The iPad appears to have had an issue from day one: videos from YouTube can sometimes take extremely long to buffer and play. As with any inconsistent behavior, you don’t notice this the 95% of the time when there is no problem. But that 5% will frustrate you to no end. Especially since other devices (laptops, smartphones) can load the same videos blazingly fast on the same network. Plus, other video providers including Vimeo, Hulu, and Netflix have no issue at the same time.
## Current theories
There have been plenty of discussions about this across message boards and blogs since the early days of the iPad. I’ve tried everything and most seemingly sound like a wild-ass guess (WAG). Some of the highlights:
– Your DNS settings are wrong: the DNS lookup is taking too long and by switching to OpenDNS or Google’s (conspiracy theory alert) DNS everything fixes itself. This makes no sense during video buffer (DNS lookup is complete) and does not explain why other devices don’t have this issue.
– Other router configurations will fix it: I’ve seen some obscure router settings thrown around about packet rates or loss or this or that. Again, the problem is not at the network level, it’s at the device (iPad).
– Low brightness setting: somehow the wifi power corresponds to the brightness setting and the lowest level will prevent video loading. Interesting theory but I almost always keep my brightness at the lowest setting other internet applications have no issue: video (Hulu Plus, Netflix), web pages (Safari) and even Instapaper.
– Auto-join networks enabled: I have no idea why this is discussed as I’m already on a wifi network and am never prompted. The network is fine as all other devices load YouTube and the iPad still gets blazing (10 MB/s) speeds.
In short, these theories miss the key points:
– the wireless network is always fully operational and experiences no other issues with any other providers
– other devices on the same network are not experiencing the slowness specific to YouTube
– the iPad is still downloading at very fast speeds, even for large video files
– other applications are not experiencing any issues at the same exact time
– the timing of the slow buffers is inconsistent (may happen once a week with in a one-hour window)
## YouTube’s iPad experience
I’ve had plenty of experience with YouTube and other video hosting sites. Since YouTube was a launch partner with Apple’s iPad, it’s clear to me there is some behind-the-scenes stuff that is loading iPad-specific video types. Here’s a few points:
First, it appears to only be higher-quality videos (so that Apple’s YouTube app is always loading beautiful videos?) can be displayed on the iPad, you don’t even have the option of viewing a lesser quality version. Keeping in mind that at upload time, YouTube creates various formats and sizes from the small mobile-friendly videos to the 1080p high quality versions.
Second, it’s also clear that not all videos will load on the iPad. For instance, Cee Lo Green’s “F*ck You” will not load on the iPad. From the mobile website this NSFW video (mobile link) will not load even if you try to tap the big play button. To confirm this is not just a bad video, I’ve saved this video as a ‘favorite’ and tried loading it from the YouTube app itself. At which point it returns the error: “The author of this video does not allow playback on iPad.” Curious…
## My theory
The iPad is always trying to load a very high quality version of a video, but it’s not the same version as the desktop or other mobile versions. It’s clear that from both the mobile site and the YouTube app that there is a different video format being delivered to the iPad.
The very slow buffer and download speeds may be explained by:
– an iPad-specific video is being compressed, or converted on-the-fly which requires much more time on the YouTube server’s side of things (doubtful as the same video may load quick one day, slow the other)
– a larger file size like 1080p being loaded where this is not the default on the desktop nor a mobile device. This could explain the perception of slower loads as more data is being delivered (this would only explain the slowness simply being magnified)
– a different set of servers or content delivery providers are responsible for an iPad-specific version of the video. This network is not part of the same resources as the remainder of of YouTube.
Why would YouTube keep the server resources for one device separate from the rest of the powerful mega data centers that power the other billions of videos being served? My thinking is that YouTube was required to maintain serious secrecy up to the iPad launch and quarantined any iPad-specific delivery, formats, servers, CDN resources, etc.
This has only seemingly been getting worse with time. I have had plenty of weeks where I’ll load funny cheezburger YouTube videos with no problem. I’ll even watch music videos, CollegeHumor videos, all on YouTube with no problem. But lately, the buffering has been getting worse. A 90 second video will take more than five minutes to load during “peak” hours (weekends, after dinner). My guess is there is many more iPad users coming online but nothing new happening on the YouTube infrastructure side.
I’m sure the plan is ultimately to move everything into the same data warehouses but this takes a few months of careful coordination. Especially since the iPad cannot load Flash, which means it cannot load ads, this is now a cross-departmental issue with far reaching intentions and consequences that was only just surfaced on the day the iPad was announced. Video publishers want to do things right for the iPad and, as we’ve seen, change takes a long time and the technical hurdles will remain on-hold. Note the huge ad beneath Cee Lo Green’s music video to buy his new album. You don’t see that on a stripped-down mobile version of YouTube.
I have this exact same problem – infuriating. Happens intermittently on my iPhone as well. It’s definitely not an issue with my wifi network, for the reasons you mentioned. I sometimes even find myself disabling wifi and watching YouTube over 3G – which typically works better.
