How Do I View Videos Online Without Them Stopping or Pausing?

By Heather Laurent

Allow videos to fully buffer.
i laptop 9 image by Harvey Hudson from Fotolia.com

As the popularity of websites like YouTube and Netflix rises, more and more Internet users choose to view videos online. Because the types of Internet connections and servers vary, so does the quality and speed of live-streaming videos. Often, users encounter issues when online videos suddenly stop or pause so that the data buffer can refill its cache. You can improve the smoothness of your video streaming in several ways.

View online videos on a high-speed internet connection. Use a DSL or cable connection to improve the buffering speed of your videos. If the bandwidth of your connection is less than the bitrate of the video stream, your playback will stop periodically to replenish its data buffering cache.

Pause your movie until it has completely finished buffering. On most media players, you will see a progress bar moving along with your position indicator to show how much your video has buffered ahead of the part you are currently watching. Allow the progress bar to fully complete before playing your video to avoid pausing or stopping during playback.

Switch to a lower-quality version of your video. Often, websites will give you the option of choosing a high quality or low quality video, which corresponds to the resolution of the image as well as the bitrate. Lower quality videos will stream faster than higher quality videos.

View your video at non-peak times during the day. When a website experiences high traffic, the servers can become overloaded, resulting in a very slow streaming rate for individual users. If you have ruled out other factors as possible causes of your streaming issues, wait a few hours and try your video again when there are likely to be less users attempting to do the same.

If the website on which you are viewing your videos consistently exhibits choppy playback, try finding your video on a different video-sharing website.

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