Why do YouTube 1080p videos buffer when I have a fast Internet connection?

[ady199]

My current internet speed (wireless) is:-

but YouTube 1080p always seem to buffer and stutter

Why??

Thanks in advance

[Muhammad Farrukh]

Because you are downloading a torrent in the background :p

[rajputwarrior]

My current internet speed (wireless) is:-

but YouTube 1080p always seem to buffer and stutter

Why??

Thanks in advance

because you are in the UK and youtube is in the states...

[brink668]

1080p are big files, also YouTube seems to throttle traffic at times especially in the evening hours in the USA, the demand must be so great they probably do this on purpose to conserve bandwidth at times.

[Ridlas]

They throttle videos that are not popular.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

i find that no matter what network im using Youtube videos usually have buffering or stuttering issues. like others said, Youtube throttles heavily based on time-of-day or popularity of the video

[CPressland]

Simple Fix - Big Ass Proxy Server behind your Internet Connection.

Otherwise just download the videos ahead of time using something like jDownloader, at least you can get more bandwidth if you're downloading multiple videos at the same time.

[Anthonyd]

Youtube is intentionnaly lowering down the speed at which you can DL video, because they won't you to use lower video resolution.

Use Jdownloader to grab video on youtube, since it's using multiple connection at the same time, you'll reach the maximum of your internet connection.

Sad but true.

[Salty Wagyu]

I've seen some 240p and 320p videos slow to load as well. Only way to effectively speed them up is using something like Speedbit Video Accelerator which opens up 2 connections to Youtube to double it up. It worked in the trial I used, but I'm certainly not going to pay for full version with the ridiculous price they ask for it.

[shockz]

I get a kick out of how 480p buffers or stutters but switching to 720 or 1080p results in better streaming half the time. They for some reason also can't get full screen down either, the feed either stalls or you have press play/pause a couple times to get it going.

[statm1]

You are all assuming that Youtube is the only culprit, specs matter just as much. If you have a crappy computer it doesn't matter what speed you're getting from the ISP, its going to be buffering every 2 or 3 seconds or worse be an actual slideshow.

[trag3dy]

You are all assuming that Youtube is the only culprit, specs matter just as much. If you have a crappy computer it doesn't matter what speed you're getting from the ISP, its going to be buffering every 2 or 3 seconds or worse be an actual slideshow.

That doesn't make sense because sometimes for me I can watch an entire 20 minute video in 1080p without any buffering, and other times it buffers every 5 or 10 seconds. And time of day doesn't really seem to play a part in that as well. I believe 90% of the buffering problem is caused directly by youtube.

[Detection]

I used to get that all the time with a 40/10 fibre connection too, I read about BufferBloat and followed a guide to reduce the buffer size in DD-WRT, and coincidence or not, it fixed it

http://www.embracing...-on-dd-wrt.html

[PiNoYz]

1080p youtube videos load slow for me too. I probably only get like around 200-400 KBps speeds but when I view 720p videos, I get my full internet connection speed (around 2.5 MBps). 240p-480p only gets me 100-200 KBps speeds. It also doesn't matter what time of day I watch youtube videos, popular or not.. I am also from the States.

[44MLX]

Maybe because you have bad graphics card?

[Klownicle]

For the same reason im on a 50mbit line and youtube buffers even on non-1080p streams. The Internet Tubez are big enough and Routing.

[Chsoriano]

Maybe because you have bad graphics card?

While a low-spec GPU could impact video performance, I have this exact same issue on my computer (Quad-core, GTX 580) and know for certain it has something to do with either Google throttling Youtube videos, or the ISP throttling Youtube traffic. I have a 24/3 internet connection but 1080p videos are often unwatchable. I often have to resort to 720p and sometimes even lower just to watch the videos. It really is terrible. And I know it's not directly related to my network connection because on the same machine I can stream Netflix or Amazon Video in "HD" just fine.

[+John Teacake MVC]

Could be a number of reasons! The speed between the hops of your connection and YouTube Servers might be slow. They spend massive amounts on CDN's but they cant provide a seamless experience to EVERYONE no matter how big they are!

[+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹]

Because your on BT, VM here and have no issues whatsoever :)

[Louisifer]

Its nothing to do with anyone's computer its all to do with what server you get, if you get a heavily loaded server your going to be buffering no matter what quality you chose some people seem to get a better server by refreshing maybe once or twice. I think your location in the world may affect which servers you get so you might be out of luck no matter how many times you try and refresh.

One way to test if it is your connection or YouTube is to try any of the VEVO videos and choose HD, VEVO and im not sure which other partners get the best servers which will only buffer if your connection isn't fast enough.

[DJ-Light]

Download this http://bywifi-video-streaming-downloader.softonic.com/

[shakey]

I'd rather videos buffer than what happens with my pc... any flash based content I play has to be below HD quality, because if I enable Hardware Accel, it freezes my pc completely within a few mintues... :(

[statm1]

Its nothing to do with anyone's computer its all to do with what server you get, if you get a heavily loaded server your going to be buffering no matter what quality you chose some people seem to get a better server by refreshing maybe once or twice. I think your location in the world may affect which servers you get so you might be out of luck no matter how many times you try and refresh.

One way to test if it is your connection or YouTube is to try any of the VEVO videos and choose HD, VEVO and im not sure which other partners get the best servers which will only buffer if your connection isn't fast enough.

I'd rather videos buffer than what happens with my pc... any flash based content I play has to be below HD quality, because if I enable Hardware Accel, it freezes my pc completely within a few mintues... :(

[Argi]

They throttle videos that are not popular.

From what I'm been told it's mainly that they're not in a higher up cache. If you request a random video, it'll have to go all the way down into store to fetch it which is considerably slower than something popular which is already in memory ready to go. Could be throttled too but that's the main reason.

[SiCKX]

It's their servers, happens even on a much faster connection than yours (120Mbps), no biggie.

I mean sometimes vids loading slow, dunno about stuttering badly.