Youtube Blues Again

When playing a youtube clip with an ad pop up like this one I cannot control it (pause scroll replay) after the progress bar hits the little yellow 'ad marker'. Right clicking on settings displays the content weirdly revolving.
Same goes for the related site videovolt.net that is hosted from wordpress.com where I also found this. So far identifying/masking as FF or IE, disabling the url-filter, deleting the cache and (flash)cookies, downgrading the flash player and even freshly installing it did not help.
Can anyone confirm? - you may have to test a few on the 2nd url, some are without ads and these play fine.




Opera 11.51 and 12.00 alpha
Win 7 ult
Flash 10,3,181 and 10,3,183,10

Works fine with me. I get no ads from youtube.





Opera 11.51 with Windows XP sp3

Thanks for answering heyra,

Watching the same vids on youtube directly does not display ads, so it looks like NRC and Videovolt are adding them When they did come through last week they looked too well targeted, eg after visitting a speed test there was an ad for a glass fiber provider's speed test, others came from local restaurants etc so probably only dutch people are targeted here.
Any dutchmen out here?

It seems like a Dutch problem indeed: [Info]

Issue summary:  Standard embedded playlist-player AS3  becomes defective when it should show any ad  (when it reaches yellow marker)  Only happens in The Netherlands  therefore suspect of defective communication with local ad-servers.  Happens to all videos with ads.

Would it be any use to report this to Youtube and how would one do that? Or is this something that will pass by in a while?

Have you tried ad blocking those ads?
This are the Url filters that trigger when I visit the sites you mention in the OP, hope it helps you

*.google-analytics.*.js
*.quantserve.com/quant.*
*/b.scorecardresearch.*
http://edge.quantserve.com/*
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
http://www.facebook.com/plugins/*
*/ad/*
http://pixel.quantserve.com/*

Originally posted by gdveggie:

... occasionally (rarely) have to figure out what it is blocking that prevents proper loading of a page. But my current (very outdated) version has 5,692 filters. Do you have some quick way to pick out which ones a website is triggering?

I just do a right click "Block Content..." and click on Details
and a small box named Blocked Content appears

Thank you both for thinking with me, first tried heyra's block list -to no avail- but it did give me the idea to go for an extension and so far youtube-adsfree-1.3-1.oex does the job!
Still don't know the official status of the gdata site, could be ten developers are making overtime but I doubt it; What strikes me is that even in our small country a few hundred people per day must notice something but are glad that 'at least it runs' and that if the problem is outside it is unsolvable. In this case it's almost true, it is funny to see how different browsers behaved, top of the bill was Chrome that did let me pause the Kafka movie (sic), but without progress bar.
Conclusions so far:
There are at least two servers for the Dutch ads, one seems OK since as of today only half the vids with ads are erratic.
Looking at the numbers in the youtube links some have no hyphen in the middle (v=GHJYiuZkRXw) others have -until I found the Kafka starts with one. End of theory Viva Extensions!

My worst fear about extensions is that some tend to stop working. Long time ago a friend found out he could drill a hole in HP ink cartridge and refill it. Long story short you can guess what happened when he tried that again one year later, of course 'they' changed the design.
As for ad blocking I only block the ones I really really hate so I will remember what I blocked and why. If anyone of you can read Dutch there is a very funny story about criminals buying anonymous sim cards abroad, and eg by swapping them actually provide quit a bit of information.

Originally posted by gdveggie:

...And then there's the one about that bartgzn guy (wysiwyg) who somehow keeps his post count hidden...

Just a glitch in the forum software, no big secret, should be around 3 pages.

Yes, now you mention it I do remember, guess I'll have to come up with some sort of variable under my photo, antidate and rewrite all of my posts, nice job for the weekend!

FWIW, no problems here on your first site (nrc.nl) with WinXPsp3 Opera11.01 Flash v10.2.152.26, but it may be less because of my Opera and Flash versions than my ad-blocking, as I don't see the yellow ad marker you mentioned. If you're not using any ad blocking, that might make a difference.

