my real name as well as my home address before they finally lifted the claim off of my video. I'm actually lucky it didn't go further than that, considering that YouTube has claimed copyright infringement on a professor's example of fair use [http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/2013/buffy-vs-edward-remix-unfairly-removed-by-lionsgate], I shouldn't have been too surprised by the whole situation.

 

[viranimus]

then list whatever metaengine you use, since it is apparently far superior.

and yes, with that long term pessimistic view, everything is "ruined" by any company that touches them,and google is guilty of that surely; i have yet to see a company stand the test of time in that manner, but i'd much rather have android/google than to have an apple/iphone, so that is what i use and it has yet to let me down. (i will say it is bloated, as restrictive as apple is though? i don't think so.)

Hrm, I use several.

For school:
http://www.scirus.com/
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/index

Deepweb
http://www.deeppeep.org/ (When its up)

Older boxes on my network for day to day I will use
http://www.webcrawler.com/
For overall quickness and lower resource pull

General day to day I will use
http://www.dogpile.com
as it has reasonable resource pull but results from wide range of engines like Yahoo, google, Bing, Ask, Ehow, Yandex,lycos, etc

Now as for longview this isnt screw ups based on law of averages. I knew over a decade ago I did not like google. Why? Because in the .com bubble burst they realized they had no actual product to make a business model on so they decided they would make their model on having the same sort of brand identification band aid has, for all things related to the internet. They exhibited early on the type of organization they are and would be and they have remained true to that indignant form. This is a major reason WHY this keeps happening with Google. They have an eye for lucrative ideas and the money to buy them out, but once in their hands they have no clue how to keep from making those properties worse for customers/users.

Again don't get me wrong, I would not have apple either. But to simply accept a google product bit by bit being ruined on the basis of "well at least it isnt apple" is beyond defeatist. But if you are bowing to google in the name of their Interoperability as a unified platform, especially when it comes at the cost of adopting their services even if you do not want to, tolerating their increasingly intrusive nature, Increasingly restrictive products, and having to willingly feed google info it has no place having access to, then really theres no difference if you use apple or not. Same concept to differing degrees. So while things like syncing might seem appealing it is not worth having to set up a Gmail account, to spend more time writing out scheduled events to upload to calender in order for gmail to give you an email reminder of it. Synch has potential for usefulness, but its usefulness is in no way justification for forcing googles will on you elsewhere. Especially with the long and shameful track history of the longer they tinker with it, the more broken it becomes that google has written for itself. If that is the cost of entry, I will gladly not use such interoperability as I was fully capable of maintaining my day to day schedule before Android ever existed. I can most likely continue existing without it just fine instead of turning life over to some hand held device to do my thinking and recalling for me.

Its definitely a LOT more than just law of averages. There is a reason their unofficial motto is "Dont be evil" They need the reminder because it is next to impossible to resist their nature.

 

[Yopaz]

It hasn't been getting objectively worse. I actually thought the last layout change was an improvement so this is still very subjective.

I don't know, I seriously believe that overall the layout has objectively become less efficient and less easy to use. I'm not saying that each layout change is objectively worse from the previous one, but the overall change has been a decline in quality.

Say if you compared the state of Youtube maybe 4 years ago with the state of it today, you could conclude that today's Youtube is literally less efficient and more difficult to use.

Yeah, it's a shame that it doesn't look like this anymore

Spoiler

Personally, I think the new update made it more efficient. That's my subjective opinion so it doesn't mean anything at all. It means that "it's getting worse all the time" isn't completely objective though.

 

[Vykrel]

glad im not the only one having the sound dip lately. i thought there was possibly something wrong with my speakers.

 

[Nowhere Man]

Youtube's buffering is now ass. Even after I've messed with the flash settings and cleared my cache. What's worse is the creepy way it keeps nagging me to use my real name for my account and to link it to a G+ account I don't want or need. What exactly is your end game here Google?

