Having trouble watching a video?

There are usually three problems:
1) It keeps stopping or stuttering.
2) It just won’t play at all – or you can’t see it.
3) It crashes/freezes your PC or web browser program.

See below for solutions…

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1) IF IT KEEPS STOPPING OR STUTTERING…
it probably means the video is still loading. You need to give it a minute or so for all that data to come down the pipe into your computer. The little grey bar at the bottom of each video shows how much of the video has loaded. Most broadband connections should be fast enough to play my videos , but occasionally people on lower speed connections have these loading problems.

Sometimes it’s easier to set your computer to automatically download my videos into iTunes for you to watch anytime, instead of watching them on the internet – see bottom of page for details.

If you’ve given it time, and you know they’ve loaded fully but they’re still stuttering, then you probably need to update your software. See below…

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2) IF IT JUST WON’T PLAY AT ALL – OR YOU JUST CAN’T SEE IT…
it probably means that you don’t have an up-to-date version of Flash Player, the program that plays videos on the web.

There are two options:

i) the best option is to update your Flash Player by clicking here – they keep the process easy and quick.
It’ll take 3-5 minutes (about as long as a video) and is a one-time thing that means you’ll be able to watch more videos elsewhere on the web, and in higher quality.

ii) You can just click the “Podcast File” link below the video. It will open the video by itself as a “Quicktime” video – it will take a moment to load properly. Of course, there’s a chance that if your Flash Player is out of date, your Quicktime is, too – so this may not work.

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3) IF IT CRASHES OR FREEZES YOUR PC OR WEB BROWSER PROGRAM…
most people think this is because their computer is too old. It probably isn’t. There are a few reasons this could happen, but by far the most likely is that your software is out of date. You can update it easily – it’ll take a while, but you should do it as soon as possible for security reasons, and also to make it work better and faster. Once you’ve done it, you should also update your Flash Player (see above).

There are two main browsers that people tend to use to access the web. If you’re not sure what browser you use, you’re probably using Microsoft Internet Explorer.
> Click here to update Microsoft Internet Explorer
> To update Firefox, click here

If you’re on a Mac and using Safari, you need to click the Apple at the far top left of the screen and choose the second item: Software Update…

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4) OTHER WAYS OF WATCHING
If you use iTunes to play music on your computer, or have an iPod or iPhone, it might be easier to “Subscribe” to Twittervlog – so that my videos will be automatically downloaded into the Podcasts section of iTunes, ready for you to play anytime. You can add Twittervlog to iTunes right now by clicking here.

If you have a really slow connection, like Dial-Up, you can watch my videos here, on my ‘mobile’ channel – they’re smaller and lower quality.

I upload some of my videos to YouTube, which uses a very old video system which most people can see. Check out http://youtube.com/twittervlog

IF YOU’RE STILL HAVING PROBLEMS, EMAIL ME AT RUPERT AT TWITTERVLOG.TV
I mean it. I hate it when people can’t see my videos because of technical problems. I’d love to help fix you.

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Rupert Howe
November 19, 2008
Creative Commons Licenced – BY NC SA