YouTube stops buffering when video is paused

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For some reason YouTube isn't buffering videos whilst they are paused.

Screenshot

It started happening two months ago. At first I thought it was just a global change by YouTube, but after venting on Twitter I discovered that only some people experienced the same problem.

I've searched for answers online but none of the solutions have helped.

So far I've tried:

  • Clearing the cache and cookies
  • Using a DNS service (OpenDNS)
  • Increasing YouTube's storage limit

It happens in both Chrome and Firefox. I'm running Windows 7 with Flash version 11.2.202.235 and located in South Korea.

Does anyone know of a solution?

Best Answer

It seems to be on a video by video basis. Your 'create a spaceship' tutorial will buffer when paused, but your 'create a city' tutorial will not.

They seem to use slightly different players; based on the right-click menus. The spaceship tutorial mentions HTML5 and the city tutorial has the standard Flash menu.

You could try forcing the use of a different media player or you could try joining Youtube's HTML5 trial; the 'create a city' tutorial buffers fine when played using the HTML5 player.

https://www.youtube.com/html5

Edit to include solution by Andrew Price:

  1. Login in to your YouTube account
  2. In 'Settings' go to the 'Playback' menu
  3. Under 'Video Playback Quality' check the 'I have a slow connection' option

This will default video output to 360p, but you can manually alter this when playing the video. Even at higher definitions the video will continue to buffer.

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