YouTube "An Error Has Occurred" message

Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

YouTube "An Error Has Occurred" message

Our director wants to switch to Vimeo over YouTube error

mrjohncory

3:16 pm on Apr 7, 2010 (gmt 0)

Wondering if anyone else has been researching the recent "An Error has Occurred" message in YouTube.

We use YouTube to host virtually all of our video content and embed it throughout our websites. At the end of March I started getting hourly complaints from staff that "our videos are broken" because of that error message. Using a few different browsers, computers, and IPs, I found that videos all over YouTube were blacking out intermittently.

Since then my director has become scared that YouTube is not to be trusted and that we need to switch to Vimeo. That seems like a lot of work to me and I'm wondering what others think.

I know 1) that YouTube switched things around recently in a redesign but to what extent, I'm not sure ... and 2) that a lot of people blame browser javascript configurations.

StoutFiles

4:05 pm on Apr 7, 2010 (gmt 0)

I'd just put a link next to the video. "Video not loading? Click here." and then play the video yourself. Or do that but with the Vimeo option.

travelin cat

4:07 pm on Apr 7, 2010 (gmt 0)

mrjohncory, this is the first I have heard of this. My thoughts are that whatever may have been occurring was temporary and/or browser related.

I wouldn't make that jump to Vimeo without further proof that the problem actually came from YouTube.

Demaestro

4:10 pm on Apr 7, 2010 (gmt 0)

Youtube has been rolling out massive layout and playback changes. I haven't seen what you are describing but I have been encountering other errors in the past week.

I would just give then at least another week to get everything all figured out.

I would remind your boss that you get what you pay for, and if the videos having a 99% up-time is a requirement then he should move to a paid service that would guarantee such a thing.

If free is what he wants them I would go with something like what Stout suggested.

Have the video embedded from Youtube and a link to a 2nd source like Vimeo in case Youtube is down.

Do let your boss know that the outage more than likely had to do with massive updates being rolled out on Youtube for the past week.