SMPlayer Support Forum

It always takes a few seconds before a youtube-video starts to play in SMPlayer here.

Until recently it was possible to pause the video right after the player-window opened, i.e. within these seconds before the playback started. Now I need to wait for the start of the playback for my pause-click to get registered by the player.

I wish the old behaviour back, because I sometimes open several players/videos at once and want to pause them quickly and watch them later. ... Having to wait every time to pause it ... is no fun.

Is there a way to get the old behaviour back?

Best greetings!

Do you know in what version this problem was introduced?

I can only say pretty vaguely, that the new behaviour occurred sometime in the last 2-8 weeks.

And would it be an issue caused by SMPlayer, or by a hardware problem, if the computer needs a couple seconds to be responsive after launching the video?

No, my hardware is not at its limit. Everything else is completely responsive.

Even SM-Player itself is responsive for the most part, e.g. the menus and also the playlist-button work flawlessly right after opening. Only the pause-button, the stop-button and the sliders don't work any more (before the video starts). (The delay for the start of the video only appears with streaming videos. Videos from HD start immediately.)

And also: This worked before for many years. My hardware didn't change.

Since version 20.4.0 smplayer uses a new way to communicate with mpv (required by a change in mpv), maybe that introduced the problem you're experiencing.
You can try to select mplayer as multimedia engine (preferences -> general) and see if that makes any difference.

Thank you for looking into this problem!

If I choose smplayer, the player does not play videos from youtube at all. The player opens, but nothing plays. Only when mpv is choosen does it play them. ... I have no clue, why this is.

What version of SMPlayer are you using and what operating system are you using?

Do you get any error message when you try to play a youtube video with mplayer?

Okay, at least I'm glad it's not a hardware issue, it means it's solvable. Sorry though, I can't help you any further...