this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Why can't YouTube just render the video on the fly with the relevant add?
Not sure if they have that kind of processing power. Also, couldn’t you modify the player to skip them?
That IS how YouTube works. Let's say you are watching a YT video. What your YouTube app/ website does, is that it downloads a certain portion of the video from the server. This small part is called a "buffer". That's where the word "buffering" comes from. Now, for the ad to be displayed within the video stream itself, it would need to be downloaded in this buffer somehow. Therefore, while there is a buffer in place, all of my above points would apply.
Completely eliminate the buffer you say (ie., stream the video bit by bit by reducing the buffering size dramatically) ? Well, then you would need an ultra stable internet connection to YouTube's servers, without any ping difference. Good luck with that. Especially, good luck with doing that in developing countries, whose populations make up the majority of the world.
If that is true, then how is it possible for software to determine the difference between a commercial and content? They are streamed from a different source. I'm suggesting that YouTube could encode the commercial in the same stream as content, and as far as the player is concerned, there would be no difference.
Read point 3 again. Regulations require companies to visually distinguish between ads and non-ads. That's why u get the yellow box with "ad" written in it, which indicates that the video that u r watching currently is an ad.
Software could thus use this factor very easily by scanning the stream for such an indicator. The moment it finds something like this, it skips to a frame where this indicator isn't present.