 

[NearLifeExperience]

THE ADS FOR FUCKS SAKE WHY AM I FORCED TO WATCH THE SAME COMMERCIAL BULLSHIT THAT HAS RUINED TV FOR ME EVERY COUPLE OF VIDEOS!!

Pff. That felt good For the rest I don't have much to complain, safe for the absolute morons that start childish flamewars in the comments. But I guess that's not youtube's fault.

 

[Hawkeye21]

I am not bothered by layouts or ads. The thing that really grinds my gears IS VIDEOS NOT FUCKING BUFFERING ALL THE WAY TO THE FUCKING END! In much happier times long past, if buffering was slow, I could pause the video without interrupting buffering, and let it load to the end, while watching a movie and eating a sandwich, then watch it at my leasure. For what stupid fucking reason I don't have the option to do that now?! FUCK YOU, YOUTUBE! I now use streaming video download addons just to watch videos I want without retarded stuttering interruptions.

EDIT: inb4 my connection sucks, NO IT DOES NOT! It's fucking retarded youtube engine, with DownThemAll I download youtube video at 30mbps, but I can't fucking watch the same fucking video because of shitty fucking buffering cause it keeps stuttering every 10 fucking seconds

EDIT2: oh, and by the way, downloading videos with this plugin skips fucking ads. So fuck you youtube, I am going to leach every single video I watch now, without seeing your shitty ads and generating a single cent for you. You calling me a **** now? FUCK YOU, YOU STARTED IT AND ITS YOUR OWN FUCKING FAULT

 

[FalloutJack]

Aww, I thought we were going to vent about the youtube community. :[

Nah, I don't even comment there much.

Efficiency?

Efficiency is in the eye of the beholder. You say the layout's better. I say the videos suck. It all depends on priorities. And since my priorities are based upon finding, loading, and viewing videos with some semblance of quality, I feel my complaints - and certainly the ones of people talking here with me - are pretty valid. Doubly-so when you consider some of the problems the site is having now were things that were running FINE beforehand. It basically falls into the trope of "They Changes It, Now It Sucks", because it means that somebody had to go mucking about with the buffering program, thinking that NOT loading the whole video was somehow a good idea...when it is not and NEVER WILL BE.

Nice rant

Nobody here will think your connection sucks. We've all seen the huge lines of complaint about the buffering problem in which Youtube spouts BS on the matter and then ignores it. They don't know what they are doing and I would love to see someone code-savvy pick it apart, hand them the solution, and say GET TO WORK. The loading is shit and it wasn't always shit, which means they stupidly MADE it shit either on purpose or because they are idiots. Or both. Somehow, both can be true, or should.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

So, the other night it took me 1 hour to load a 12 minute video in 240p.

At that very instant I was able to load 1080p videos that were 6 minutes in length in under 10 seconds.

It frustrated me so much that I made a thread about it. I think that youtube is trying to curb my youtube addiction.

 

[Tayh]

For those suffering buffering woes, try to set your local storage to unlimited:
Right-click on video -> settings -> Adobe Flash Player Settings - Set slider to unlimited.

Does not make whole video buffer. Ergo, not good enough. Sorry.

Hey. It was a suggestion, not a solution.
While it doesn't allow for complete buffering on my end, I found that it increased the amount of video it will buffer while paused.

I'm a bit stumped in regards to all the complaints of having to sit through ads, however. Ads on youtube? Wut?
Either Denmark gets no ads, or else my Firefox AdBlock plugin manages to block the ads without any action on my part.

 

[FalloutJack]

For those suffering buffering woes, try to set your local storage to unlimited:
Right-click on video -> settings -> Adobe Flash Player Settings - Set slider to unlimited.

Does not make whole video buffer. Ergo, not good enough. Sorry.

Hey. It was a suggestion, not a solution.
While it doesn't allow for complete buffering on my end, I found that it increased the amount of video it will buffer while paused.

