[NA]Youtube fail - ipad[NA]

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
20,311
Location
west Texas
Display Name
Display name:
Dave Taylor
I can see most yt videos on the ipad but some simply give me a "Could not load movie OK" message.
I have tried accessing these via YT or through a link I mail myself and the same error.
Is it a flash thing?
 
YouTube has a new trend, "This video has not been made available to mobile by the publisher."

Playing around with it, as a "publisher", I see no way to set that level of granularity. I think YouTube/Google is making those choices and deflecting the backlash by making it look like the "publisher" did it.

On older Apple devices/versions of iOS, it seems that the error message is the one you've seen more often than the new one.

I've even seen one video that refused to play if launched one way, but would via another.

I suspect that YouTube is not transcoding all videos to all formats anymore by some metrics of how many views something has had, or similar.

I suspect also that this is rooted in not having enough disk space and CPU to transcode and store them all. Cost cutting. Nothing free lasts forever, and the mobile device players often don't show the advertising which is typically paying for the service.

I can't say that I've gone hunting very hard for all the answers as to why various videos aren't available in all formats, though. I'm sure it's a mix of all of the above.
 
I wonder how many terabytes of video they got?
 
I'd bet it's an Apple thing, not YouTube.

My iPad has been relegated to chart viewing duty in the plane, due to having had enough of glitches like this one.
 
I can't think of a reason Apple would want their YouTube player not to work with some strange percentage of videos.

Okay couldn't stand it anymore, so I had to Google a bit. Curiosity killed the cat.

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=184706

Looks like there's both a "Syndication" flag that publishers must set, as well as a flag that content owners of things like music videos can set to not allow playback on "mobile" devices.

Doing a bit more Googling, it appears that some devices honor the silly "no mobile" flag and other's don't. Newer versions of Android do, but some older ones ignore it.

So there's a mess of enforced and unenforced flags on YouTube content to keep the likes of RIAA and MPAA happy.

The usual copyright and content control mess.
 
why does a website know I have a mobile device at all?
How can I prevent it from knowing?
I will just use Safari to go online like on my laptop.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
why does a website know I have a mobile device at all?
How can I prevent it from knowing?
I will just use Safari to go online like on my laptop.
Click to expand...

The web browser tells the web server the name of the software and platform.

But some browsers allow the user to change what the web browser sends. For example, there are other web browsers for the iPad that allow that (I downloaded one called Atomic Web that lets me change the claimed identity.)

But sometimes it accomplishes nothing; when I set Atomic Web to claim it is, say, Desktop Safari, or Internet Explorer, and then go to Youtube's web site, everything looks great. Alas, none of the videos can be viewed - Adobe Flash is needed, and that product isn't available for the iPad because Apple had issues with it.
 
Doing more searching, typically only stuff available on the YouTube mobile site (m.youtube.com) is available transcoded to H.264 for Apple's player.

But. There's hope. Since a lot of content is also available in HTML 5 format, if you go to YouTube's homepage with a mobile browser like Safari on the iPhone/iPad and scroll down to the bottom right and click on "Desktop", that'll bring up the normal desktop layout version of YouTube.

Now hunt for your video. Once you find it, I've just noticed that sometimes it won't open properly with a single tap. Tap and hold on the video and select "open in new page" on mobile Safari.

I just tried this with a few videos and they played in HTML 5 format and didn't bounce me out to the Apple player. Seems to work.
 
Hmm. More playing seems to prove that this isn't foolproof either.

By the way, the direct link to force YouTube to show the "non-mobile" site even if you're using a mobile browser, is this:

http://www.youtube.com/?nomobile=1

Some videos play in HTML 5 this way, some just say you need Flash.

I guess if nothing else it makes it really clear which videos are transcoded and which ones aren't.

And if you're logged in, it makes it pretty easy to send a comment to the video uploader asking them of they'll turn on "Syndication" for the video so more viewers can see it.
 
Yeah. Weird.

This doesn't play... via the nomobile trick, but does play in the YT Apple player.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JP7dXD_VVc

Makes no sense to me yet.

I'm guessing the real answer is we're all just at the mercy of whatever formats YT feels like transcoding to.

You can set "Syndication" when uploading and hope for the best. If someone uploads without setting that, it's likely the videos not going to be viewable by various mobile devices.

If it's any consolation, Vimeo was all Flash too, and recently created an App for their website.

The reviews on the App Store are averaging two out of five stars with "crash" as the most common word in the reviews. Other review say folks who've paid for additional Vimeo "prime" services or "pro" services often can't access that content from the App.

So the grass isn't any greener at YT's competition yet either.

Ohhhh well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top