Fuck you, Youtube

10 years ago
This is some bullshit:

Even better is that it only happens sometimes.

Previously.

Tags: , , ,

21 Responses:

  1. Indra Lowenstein says:
    10 years ago at 1:39 pm

    Oh the sucking.
  2. Robert Ames says:
    10 years ago at 1:55 pm

    Likely ad related. Certain ad sizes might require certain player sizes, etc, etc, ad-nauseum due to technical or contractual obligations.

    Remember, it's not a video player- it's an ad player that happens to play videos.

    --Robert
  3. nonplus says:
    10 years ago at 3:25 pm

    dickbags.
    beat them at their own meta-game by changing size with CSS.
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13393588/complete-styles-for-cross-browser-css-zoom
    • jwz says:
      10 years ago at 5:28 pm

      Holy crap, that fakeout worked!

      Works for me in Safari and Chrome on OSX, and in Safari on iOS. It seems to fuck up in Opera 12.14.

      Does it work for the rest of you?

      An interesting side-effect is that the player controls are now half-sized as well, which is fine with me, too.
      • phuzz says:
        10 years ago at 7:50 am

        Firefox 20.0.1 doesn't show me any YouTube video (I guess it's supposed to be in the box in the bottom left hand corner right?).
        IE 10 displays just the top corner of the video.
        Chrome Version 26.0.1410.64 m gives me the "player is too small" error
        This is all on Win7.
      • Anthony says:
        10 years ago at 11:07 am

        Opera 12.15 on Windows XP works, assuming that the video I'm supposed to see is "I Am Dynamite: Ms. Jones". Clicking on the video itself does not take me to YouTube, in violation of my expectations, but you've put a link at the bottom.
      • Adam says:
        10 years ago at 12:32 pm

        Works for me in Firefox 10.0.12 and Chromium 26.0.1410.43 [sic!] on Debian.
      • Rick C says:
        10 years ago at 3:59 pm

        Win8, Chrome 28 and IE10, neither worked right (mostly). Chrome either gave me "player too small" or opened the video in a new tab on Youtube, or, mostly, did nothing when I clicked. IE "worked" except that it didn't scale; only showing the top left.
  4. Michael says:
    10 years ago at 5:51 pm

    NoScript complains that I'm being "Clickjacked" if I hit the Play button on the video. Firefox 10.0.12 / NoScript 2.6.6.

    Not sure if this is likely to be a problem for enough of your visitors to warrant worrying about, though. I really have no idea how many people actually use NoScript.
    • jwz says:
      10 years ago at 5:55 pm

      The number of shits that I give about NoScript is exactly zero.

      However it also seems to be showing you the middle 50% of the video, not the whole thing, so that's bad.
      • Michael says:
        10 years ago at 6:14 pm

        The scaling looks just fine on the page itself, and the video seems to play without any problems if I nuke NoScript.

        FWIW it also seems to be using the HTML5 player, which is nice.
  5. James says:
    10 years ago at 9:16 pm

    There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but don't ask me if it's the outdoors or a robot boring a new subway tube.
  6. Jani says:
    10 years ago at 3:03 pm

    "Every embedded player must be at least 200 pixels by 230 pixels." (and yes, I think they mean 230x200).

    In practice 268x201 and 368x207 are the smallest working sizes.
    • jwz says:
      10 years ago at 3:44 pm

      Yes, I understand that that is their new policy.

      My considered response to that is in the subject of this post.
  7. Albie says:
    10 years ago at 4:48 pm

    Embedding via anything other than a player that you own/host: Vimeo > YouTube.
    • jwz says:
      10 years ago at 5:02 pm

      None of the content I'm interested in embedding exists on Vimeo, so I'd have to re-upload it all. Also Vimeo's player is notably flakier and less functional than Youtube's.
      • Albie says:
        10 years ago at 5:24 pm

        Only option I'm sure of that won't need re-upping then is if it was upload to a Youtube account you can access, de-monetize it entirely and make sure it doesn't think there's third-party content. Third-party content detected in the video can often mean ads no matter what. But this is based on embedding a video last week at 245x245: here (Youtube player embedded on bottom-left).

        Although depending, that may not be an option, I get that. Which sucks. But as far as I've ever known in practice, it's: owning your own player > Vimeo > Youtube > anything else, generally.
  8. Albie says:
    10 years ago at 5:31 pm

    I should clarify minorly that regarding Youtube's recommended min. of 230x230 or 230x200, then Janis recommendation of 268x201, etc., I'm taking it for granted that who know what the most optimal size is, especially if this is a result of such recent changes, and said changes may still be getting tweaked whatwith everyone's comments on how inconsistent the players is working. Just fuck all that noise and de-monetize particular videos you need/want at small sizes and nullify the whole issue if you can. Or start uploading to not Youtube, I guess.

Comments are closed because this post is 10 years old.