Video player is really making it hard to enjoy the site.

A big problem I have as I can not watch the videos on the site when they are first released I click play and nothing happens. I normally have to wait a few hours for them to start working or watch them on their you tube channel dam annoying.

I haven't been able to watch any videos on Chrome in quite some time now and it's really quite frustrating. Any time I want to watch something I have to open up IE and play the video, and sometimes that doesn't even work.

hey guys,

apologies about the video issues. Now that E3 is done, we're going to be working on rewriting pieces of the video player to make it what it should be.

One quick question is what type of computers (CPU/memory) are you all watching videos on? The video player shouldn't be resource intensive, but I'd like to get that out of the way. Also, please try turning off Adblock and see if that helps (I know, I just need to have it as a bug that I can file w/ the player team).

I'll have something written up later this week about what our plans for video moving forward are.

Thanks and sorry again.

I stopped streaming videos because it would jump back a few seconds a bunch while I'm watching it. What I mean by that is you'd hear, say, Ryan say something along the lines of, "That was crazy", and when you look at the video it would be frozen. Then you'd hear Ryan say, "That was crazy" again before the video would catch up and begin to play normally. This would happen at least 5 times in a video for me. There are rare instances of it jumping ahead 5 seconds for no reason as well.

I've gone back to progressive which has been okay so far since the videos load up fast for me.

I agree. The video player needs serious work. I skip a lot, so progressive's not an option. Streaming's locked at a extremely low resolution, so I won't use that. HTML5 is passable, but very prone to crashing. With the amount of video content on the site, that player needs to be ship-shape.

I have an i7 2600 with 8GB's of RAM. The video player is inconsistent as heck. I can watch a progressive video on the high setting, and the entirety of the video will load in under a minute. Then when I hit HD, it will load the HD video at a snails pace. Also, video sometimes glitches out and starts from the beginning.

Agreed!

@itwongo: our player's streaming looks at not just bandwidth but cpu and memory to figure out what quality to serve. I think it's a bit too aggressive in dropping your quality but just to make sure, do you have a fairly powerful system?

@liquidprince: it's on our list. Akamai claims we have too large of a discrepancy between our qualities (4k bitrate for HD vs 2500 for high), but it shouldn't be causing these issues.

@mrpibb:

System Type: x64-based PC

Processor: AMD A6-3620 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics, 2200 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Physical Memory (RAM): 6.00 GB

And thanks for the quick response!

@mrpibb: I'm on Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 4GB ram. A small feedback from me would be to let the user decide the quality of the video since the code is deciding to stream low quality for us even though some of us have the net speed and machines capable of better quality. Looking forward to reading your write up!

While it's no excuse for non-subscribers, premium members should always be downloading their videos in HD if they can help it. Unless they literally cannot spare 4 more GB, they can always download them and enjoy them in full quality without any of these issues. I've been enjoying the site's content like thsi for years and frankly I don't understand how anyone else does it.

If you want to "stream" the content, then in some instances browsers will display the content inside the browser as if it was downloaded but progressively. I recommend trying it out for any premium member who has for one reason or another avoided downloading.

@itwongo: thanks. Can you try playing video and see if your CPU goes past 50%?

@mrpibb: Me personally, I've previously tried the ad block disable, no difference in issues. I have a fairly powerful pc, and literally have no other issues with any other player on the internet, except for this one.

@mrpibb:

Streaming full screen: 35% to 51%

HTML5 HD full screen: hovers at 13%

Progressive HD full screen: 35% to 45%

Windows 7 x64, Intel Core2Duo E8400 @3.0GHz

4GB Ram

ATI Radeon HD 3470.

Chrome 23.0.1271.95 (Portable version)

No video plays at all. Adblock has been whitelisted for this site, but even removing it from Chrome will still not allow me to play videos. Makes using half of this site essentially impossible. The ad will play, and then it will just be a black box that loads indefinitely.

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit, Chrome as my browser.

I'm having an issue where attempting to skip to somewhere in the video, no matter what combination of setting I use, causes the video to either end prematurely (grey screen and all) or buffer forever. It's really a pain in the ass. I'm working full-time and I do not have the time to sit down and watch 2-3 hours of video in one sitting. I guess I'll have to start downloading them, but I'd much rather watch them on the site.

@mrpibb:

Windows 7 Pro 32 w/ Google Chrome

Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.10 GHz

2GB Ram

Perhaps not the most powerful laptop, but it plays all other online video players without any problem.

I have both the loading/buffering and crashing issues as addressed in this topic, as well as the issue that a video replays immediately after watching for some reason. In the latter case, it only replays the audio while the screen is grey, and I am not able to use any of the interface buttons anymore.

I have no problems with videos loading for me, but I do want to know if the volume on all videos starting out on max being a firefox thing or does it do that with chrome as well?

I have to download all the videos I want to watch (resulting in me watching a lot less) due to constant stuttering issues. Nothing I do seems to work.

