YouTube video playback freezes and keeps reloading every couple of minutes in Browser

Bug Reports
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1

REPRODUCIBILITY: Often
OS VERSION: 5.0.0.72
HARDWARE: Xperia 10 II
UI LANGUAGE: Finnish
REGRESSION:

DESCRIPTION:

I start playing a video (at 720p) in the Browser, and it plays fine but within minutes the video freezes (audio continues). Sometimes it recovers (the video skips and starts running again), but usually after some 10-15sec of frozen video, the audio stops too and YouTube’s spinning loading animation starts spinning. It spins for about 15-30secs, video goes black and playback resumes normally. Until it all repeats within minutes, making it very frustrating to try watching a video.
Test case, the issue happens for some reason in almost every video they release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0Qw8GrOcp0

PRECONDITIONS:

Internet connection (wifi or mobile data)

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

see description

EXPECTED RESULT:

Video plays OK

ACTUAL RESULT:

Video stops to buffer every couple of minutes

MODIFICATIONS:

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The issue happens on both wifi and mobile data. I have cleared the browser cache. I am not logged in into YouTube. During playback the video’s timeline shows the that the video has buffered plenty forward so it’s not running out. Does not happen on all channels, but at least one does it practically every time (a new video is released). Most videos play just fine.

2

I have the same configuration. Opened the link and could watch the whole example video. It seems that the problem is not affecting my phone. My phone is not currently my daily driver so I have not installed e.g. Android App Support and have flashed it recently. Currently I am having only couple of apps installed, which may explain something.

3

Same here, X10 II. It works.

Try to clear cookies and site data for all time, same for cache of course. All time.

Do you have other apps running while watching the video?

You might want to install a system monitor (Crest fork) and see what resources are at their limit during playback.

That said, I much prefer SailPipe to watch YT content.

4

I attempted to watch the afronementioned video with uTube but it failed to find streams for it. I was wondering if this is something to do with different resolutions available on YouTube for a video or not (soon after upload) and perhaps some specific format fails on playback…?

I’ll install SailPipe and test that too!

5

Answer to both microtube not working and your issue might be reason as to why microtube is not working.

Youtube recently moved to their proprietary streaming format called SABR (Server ABR). Microtube does not support it so it lost ability to play youtube videos altogether. And it might be causing issue in browser

1 Like
6

Do you have some patches from Patchmanager active? I had similar issues and were because of some patches, I don’t remember which ones.