I haven’t really noticed that it’s slower at peak times, it seems random. Also, YouTube has been transcoding video for iOS for years now (it’s the same platform that delivers video to the iPhone) so I can’t believe it would take them that many years to deliver a properly scaled platform. I’m actually inclined to think that it’s a bug in the iOS software/YouTube app that Apple doesn’t have a fix for for whatever reason, and thus won’t admit to…
Hey Bill, thanks for the comment.
Exactly my point. They’ve had years to handle this for iPhone-sized media (much smaller than 1024×768) but since the iPad was a secret, has not yet moved over the same delivery resources.
I doubt it’s a bug in iOS specific to YouTube, it’s certainly not an issue with any other video providers and not limited to the native app.
That’s true, it’s not just limited to the native app – definitely occurs in iOS Safari as well. I have the same problem intermittently on my iPhone as well though…
Really hoping Apple/YouTube figure it out soon, very frustrating.
Man, I think you got the point. That was my feeling. HQ videos, but I didn’t think about the infrastructure behind that (never realized there were no ads on youtube for my iPad). Thanks!!! Now it’s time to wait big brains to do their job…
Lots of people I read changed DNS settings and said it helped. I ran Benchmark and changed to the fastest DNS setting that it said which would have been 48% faster, nothing. I changed to the recommended “open DNS” setting, still buffering forever and a day. I don’t know how this made any difference for anyone. Did not solve my problem. I’m glad my husband won this useless gadget, b/c there’s NO way I would have shelled out $800 for it! POS!
Hello guys, I ve got the same problem too and its really bad. They got a do something about it. Hope the coming ios 4.2 will solve the youtube issue.
It doesn’t.
I think I found a way to mitigate the problem. Not the best solution but…. So, according to your theory the problem is in part the fact that we are forced to watch Youtube videos in high resolution.
So a solution would be to access YouTube using Safari or another Browser and once the video starts loading you can click on the red “HQ” icon in the bottom right corner. Once it turns grey, it will stop streaming in high def and it will render much faster.
This was the only solution that worked for me… let me know if it helps!
Ricardo’s approach worked like a charm. Considering what I normally watch on youtube (today it was cats playing pattycake with a funny voiceover) high def really isn’t all that necessary. Going to the youtube site via safari and turning off HQ made the video buffer fast enough to watch immediately. Thanks!
Note, however, that the theory listed in Devin’s main post sounds dead-on to me. I had the same doubts about all the suggested fixes I’ve found on message boards.
I’ve spent many nights looking for solutions. The only that worked for me was ricardo’s. But the videos are very lo-res, terrible. I don’t think that this issue is something that will be fixed soon. 4.2.1 still does’t me allow to se ok go last leaf. Isn’t this a harware issue? Isn’t it converting from flash in real time?
Goddam, i hate this bug.
I rec’d an iPad for Christmas and am having this horrible problem with the YouTube videos. I doesn’t seem to matter what the resolution is. About 4-5 seconds load and then the video freezes. I have tried changing the DNS but no help. So, I made an appt. with the local Apple store this afternoon and the thing worked fine there!! But at home this evening it is the same old thing. what gives??? both my daughters have Itouchs and they both load YouTube videos – even high res ones – no problem, so I know that it isn’t a problem with our home wifi. Any suggestions??? Do I return it or hold out for a fix??? Thanks.
Same position here. Anyw news.
My AppleTV 2nd gen is waaay faster than my iPad for YouTube. And it’s further from my wifi router. The iPad is frustratingly slow for YouTube. Hoping for a fix.
I only have the problem with my iPad. If I’m in the same exact spot with my itouch and iPad the itouch will already have the video loaded while the iPad is only at about 10 seconds. So it cannot be the wireless in the house.
Got bought an Ipad for christmas and Youtube has never been working properly. All other computers (3) in the house and my WP7 phone works super smooth with Youtube over wifi. I got the Ipad for 2 reasons, watching Youtube videos and reading news. I get zero support from Apple so this will be my first and last Apple product. Im also very surprised looking at forums regarding these problems. The first posts are from may 2010 and nothing has happened!!!!
My own theory is that since Google started putting Android in pads competing with Ipad the cooperation with Apple seized…
I am not defending apple here. But every other apple device is said to have a good youtube service.
But for me, the strange thing is that on my iPhone3G, it works fine only using the poor 3g of Brazil. When it is on wifi, it makes the same thing as ipad (but is still better).
Now, i don’t know what happened. I have made nothing and the youtube is working fine! But very fine. It gets stuck only sometimes. What is your connection speed? Mine is 10mbps and, well, i don’t know why, but works fine now.
Regarding other forums, well, when i found the problem and was looking for the solution, i found that for every user that has a problem and looks for a solution, there are two or three people to attack and say “You have a slow internet!”, “you router is a crap buy the apple router”. The main problem is not the apple, but the apple fans. They don’t user to help.
Has anyone tried forcing a different User-Agent in an alternate browser? You should be able to force the desktop experience in that case. Maybe I should try squid.
It’s curious because I very often switch to the iPad UA from Safari on my desktop (so I can bypass Flash). I have mixed success taking this approach too (some videos load slowly, some don’t play at all).
I’ve found that turning off location services stops this problem. Not sure why though, shouldn’t think it’s a bandwidth issue.