I've been having a problem where after a video finishes, the audio will play back again for the entire video until I leave the page. I've found that most of the issues I have with the player get fixed after about a week though so I haven't posted it in bugs yet...we'll see.

I always just watch on Youtube or download the videos now. The worst part is that they were using FlowPlayer originally, which always worked great for me, and since its most recent revision they've got it looking really nice too. With the current player I always run into quality issues, occasionally stuttering, and most annoying of all for me: the time bar never wants to disappear in fullscreen videos. If the video's 30 minutes or less I'll just watch it on Youtube, but extra lengthy QLs or premium content end up just being easier to watch in VLC regardless. To be fair, I'd only watch on FlowPlayer instead of Youtube, but I find long videos are always best downloaded.

I stopped trying to watch videos on my iPad 2, too flaky

The biggest problem I have with it is that every 10 seconds or so the video stops and the audio repeats the last 5 seconds or so again and then catches up to where the video is paused and then it carries on. The only way I can get around with problem is to buffer the whole video (which if you leave for too long makes the player bug out and you have to start the buffer process again) or download it... I actually find the content better to watch on youtube and end up simply downloading all the premium content that I can...

its fucking garbage

I have this too!

Same. Its gotten to the point that I just use Youtube for giantbomb videos now.

It's kind of insane how many different issues people are having. I haven't had some of the problems people have run into but I sure do dislike the player. I'll use YouTube whenever I can and just put up with the player for the premium stuff. HTML5 crashes all the time and streaming looks like hot garbage. I'm using beefy computers, fast internet connections, latest version of Chrome and don't have adblock installed on any of them. It's just a real mess.

Same problem with windows 7 pro, 6-core AMD, 6 gigs of ram, Newest firefox. Also, when using streaming the video (audio only, actually) restarts after I finish watching it.

@mrpibb:

Phenom II X6 1100t 3,1ghz, 8gb ram, HD 6970, windows 7 64bit, latest stable chrome release. I'm pretty sure it's not hardware related at least on our side.

And yeah, I second pretty much every problem listed here regarding performance. Can't watch in HD only on Giantbomb and the low quality is really garbage. And I cant even download the videos here, the download speed is terrible averaging 20kbps on my 30mbps connection. The only solution I found is let the video buffer like 30 min prior to watching it... and sometimes that's not enough :P

Here's the issues I have with the player:

• When a video is done it will often repeat the audio from said video from start
• If I choose streaming the quality often changes multiple times but most of the time is quite poor quality
• If I choose progressive I can only watch the low quality version. High stutters, but the audio is fine.
• HTML5 works fine most of the time. I can watch videos in high quality without problems. Unfortunately it stops loading most times.
• Youtube is the best and most reliable way to watch the content.

Unfortunately I'm not a premium member anymore so I have to watch most videos on youtube. But I do think it's weird that I can watch HTML5 videos in high quality without the video stutters, but if I choose progressive high the video stutters.

I haven't been having a lot of playback issues but every time a video ends the audio starts playing again. So weird.

I've noticed the Streaming setting tends to restart your videos too, Progressive is where it's at.

Edit:

• Chrome Version 27.0.1453.116 m
• Windows 7 SP1

One of the video options (streaming or progressive) plays videos way too high of quality for my connection, but it allows me to pick my own spot in a video; whereas the other option lets me stream at the shit-quality my connection prefers, but if the stream dies or if I want to resume a video I have to sit and wait for the entire thing to load again. And the HTML 5 player is just plain ass for me because my laptop can't handle it or something. I'm left bouncing in-between players, depending on how my internet is on that particular day. Thankfully, for the non-premium videos I can just watch them on Youtube. There's also my (and I'm sure a lot of peoples') pet peeve of having that "gear and thumbtack" overlay arbitrarily getting stuck on the screen, which happens with with the Youtube embed, as well.

Overall, there are just a lot of inconveniences that ideally shouldn't be a factor.

I understand a lot of work goes into these things and I don't mean to insult the engineers. It's just that the player's been in about the same state for a long time, and I think a lot of people thought it'd be fixed by now.

Hey guys, first of all the site is awesome, you guys rock, you work your asses off, etc, etc. I'm not trying to criticize the content; but videos have become practically unwatchable:

1. I can't pause videos for more than like 2 or three minutes, it crashes the player and I have to reload the page

2. When I reload the page, I can't start from anywhere other than the very beginning of the video. I recently started using HTML5 (as opposed to progressive, which I used to use) so <i>sometimes</i> I get lucky and it restarts where I left off.

3. When that happens, however, the player typically crashes a few minutes later, rinse, repeat

4. This one is really nitpicky and I know I'm an asshole for bringing it up, but the audio levels are allllllllllll across the board. Again, I'm an asshole but since I'm listing grievances a little consistency would be nice.

5. Again, not a huge thing, but when I do start a video at the beginning and never pause it and it plays all the way through (on progressive) the screen grays out at the end and the audio, but not the video, restarts.