I'm a bit stumped in regards to all the complaints of having to sit through ads, however. Ads on youtube? Wut?
Either Denmark gets no ads, or else my Firefox AdBlock plugin manages to block the ads without any action on my part.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I MEAN, it might be useful to do that anyway, but it doesn't solve the problem, as the short vid of Baker Cat remained unfinished. As for ads, yeah it probably is your plugin. The Escapist will, of course, sacrifice you to an Aztec god if you use it here. (Biiig controversy on that around here.)

 

[Sir Pootis]

FINALLY, a thread for ME!

Firstly, Why did you get rid of the Subscription box? It was a good place to see your subscribed videos in order of upload, and videos you have viewed are removed, making it so I can click a video, watch it, and go to the next video I want to watch. No, they have the feed, where you just have a bazillion notifications. Videos aren't removed upon being viewed, so you have to scroll through EVERYTHING just to get to the next one. Also, why did you remove the INBOX of all things. It made it so I can instantly see when someone replies to a comment of mine. I'm not going to go back to a video just to check, it's a pointless waste of time. And the new channel layout is just stupid. Google just likes to bury everything under seemingly infinite inconveniences, apparently trying to set a record for the least user-friendly interface in history.

 

[Yopaz]

Aww, I thought we were going to vent about the youtube community. :[

Nah, I don't even comment there much.

Efficiency?

Efficiency is in the eye of the beholder. You say the layout's better. I say the videos suck. It all depends on priorities. And since my priorities are based upon finding, loading, and viewing videos with some semblance of quality, I feel my complaints - and certainly the ones of people talking here with me - are pretty valid. Doubly-so when you consider some of the problems the site is having now were things that were running FINE beforehand. It basically falls into the trope of "They Changes It, Now It Sucks", because it means that somebody had to go mucking about with the buffering program, thinking that NOT loading the whole video was somehow a good idea...when it is not and NEVER WILL BE.

Nice rant

Nobody here will think your connection sucks. We've all seen the huge lines of complaint about the buffering problem in which Youtube spouts BS on the matter and then ignores it. They don't know what they are doing and I would love to see someone code-savvy pick it apart, hand them the solution, and say GET TO WORK. The loading is shit and it wasn't always shit, which means they stupidly MADE it shit either on purpose or because they are idiots. Or both. Somehow, both can be true, or should.

Seriously, why did you quote me? It seems like the only thing you said was that this is a matter of opinion and priorities. That is the exact same thing I have been saying in every post I have made in this thread. Someone says the layout is objectively worse and I am saying it's subjective. I have complained about the exact same things you have and I see the layout as something subjective.

 

[M0rp43vs]

I actually thought the Layout before this one was one of the better ones, the current one I couldn't care less for.

Unlike others, I don't have too many problems with the site but my what really kicks the back of my seat is the like others, the videos not buffering to the end but I'd be lying if I didn't say I've gotten used to that by now.

Also minor things that bug me, remember when the title was above the video(this is not my gripe)? Remember when there was this box where you could click and would show a bunch of videos before and after these videos, making series or finding similar videos a bit easier? Yea, that was pretty annoying getting rid of that.

Also, though others may disagree, I actually liked the fact that one side of the homepage had recommendations where if I clicked I'd get an entire box full of videos which, while most I would never watch in a million years, don't get me wrong, but now and then had some gems and helped me either find new series to watch or music to listen to.

 

[charge52]

EDIT2: oh, and by the way, downloading videos with this plugin skips fucking ads. So fuck you youtube, I am going to leach every single video I watch now, without seeing your shitty ads and generating a single cent for you. You calling me a **** now? FUCK YOU, YOU STARTED IT AND ITS YOUR OWN FUCKING FAULT

You do realize that while youtube does get a profit from ads, the main people you'll hurt will be content providers right?

Since video's don't have to be monetized, it clearly isn't youtubes main source of revenue, it's how people who make a living off youtube, well, make a living off youtube. Adblock barely hurts youtube, it just hurts people who work all day to make you entertained.

 

[MrBenSampson]

I can live with a lot of the changes they've made, but the one thing that actually upsets me is that I can't restart a video without it needing to load all over again. Also, I don't like that I can't tell it to stop asking me to use my real name.