My wife wants to see an episode of NCIS she missed. Found it on the web. When she tries to watch it, it runs 5 or 6 seconds, pauses, runs 5 or 6 seconds, pauses, rinse and repeat. Don’t seem to see any way to download the whole thing and then play it so the show isn’t affected by the transmission speed.
Am I missing some important step?
Thanks
It could just be the speed of the server. Are you trying the official CBS site? I’d say to try that one and if it doesn’t work, try again later.
Try starting the video, and then pausing it right away. Then leave it for a while, to let it buffer. Usually there will be a bar at the bottom that tells you how much is buffered.
If I’m having trouble like this with a download I let the whole thing download, with the sound off, while I’m doing something else. Then I go back to it and hit replay. Usually plays then without any stopping and starting.
I’m taking the question in the OP at face value since I don’t know how tech savvy you are, so I’ll quote myself from a post I made on another forum:
A “streaming” video will download incrementally while you’re watching it, so that the next ten seconds have already been downloaded, but maybe not the next ten after that. There are three main factors to how this works:
X - The size and resolution of the file. I.e. how much is needed to download to show a single second.
Y - The server speed, or how quickly the service is made available from the provider. (Be it CNN, Youtube, whatever)
Z - Your download speed.
If you’re experiencing slow, i.e. not real-time, streaming of a video, the most nearlying explanation is your own download speed. I would estimate that anything under 1mbit is insufficient for watching streaming video in realtime. What’s your download speed?
If your download speed is 1Mb/s or higher, it shouldn’t be the problem, unless you are using other software that also uses bandwidth, like a torrent client or LimeWire, at the same time.
In that case, it’s probably the server. You might want to try to access the file on a different time of day or in a day or two - freshly uploaded episodes are very attractive and the more people watching, the bigger the strain on the server.
The end result is still that you may have to buffer the video. Buffering in this context means giving the server a “lead time” before you start watching the episode, so that it has time to load the file sufficiently that it can do the rest while you’re watching. Just put the episode on pause and check back in 10 minutes. The test here is that if it’s a 20 minute episode and in 10 minutes, the status bar is over halfway loaded, you can start watching because it’ll be done loading by the time you “catch up” with how much you’ve loaded.
It’s a bit complex to get around to start with, but it quickly grows on you.
As everyone else has said, start the streaming and then pause it. Jerky streams annoy the hell out of me so just be patient, do a load of laundry or something while you wait.
Thanks for all the tips. I did the Pause routine and it solved the herky jerkies.