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Comment by ChrisMorrisCo | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to hear if anyone else is having these issues, because it's really frustrating me.

Hey Chris,

I haven't experienced the buffering issues you describe, but I've definitely seen the resizing issues from leaving fullscreen (screenshot here): http://cl.ly/2y3F0B3V0X09013U0710. I've noticed this doesn't happen after full-screen, however; there's resizing issues anytime you toggle between different video sizes.

I should point out that my connection is pretty fast, around 75 Mbps.

I also checked out the caching issue you pointed out: you're dead-on. There's no caching whatsoever with HTML5. In general, the buffering behavior is kind of odd. Doesn't behave at all like the Flash player.

Oh good, so I'm not the only one with the caching issue! Wait, that's bad actually, haha. Were you using Chrome to test the cache? I'm going to try FireFox as well as that apparently hasn't had the buffering issue, so it may not have the caching issue either.

Weird that you don't have that resizing/offset issue when exiting fullscreen, but rather when toggling between video sizes. Everybody seems to be having different experiences.

Oh, maybe I wasn't clear: I do have the resizing issue when exiting fullscreen (not always, just sometimes). I was saying that there are other resizing issues in addition to that.

I was using Chrome 16 to test the cache. For the HD stuff, I must say: I can't find many HD videos to try it on. HD videos are more likely to be supported by big corporate accounts, and they'll opt for ads in their videos, too, which means that the video won't be HTML5-compatible (that's the real distinction). If the video doesn't have Google Ads, then it can be played in HTML5. Otherwise, it has to be Flash.

Ahh, okay. Fair enough.

Yeah, it took me a while to find some HD videos. I noticed it when stumbling across an advert for Breaking Bad which was uploaded by a user, if I remember correctly.

I haven't tested on all of my computers yet, but I've updated to Chrome 17 on my Mac and the caching issue seems to have gone away. I believe I still have Chrome 16 on my Windows machine, so I'll hopefully be able to test them side-by-side.

Are you only using the embeddable player with all the controls included? I just started using YouTube's HTML5 player as a fallback for users who don't have Flash, but with a chromeless player and using their iFrame API. The iFrame API is definitely rough on the edges, but it is experimental. And as far as I know, the HTML5 player for YouTube is in trial so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt on bugs and that they're working on it.

I haven't seen the bugs you mentioned, but will look out for them now.

Nope, I'm merely browsing the YouTube website. Are you using Chrome 16 as well?

I don't have the buffering issues on Firefox 10. Everything else happens though. (The cursor not hiding can be avoided by moving it to the bottom-right corner of the screen, which effectively hides it.)

I haven't tried on Windows, but on my Mac my dock is set on the right-hand side of my screen. This means that if I move the mouse to the bottom-right or top-right corner, the dock sometimes pops up if I'm not careful. I can't move it to the other side either because the mouse hit's the wall, so to speak. I think I just have to get used to it.

I'll try FireFox 10 in a moment, by the way.

It is not a YouTube issue, it is a Chrome issue. I have built a fairly sophisticated html5 player, and Chrome's buffering/caching strategy is just irritating relative to Flash/Safari/IE9. Also Chrome is just not as good a seeking as Safari/IE9.

My player is designed for language learning, so the users are constantly seeking: http://bit.ly/z9J8Cc

Your link isn't working for me. I'll test out some other browsers shortly. I'm surprised that Google wouldn't optimise the HTML5 player to fit YouTube considering they own both products.

I think they think they have optimized it. Chrome uses much less bandwidth for a partial play than the other browsers.

You're right, it must be a Chrome issue. I just clicked your link and it worked this time the video is having the same jittery playback I experience on YouTube's HTML5 player.

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