6. Did I mention I love you guys? Really I do, just please fix the video player, the lack of functionality really bums me out

Oh, I'm running on Chrome, I just now turned ABP off and my video card is..... ummm I think an ATI Radeon HD 5800 series. AMD processor. Either 8 or 16 gigs of ram, I don't really remember what else is in there.....

The current video player has been a pile of trash since it came to be.

Well he's part of the staff cuz we love him and we'd be super sad if he was gone again, but it's also funny how he pretends to not know these things seeing as he was playing Last of Us before mentioning this.

Having audio looping issues as well. Once a video is over, the audio loops but there's no video.

Sometimes, the player just stops. I can rewind a few seconds, it'll play again, continue to play for a few seconds, and then stop again.

Happens on my iPad 2 and on my HTPC which is a Core2Quad @ 3.2ghz, 16 gigs of ram, and a Radeon 5850. Win7 64 bit. Firefox 22 with NoScript and AdBlock, although GB is whitelisted completely. Modified host file which is much too large to post. iPad is jailbroken, although the only thing I've really done is add a modified hosts to it.

If I try any option other than progressive at low quality videos run in super-slow motion for me. Audio stays at normal speed so everything de-synchs, its totally unwatchable. Before that I was getting problems where the video was extremely skippy, basically showing like one still a second or something, also unwatchable.

Low progressive is the only option that works for me, and it looks TURRRIBLE, big square pixels that vaguely resemble games. Am also squarely in the youtube first camp now (for nonsubscriber stuff). Basically can't watch subscriber content any more, hope this gets sorted soon cos it's really becoming a problem. Over the last few years Giant Bomb has become one of my main sources of video entertainment, and this video stuff is just killing the site.

Running Firefox on a piece of shit laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU @ 2.00 ghz, 2 gigs of Ram, Vista 32 bit, no adblocker.

Also, I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to computer stuff and I cant figure out how to download videos. The download button just opens a quicktime movie in another tab (with all the same video problems), right clicking doesnt have any download file option either. How do I make it work?

I'd also like to report a lot of problems with the video player lately. HTML video has been unwatchable. The HD html video is a great quality especially for all these new trailers but it won't play for more than a couple minutes before stopping. The streaming player cycles between high and low quality so frequently I get weird looping video segments. Not to mention anything less than the highest quality on the streaming version looks really bad. The highest quality on the streaming version still looks poor.

edit: To add I've checked my internet speed when this is happening and still 25 down/ 3 up and 20 pings on speedtest.net. Also youtube hd will load and buffer fine.

Since we're all at it, me too. I have a decent laptop, and I'm never doing anything else on it when I watch videos so that shouldn't be an issue. No adblock, using Chrome.

6GBs of RAM, 1.6GHz AMD dual core processor, 5.8 Windows Experience Index™.

For people with iOS devices (not sure if it's available on Android) download the Giant Bomb Video Buddy app. It's how I watch all GB videos since the site barely functions properly. It works almost flawlessly.

I was beginning to think I was a unique case with the whole "audio starts again" thing on videos, but that's really my only complaint. I've not really had any problems with the progressive setting, but I do get the stuttering on streaming (never really use the Youtube option).

The only problem I've been having was where the video would freeze and the audio would go back like 5 seconds, catch up with the video and resume like nothing happened.. weird.

I have had problems on an ancient MacBook (from 2006 or something), a decent gaming PC (Windows 7 64 Bit, i7 920, 6 GB RAM, Geforce 560 ti 2GB) and a year old iMac (not sure the specs on that one, it's my parents). I will say that I have very few problems on the iMac which has the most steady connection being right next to the modem. On your standard speed test it usually has a ping of below 10 and 0 judder in the connection at about 20 Mb per/s and there are very few problems.

My main problem is the audio problem where the audio drops back five seconds or so. Honestly, on this old MacBook even Youtube has trouble playing so I never realized there were major issues with this player since it was generally fine on a super stable and fast connection.

I usually watch videos on HTML HD and the biggest problem for me is when I go full screen, it usually stops playing within like 10 minutes. It will keep starting and stopping after that and never catches up. When I reload the page it will start from where I was and then play fine for another 10 minutes but then I end up reloading the page a few times for every video I watch and it's a little annoying.

Using Chrome and a Core i3 2.4gh laptop with 4 gb ram. I don't have the fastest internet (10 mbps) but the videos play fine on youtube in HD for me.

I have to watch all giantbomb videos on my phone which is kinda shitty

I'm another one with this issue.

I thought I was the only one having this issue, I usually just watch the videos on youtube.

2013, subscriber only YouTube embed.

lol

lol yeah let's assume everyone has massive hard drives to keep all Giant Bomb videos and the bandwidth to download those large files and let's not forget the fact that internet service providers may charge extra to download them.

I download the gb vids and watch it through my xbox360 . I never watch it on my pc.