Oct 19 2007

YouTube URL Loop?

Published by admin at 1:45 am under Uncategorized

Appending &loop=1 to the embed code of a YouTube URL no longer gets the desired effect - looping. Appending &autoplay=1 will still auto start your video on page load, why not the looping - same implementation method.

Did YouTube take the URL loop append functionality away from the player? (See looping post)

If so here are my guesses as to why:

1.) Ads - if people embed looping videos on their pages it may prevent ads from showing pre or post video roll. (If YouTube starts serving pre or post roll ads maybe they will not get the same number of ad impressions on an embedded video with a looped URL - for the number of times the video is watched).

Perhaps YouTube really wants you to see links to more video options post roll (as currently happens) so you watch additional videos - this does not happen when looping a video.

2.) Server call issues. If someone loops a YouTube video does it make continuous calls to the server and take more server resources? Once the movie loads (YouTube videos are Flash) does it need to make server calls after it has been loaded and you play the video again - it should not right? Google requires you to cache any Flash resources with Google Gadget Ads so maybe they could be sure to cache any elements of a YouTube video that require additional server calls and make looping a strain on the server (if there are any).

5 Responses to “YouTube URL Loop?”

  1. Hmmon 21 Oct 2007 at 10:57 pm

    I don’t think it’s a server call issue because youtube used to loop video smoothly without reloading. Google video on the other hand reloads the entire video from the beginning when set to loop and they did not disable looping on that site. They have broken a crucial feature we were using and hope they restore it soon.

  2. adminon 22 Oct 2007 at 12:43 am

    Thanks for the comment - good points.

  3. amy bethon 06 Dec 2007 at 4:48 am

    has anyone figured out yet how to loop the youtube videos once again?

    thank you! :)

  4. blangmeuhon 08 Jan 2008 at 3:03 am

    This is so sad, I just recently learned youtube video embeding and too bad that looping is no more. So for sure that there’s no any other way? I tried what others suggested =true, or =yes, still not working. And the other thing, does anyone know why if we embed youtube playlist, only a number of videos appear, even though youtube has allowed up to 200 videos in a single playlist?

  5. adminon 08 Mar 2008 at 2:34 pm

    Thanks for the comments, amy beth and blangmeuh (sorry for late response) those are good questions.

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