this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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Well the player and its controls are client side.
I'm not talking about the player or the controls being server-side. I'm talking about the player being locked into a streaming mode where it does nothing but stream the ads. After the ads are streamed, the player returns to normal video mode and the server sends the actual video data.
This means no metadata about the ads are required on the player side about the ads.
Sure you can hack the player into not being locked during the streaming of the ads. But that won't get you very far, since it's a live stream. You can't skip forward, because the data isn't sent yet. You can skip backwards if you'd like, with what's in the current buffer, but why would you want to? You can have the player not display the ads, but that means staring at a blank screen till the ads are over. And that's always the case, one can simply walk away during the ads.
Technically I can think of several ways to implement this, without the client having meta data about the ads. And with little to none ways of getting around the ads. Once the video starts it's business as usual, so it doesn't impact regular viewing.
Sure if you fundamentally change what YouTube you can make it work.
You need very small buffers or complete disablement of seeking even outside of ads. Otherwise a client can reconstruct the video without viewer interruption.
People however expect to be able to skip ahead in YouTube videos, otherwise its just TV.
Nope that's not necessary at all, the client experience can be the same as it's always been. See my other response for what I was thinking of.
Also, this doesn't work very well in the current YT implementation. If you skip around a video with ads, sometime you'll get ads even though you've just watched a pre-roll for example.