Videos ending prematurely

So in the last few days I've noticed a behaviour I've not seen being persistent before: a video I'm watching (potentially Premium-only, as I've noticed it happen in several of those videos but maybe I'm not remembering every instance & I've not watched many non-Premium videos in the last few days) stops playing and when I tab over to that page (I have it Picture-in-Picture so the page is not in-focus) then it's showing the "next video" option (clicking the play button loads the new page for the next video) but I had definitely not reached the end of the video.

When I go back to load the page for the video I was watching then sometimes it remembers where I was in the video but other times it has not resumed & restarted from the very beginning of the video. This seems to be totally inconsistent (I've had both things happen for the same video - as this happens often enough I've had it happen several times while watching a single video). It also isn't a set point in the video being buggy as it's happened at various points rather than consistently failing as a set place in the video file.

Maybe something going wrong when the video player tries to grab the next chunk of video rather than buffering correctly as it waits?

Definitely happened to me several times while watching: Going Rogue - Part 01, Playdate: Mahjong Mornings III.

Some people have been mentioning this in the video comments lately, and I've also personally encountered this issue over the past couple of weeks.

I have had some luck with switching over to Progressive instead of HTML5, so you might want to try that out if you haven't already.

@chaser324: Thanks. I'd been using HTML5 so if there is a workaround I'll try that until a more permanent fix is in.

Had this issue repeatedly with Going Rogue - Part 01. HTML5, Auto Quality, Chrome on Win 10.

I'll see if progressive gets me through the video in one piece.

I also have this same problem. Same specs as PeezMachine (HTML5, Auto Quality, Chrome on Win 10).

Noticed that too, but not with every video. Main offender for me seems to be Going Rogue, it didn't happen on both KoToR Videos. I'll try progressive mode and see if it fixes anything.

At least this time its not only me with problems, last time I had problems (Videos getting stuck buffering all the time, but only on Giantbomb, my Connection was fine) I never found someone else or a solution, it just happened to work again after a few months.

For me it is only the Going Rogue episodes that suddenly stops whenever it wants, but I tried switching from HD to High quality and it seems to be working fine, every other video works fine with HD quality.

Have also had this start happening, specifically with Going Rogue as well.

This happens all the time when I'm using my smart TV. Switching to progressive mode almost always fixes the problem.

I just had this happen as well, starting with Going Rogue Part 4. After about 6 minutes the video will end as if I've reached the actual end of the video, with a new video being recommended to play. When I reload my progress hasn't been saved for the video, as if I really did reach the end of it. Even if I skip ahead into the video, it's always ~6 minutes before this happens. This was using the HTML 5 Auto setting. I'll update if progressive fixes it for me.

Update: switching to progressive seems to be working for me

Yup. Happened 4 times during the latest Going Rogue.

Got a sub to watch Going Rogue, but can't watch it. Bit of a shame

Hmm, sorry for the trouble with these videos. Is there a specific Going Rogue this is happening on? Does it happen if you try to download the video and watch the download version in a browser window?

It seems specific to HTML 5 for me, progressive works fine.

I've had this too, but not sure specifics (will edit if it repeats). Occuring more often than normal (i.e. three times in one night v. once per month before)

To jump back in & mirror the above: since switching to Progressive HD rather than HTML5 (when it was suggested 3 days ago), I've had zero issues with any of the videos I've been watching (including further Going Rogue episodes that others have noted had the issue for them). So if this is a broader issue, it's only in the HTML5 player.

Is anyone still seeing this issue? @shivoa

@rorie: I switched back to HTML5 HD when I saw this message (Progressive HD had been working flawlessly for me - the only reason I preferred the HTML5 player was it doesn't spin up the fans on my laptop but on my desktop both players use barely any processor resources) and so far haven't had any of the most recent videos suddenly end before they had finished. But I started rewatching that Rogue Part 01 video (as a test) and about 10 minutes in it prematurely claimed to have hit the end of the video. Maybe it's just a few videos uploaded around that time had something funky about them that the HTML5 player doesn't like.

Will continue using the HTML5 player and report if I see any newer videos exhibiting this issue.

@rorie: So I was watching the latest Rogue (part 6) and guess what happened (with the HTML5 player, in HD): yep, at around the 6m40s mark the video stopped playing & the page loaded up part 5 (as if the 59 minutes video had finished so it moved on to the next available episode in the series). When I navigated back to the video I was already partially through watching, it didn't resume so I had to scrub through it to find where I'd gotten to (it was right after Vinny said he needed to change the music).

I resumed from a few seconds before that point and it dropped out (endless buffering spinner this time) at exactly the same point so does seem to imply maybe something iffy about specific videos and the points where the player moves between chunks. So I opened the basic DevTools and tried a 3rd time (in case it happened yet again). Here's my waterfall after the initial page load:

lots of video chunks (mc_goingrogue_ep05_01172021_8000-[x].ts - yes, part 6 video is named ep05 as the first video was "run00") with occasional successful calls to giantbomb.com/api/video/save-time/ (so the resume is recording time progress correctly).

New video chunks are quickly downloaded initially then falls to steady-state (as you would expect from only grabbing a new file to refill the cache as the video plays). According to the progress bar the video had cached well beyond the point the video stops and the DevTools says mc_goingrogue_ep05_01172021_8000-92.ts was the last chunk requested (downloading this chunk is isolation, it appears to be about 9 minutes into the video so clearly it's not unable to grab the next chunk it need to play past 6m40s -every chunk before 92 is also giving status code 200 & looks to have been cached by the browser).

As soon as the video stopped playing this time (at exactly the same point), it called www.giantbomb.com/api/video/mark-watched/ (which will have wiped the resume timer - so apparently sometimes this doesn't happen because sometimes I've had the video resume where it stopped).

Hope this slightly more detailed report helps someone in tech scrub through the logs or get it to reproduce locally for a proper debugging. I'm planning to go back to the Progressive player as that has so far played back all these videos perfectly.

Had this problem on Rogue part 6. Since it seems to hide the progress bar, I had to use the number keys to get to where I approximately was before (it restarted on reload since the site assumed I watched all of the video.) It once showed the progress bar, but after the next premature finish it was gone again.

Same problem with Going Rogue 6.

In fact, only seen this problem with various Going Rogue episodes.

Had the same issue with Going Rogue (multiple episodes including part 6), and a few other videos over the last few weeks.

I've also had this issue with Chrome and Going Rogue as well as some older videos. I figured it was my GPU being weird but it makes more sense that it was the site.

Ditto on this happening on Going Rogue 6. This is the first occurrence of the issue that I've encountered.

also had this on last going rogue

Thanks for all this! I'll see if an engineer can poke more into it. Strange that it mostly seems to only affect Going Rogue.

I thought there was an issue with Chrome on Windows 10. I've been messing with my extensions all evening trying to resolve this before looking in the forums. I can't complete the Going Rogue episodes either. At random intervals in Part 6, it has done a couple of different things. It will either stop as though the video is completed or it will jump to part 7. When I return to Part 6 it doesn't resume so I have to scrub around and try to figure out where I was.

Edit: Changing the video format from HTML 5 to Progressive allowed me to finish watching the whole thing without a reset.

Still happening to me rather often while watching Going Rogue Part 12. Chrome on MacOS.

Yep, there is a bug in the queue to get this looked at. Sorry for the trouble.