Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

"When I watch YouTube videos, they constantly pause and restart, the video keeps saying it is buffering. Sometimes YouTube videos say they are loading forever. How can I fix this?"

When I first started watching videos online, I used to wait forever because my Internet connection was simply too slow for smooth playback. Assuming you're watching YouTube videos on a cable or DSL connection, there should be no reason your connection can't keep up. Slow YouTube videos seem to be a common problem, with YouTube video loading wait times becoming a problem that Google should be able to stay on top of.

Without doing some network forensics to rule out your particular connection as the source of the slowdown, there's one free tool that should help make watching YouTube videos a smooth experience. I recommend installing SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube, which pre-buffers videos and makes them playback in a more reliable way. As an added bonus, if you also watch videos on places like MySpace and Facebook, you should see some improvement there as well.