I’ve been watching youtube this way for about 18 months now and it’s really nice. No ads, invidious seems to load faster for me than youtube and you can download the video or just the audio without having to use a plugin for your web browser. And as far as I can tell, age restricted videos are not blocked!
There is a catch, however. Every so often, invidious WILL break. This is no fault of the project itself, but whenever Youtube changes something in their API, Invidious has to play catch-up. The devs are usually very quick to remedy this, though. Another thing to note is that some videos will just outright not play, at least for me, regardless of the invidious instance being used. An example would be any music video on a VEVO channel. youtube-dl, on the other hand, will still happily download them. No idea why this is.
That said, I’m still willing to put up with all of the above and keep using invidious, because it really is a wonderful service, rather than use youtube. Random breakages and unavailable videos notwithstanding, it’s still a far better experience than Youtube’s own.
Every so often, invidious WILL break. This is no fault of the project itself, but whenever Youtube changes something in their API, Invidious has to play catch-up.
Hmm, the explanation that I’ve heard for this, was that every so often, Google will block their IP address, because that much traffic from a single IP looks like a bot or crawler to them. And I have had luck in the past by temporarily using a different Invidious instance, but of course, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be both.
Another thing to note is that some videos will just outright not play, at least for me, regardless of the invidious instance being used.
I’ve had luck with changing resolution. The default setting for Invidious, 720p, seems to often be encoded in WebM (the others usually in MPEG-4), which might be the reason why it’s causing more problems. Similarly, I’ve heard others suggest setting the resolution to “dash” to fix these kinds of problems. You can also do this via a URL parameter, if you want to include that in your RSS reader.
Presumably, YouTube itself might be less troubled by certain resolutions not working, because its player will automatically switch to another resolution.
I’ve had luck with changing resolution. The default setting for Invidious, 720p, seems to often be encoded in WebM (the others usually in MPEG-4), which might be the reason why it’s causing more problems. Similarly, I’ve heard others suggest setting the resolution to “dash” to fix these kinds of problems.
Ah, I did not try changing resolutions yet. Will keep this workaround in mind the next time I encounter an unplayable video. Thanks!
I’ve been watching youtube this way for about 18 months now and it’s really nice. No ads, invidious seems to load faster for me than youtube and you can download the video or just the audio without having to use a plugin for your web browser. And as far as I can tell, age restricted videos are not blocked!
There is a catch, however. Every so often, invidious WILL break. This is no fault of the project itself, but whenever Youtube changes something in their API, Invidious has to play catch-up. The devs are usually very quick to remedy this, though. Another thing to note is that some videos will just outright not play, at least for me, regardless of the invidious instance being used. An example would be any music video on a VEVO channel. youtube-dl, on the other hand, will still happily download them. No idea why this is.
That said, I’m still willing to put up with all of the above and keep using invidious, because it really is a wonderful service, rather than use youtube. Random breakages and unavailable videos notwithstanding, it’s still a far better experience than Youtube’s own.
Hmm, the explanation that I’ve heard for this, was that every so often, Google will block their IP address, because that much traffic from a single IP looks like a bot or crawler to them. And I have had luck in the past by temporarily using a different Invidious instance, but of course, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be both.
I’ve had luck with changing resolution. The default setting for Invidious, 720p, seems to often be encoded in WebM (the others usually in MPEG-4), which might be the reason why it’s causing more problems. Similarly, I’ve heard others suggest setting the resolution to “dash” to fix these kinds of problems. You can also do this via a URL parameter, if you want to include that in your RSS reader.
Presumably, YouTube itself might be less troubled by certain resolutions not working, because its player will automatically switch to another resolution.
Ah, I did not try changing resolutions yet. Will keep this workaround in mind the next time I encounter an unplayable video. Thanks!
Youtube itself also has no ads if you use an adblocker.