Videos failing to start/general buffering issues

Hi guys,

Over the last few months I've had increasing issues with playback of videos regardless of which player type I use. Usually they fail to start after pressing play, meaning I have to reload the page and try again, often multiple times before the player will actually go.

Videos will also buffer relatively frequently, for very long stretches, 3-5 minutes at a time. This is lessened somewhat by dropping the video quality, making me think it's a throughput issue.

I'm on a 25Mbps-down Fibre connection, and a tracert to v.giantbomb.com (unsure if this is the right domain for the video CDN) only shows ten hops with minimal latency. I don't have any other issues with other streaming video services I use.

I'm on Windows 10 with Chrome, latest version, and I'm not running adblock or preventing any other kinds of scripts from running on giantbomb.com.

Is anyone else experiencing anything similar, or able to recommend a potential fix? TIA.

Yep, I'm having exactly the same issues. It's got to the point where it's practically impossible to watch the videos.

Yeah, I'm also having these issues for a long time. I just usually select to watch videos through youtube because of that. If it's a premium video, then I just press on the download button and select the quality. For some reason it runs perfectly fine in the player that opens up through it. But GB really should do something about their player, I've been having problems with it for years now.

I think it relates to the return-to-last-time-watched position. When you have a video of almost 3 hours and you're 2 hours in, stop watching, come back. The video needs to jump 2 hours in but it seems to just freeze when trying this on slower browsers and lower connection speeds.

I watch a lot of GB content on my Smart TV's browser and the only real issue I have with it is the return-to-last-time-watched function which causes the video on the TV's browser to just freeze, black screen, nothing happens.
The only way to fix this is to spam my remote pointer at the 0:00 mark when pressing play so that I can cancel out the 2 hour jump and start the video at the beginning. So, a buffer issue basically seems like.

I too have been having issues. It will go for a few minutes and then just stop for a few minutes or not even start back up at all. Switching from HTML5 to streaming helped I think since I havent had the issue again, but i have been busy and havent had a chance to watch anything.

Windows 7 and basic Chrome

I've been having these same issues. Running windows 8.1, using Chrome. For whatever reason, this seems to happen to me only on videos put out by the GBEast team. Not sure if this is just a coincidence. Also, whenever this happens I've had luck going ahead and downloading the videos. The downloading has always worked fine.

I had written something up, but Firefox crashed when I hit Post Reply.

In short, I have these issues as well. Usually use Firefox (Win7), less often Chrome (Win8.1). I try to restart Firefox (before streaming a video) if it's using 1GB+ of memory. When Firefox is using a lot of memory, the buffering (not actually buffering) problems are worse.

Same issue a lot of the time on Chrome newest version and Win 8.1

Hey,

An engineer is/will be looking into this. If you're experiencing this stuff, please note your OS, browser, and whether you have add-ons like ghostery/adblock/ublock enabled. Trying it in Chrome Incognito is a good first step to seeing if an add-on is the culprit.

@rorie: Hey Rorie, I'm on Windows 10 using Chrome with no add-ons.

@leaguesman, @greasyweasel, @hustlerlt, @pilgore, @dukemcfrenzy, @withoutdoors, and whoever else who wants to chime in.

Duders, it'd be a great help if you guys could answer the following questions for us, we really appreciate you taking the time to do so:

1. What kind of content are you watching? Long form or short?

For this video, which is short, do any of you have the same issues? http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/assassins-creed-syndicates-jack-the-ripper-dlc-com/2300-10908/

2. What format are you watching? Streaming? Streaming Auto, or chosen quality, HTML5? What quality? Progressive? What quality?

3. For those of you that have no issues elsewhere, do you watch really long form content in those places? And if you have no issues, can you point us to some example pages so we can go look ourselves?

4. The usual stuff, OS, Browser with version, Flash version if watching Flash. Mother's maiden name. Wait, mother's name is only relevant with podcasts, skip that.

5. If you have time, can you go over to Gamespot or Comic Vine and browse a few random videos? Do you have the same issues over there?

6. And finally, specific links to content that always bonks for you, or mostly bonks would be super helpful, coupled with the type and quality of the video.

We're really trying to get to the bottom of this and knowledge is power (in non-evil hands of course).

So again, Thanks!!!

@hustlerlt: same. I often have videos stop part way through. YouTube works fine though. The videos seem to play without stopping on my phone though.

@hustlerlt: @wwen:It sounds like you both have issues with the Flash player. What happens if you choose HTML5? And when you view on your phone are you watching 'Auto' or choosing your quality?

Thanks!!

Same problems here. It's happening on the Roku and Plex apps, and the buddy app on iOS.