Google is working to remove lag from YouTube videos so users don’t have to wait for videos to start or buffer when not enough bandwidth is available. Users of Netflix and other similar services don’t mind waiting a minute or so for a movie to load, but users of YouTube don’t want to wait because the movies are often short.
For this reason, Google is aiming to reduce the wait to 200ms to make it appear as though movies start instantly. Currently, videos are automatically converted to multiple resolutions ranging from 360p to 1080p, but the user must pick one and hope their bandwidth is high enough to avoid any buffering.
To avoid buffering, Google is going to split these videos into slices and then automatically choose a the highest resolution the user’s Internet connection can handle. If the available bandwidth changes, Google will switch to another resolution at the end of a slice to increase the video quality while avoiding buffering.
Google will use reduce the time it takes to view related videos by preloading the first few slices and not reloading the video player. Interested in learning more? See the Gizmodo article here.