Originally posted by bartgzn:

Would it be any use to report this to Youtube and how would one do that? Or is this something that will pass by in a while?

As I'm sure you noticed, your link is to the gdata-issues site, "a place to report and track issues with the Google Data APIs."

From your description, it sounds as if it's not so much a YouTube problems as an API issue for some sites with embedded access to YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google and Google provides all the Help Support & Forum infrastructure, and presumably the API infrastructure as well.

...So my first thought was that maybe it has already been reported at the most appropriate place in the link you referenced.

But it might be interesting to check YouTube's Current Site Issues and/or Help Forums to see if there is any additional info, or a place to ad your experience to the feedback.

Originally posted by heyra:

Have you tried ad blocking those ads?

You probably noticed that I was also wondering if ad-blocking might help (since I don't see the the yellow ad marker bartgzn mentioned on the nrc.nl site), although I suspect bartgzn already has something in place.

But I don't know any quick way to pick out a list of URL filters triggered on a site like you did. I use Fanboy's Adblock List for Opera and occasionally (rarely) have to figure out what it is blocking that prevents proper loading of a page. But my current (very outdated) version has 5,692 filters. Do you have some quick way to pick out which ones a website is triggering?

Originally posted by heyra:

I just do a right click "Block Content..." and click on Details
and a small box named Blocked Content appears

Ahhh, yes! Now that you mention the right-click context menu and I see the functionality, and I recall the option. I remembered looking at what was blocked once when trying to help someone out, but we were working on a JavaScript header layout and function problem that seemed to be affected by a blocked Flash or Shockwave-based ad, so we weren't focused so much on what URL filter was triggered. And when I looked for that view today, I had forgotten how how to get there, and especially had forgotten about the Details view.

All I could recall or find was the Manage Blocked Content Dialog:
Menu Button (Alt+F):
• Settings > Preferences (or Ctrl+F12) > Advanced > Content > Blocked Content
Menu Bar:
• Tools > Advanced > Content > Blocked Content
• Tools > Preferences (or Ctrl+F12) > Advanced > Content > Blocked Content

...which lists all the items but doesn't show which are triggered on a particular page.

Thanks!!!

BTW, FWIW, just now when I visited the nrc.nl, the following filters were triggered:
*.ligatus.com/*
*.scorecardresearch.com/*
*/cgi-bin/ivw/*
*/edge.quantserve.com/*
*/ivw/CP/*
*/quant.js

...and I had to add
http://pool.nrc.adhese.com/pool/*

Originally posted by bartgzn:

did give me the idea to go for an extension and so far youtube-adsfree-1.3-1.oex does the job!

Good! If those are sites you visit with some regularity, let us know after a few days/weeks whether the extension continues to take care of it and/or the problem has been fixed on the other end.

On the flip side (and you may already realize this), keep this extension in mind if you notice some other weird YouTube and/or ad related behavior on some particular site down the road.

As already mentioned, I use Fanboy's urlfilter.ini, but I also use Lex1's AdBlock+ (v1.3.12) UserJS which may play a role on that site for me (I don't know how to check what it is blocking short of disabling it and reloading a page, which I've never had to do). I've stayed with those since I started using Opera (9.27) because they have worked well, never given me any problems, and I've never needed anything else.

But since the advent of Opera extensions, it seems I've noticed quite a few problems (usually site-specific) cropping up in the forums that have folks pulling their hair out until they finally realize/discover that disabling the ad blocking extension eliminates the problem. (I didn't try to look it up but IIRC, it seems like maybe the one mentioned most often was something with NoAds in the name.)

Originally posted by bartgzn:

...there is a very funny story about criminals buying anonymous sim cards abroad, and...

...And then there's the one about that bartgzn guy (wysiwyg) who somehow keeps his post count hidden...

Originally posted by bartgzn:

guess I'll have to come up with some sort of variable under my photo, antidate and rewrite all of my posts, nice job for the weekend!

Oh, yeah... ...but so totally worth it, don't you think?!