[Q] Youtube app constant buffering issue?

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sinister_evil

Member
Apr 25, 2010
17
1
Hello, I originally posted this on r/androidquestions on reddit but received no responses in well over a couple of months. Thought I'd try my luck here even though I never get replies. ;p

I got this weird issue on all my devices where after a certain point the video freezes, buffers for ~8 seconds, plays for a couple and repeat. This is not video specific and changing the quality does not fix this, it just makes the problem appear later on. In HQ quality, after about 1:45 minutes of playing flawlessly it starts buffering the whole damn time. SQ quality can play up to 3-4 minutes before any issues arise.
This is on a broad range of devices, both mine and those of friends. My own Samsung Galaxy S2 running CM10.1 and Cube U30GT running CM10, but had the issue on stock, and a stock Galaxy Note and HTC Hero 2.
Other info. It's not network related. Happens on both wifi and 3g and on different connections/ISPs. My own Internet connection clocks up to 20mbps and has no problem playing any YT video on my PC. Other "streaming" video stuff work great. Twitch.tv plays great as does dailymotion. Other players, other than the default YT app, have no issues playing videos even on HQ. YT through the browser works fine but somehow doesn't let me switch to HQ and the "UI" generally feels bad. Feedly (which is great btw), has a sort of plugin that uses the YT app to play videos natively. Any videos played in the feedly app, using this "plugin" play great even in HQ, which is weird. I've tried reinstalling, uninstalling, stalling, killing, maiming, clearing data+cache, completely wiping the devices and sacrificing firstborns to Lucifer.
This feels like a caching issue of the youtube app. It feels like it starts caching up to a point (playing great in the process) and at some points cache fills up and starts deleting in order to make space to cache further. That leads to the pause and buffering of the video.

Has anyone else experienced issues like this and has managed to fix them? Does anyone techsavvy enough know if it's indeed a cache issue and how to bypass it?
 

glenthompson

Member
Jan 15, 2014
12
2
Isn't news. YouTube app sucks. I have an iPhone and frequent Apple forums quite often and its preferred to use the YouTube web app or 3rd party app over the actual app. Just getting throttled. My biggest gripe with Androids YouTube app is there is no way for it to use SD as the default resolution.

I just tried the WiFi optimization with no effect. If I wait a couple hours it will stream HD no problem once network traffic slows down. I have a 30 mbs home connection which I can get those speeds easily, usually much higher, but not to a YouTube server between 3pm - 11pm.