BitChute Videos Buffering or Won’t Play (Solutions)


BitChute has the potential to be a long term competitor to YouTube, with many content creators and viewers moving over as they have grown tired of YouTube’s selective and subjective censorship policies.

However, it is also true that the BitChute video streaming is not always reliable right now for all users all the time. A lot of people are experiencing videos not loading or buffering every few seconds if they do play, which is annoying when we’re used to mainstream platforms playing their videos pretty reliably.

Here’s a quick overview of some fixes for BitChute videos not playing or buffering:

  1. Refresh the page on your browser
  2. Clear the browser cache and refresh page.
  3. Move closer to your router if on Wi-Fi
  4. Adjust VPN location or disable it for a better connection.
  5. Make sure cookies are enabled on your browser.
  6. Try disabling plugins on your browser.
  7. Try disabling ad blocker on your browser
  8. Try using a different browser.
  9. Try and find the video on another platform.

Unfortunately, as of the time of writing, there isn’t an option to adjust video quality to lower bandwidth demands on BitChute videos, as there is with other video platforms like YouTube.

However, let’s look at each of the above steps in a little more detail to solve videos not playing on BitChute.

Each Solution in More Detail

1. Refresh page – The simplest solution. Just click the circular reload/refresh icon (↺) on your browser to reload page, and it literally sometimes works the second or third time.

2. Clear browser cache then refresh – Sometimes need to purge all cookies and other junk out of cache and then reload page. Here are steps for main browsers:

  • Firefox – Click the 3 lines burger icon on the far top right of the screen, then click Options…..Privacy & Security and move down to Cookies & Site Data. Click Clear Data, check the Cached Web Content box and click Clear. Then refresh page and see if video loads. See here.
  • Chrome – Click the 3 dots More icon at the top right, then click More Tools…..Clear Browsing Data. Choose a time range. Make sure the “cached images and files” box is checked and click Clear data. See here

The process for other browsers is the same – just find Settings/Options menus, find Privacy/Browsing data and there’s an option to clear data. You can then clear cached data and/or cookies.

3. Get Better Wi-Fi signal – This is something to consider if on wireless – it might not always be BitChute, but your connection that’s stopping videos playing, or causing them to buffer. Try moving closer to your router, removing any big obstacles out the way, using wired connections instead or using an extender/repeater to improve the signal for better video playback.

4. Adjust or Disable VPN – This again can be a bandwidth issue – using a VPN (especially a free one) can reduce available speeds and make playback more difficult. Be especially careful if using the Opera Browser free VPN here, since having it on can definitely reduce speeds and cause buffering. Here’s your options:

  • Adjust the location of the VPN to something closer to your actual location.
  • Disable it altogether for better speeds.

5. Enable cookies – Especially relevant for the Firefox browser, which does have intricate cookie settings that allow you block certain cookie types, or disallow them altogether, which can protect privacy but reduce the functionality of certain sites and affect video streaming.

As with deleting cookies, go to Options…..Privacy & Security and your cookie settings should be at the top. If your settings are currently on Strict or Custom, try moving them back to Standard, as see if this improves site functionality.

6. Disabling plugins – As with cookies, having certain plugins enabled can interfere with site functionality. Again relates more to Firefox. Click the 3 lines burger icon on the far top right of the screen, then go to Add-ons. Go to Extensions on the left hand side, and a list of active plugins should come up. Use the blue switch to toggle off any plugins you aren’t using, and see if this improves video playback. In truth, less likely to work unless you really have a lot of active plugins that might be clashing, but worth trying.

7. Disable ad blocker – While you’re in the Extensions page as per point #6 above, make sure you disable the Ad-blocker extension if enabled. Can improve site function.

8. Change Browser – Can sometimes work just to change the browser. Firefox does have a nice set of features, but in fairness it is perhaps not as efficient in streaming as the Chrome or Opera browsers. Switching browsers can sometimes lead to smoother video streaming, especially if you’re a lot of plugins/add-ons enabled on one particular browser – see points 6/7 above.

9. Use another platform – See sections further below. There are other alternative video platforms that the video may be hosted on, like Rumble, lbry.tv and others. We’ll cover this later.

Understanding BitChute’s Struggles

To understand why BitChute users are sometimes having problems getting videos playing, let’s put the current situation into context.

Over the course of 2020 and into 2021, YouTube has actively pursued an extremely aggressive purge of content creators who are uploading videos that do not fit the left leaning ideology of the Silicon Valley Tech companies, or are discussing controversial topics where mainstream narratives are being challenged.

The result is that many content creators have been left without a place to host their videos, and many have switched over to BitChute as an alternative platform, since it has a strong policy of free speech.

However, the number of people switching over has been so large that BitChute have not been able to keep up with the demands being placed on their (currently limited) infrastructure, and this is why their service can be slow at the moment.

Added to this, in late 2020, BitChute themselves were de-platformed by some of their service providers, which briefly took them offline and has also made it even harder to keep up with servers demand, when they were struggling already to begin with.

Therefore, it is important to understand that it took YouTube and the other big tech companies years and billions of dollars of investment to build up the server infrastructure necessary to reliably allow uploading and streaming of videos, and it is very hard for much smaller companies with not nearly the same access to investment to catch up and provide an equally reliable service in a short space of time.

However, over time they will adjust to the demand and develop a more reliable service. They will also receive grassroots investment as many people appreciate them standing up for free speech for content creators.

It may require some patience therefore, but BitChute will get there in the end, and possibly become a mainstream video sharing platform. They just need some investment, which will likely come soon, and content creators should applaud them for their anti-censorship stance.

Another good strategy right now (for uploaders and viewers) is to spread out the demands across different video sharing platforms, as BitChute isn’t the only alternative platform to YouTube. We realize that for the actual people watching videos, this is less helpful, as there’s no guarantees that a video they are trying to watch on BitChute will be available on other video platforms (in fact, it’s often only on BitChute because it’s been deleted from other mainstream platforms).

However, spreading out the demand can help make sure no one platform is overwhelmed during this transition period where more and more people move away from mainstream sites like YouTube, and find an alternative home to publish or consume content.

Please share this article with alternative content creators especially, so they are away of the different options for uploading content should they (or their viewers) keep running into difficulties with any one platform.

Main Alternative Video Platform – Rumble

Let’s cover first our number one recommended alternative platform to BitChute – Rumble. We recommend them above others as they are noted for having reliable streaming and uploading of videos, whereas BitChute videos are sometimes unreliable when streaming and uploads can also get stuck on the processing screen.

I use the Rumble platform, and video playback and uploading is much more reliable. They are also strongly pro free speech as BitChute is, with a trustworthy reputation and non corporate, non big tech ownership that allows them to preserve this policy of protecting open debate and freedom of expression for content creators.

Rumble positives:

  • Strongly committed to free speech
  • Free to subscribe, upload and monetize.
  • Reliable uploads and streaming
  • Fully embeddable videos
  • Monetization options.
  • Independent ownership.
  • Videos have a resolution adjust feature to turn down quality to help playback if buffering.

Click here to get either watch videos on Rumble, or get started there as a content uploader (free to join and many different account options available).

Some Other Alternative Video Platforms

Let’s look at a few other alternative video streaming platforms, other than BitChute, both for consuming content, but also uploading content to spread the server demands around a little:

lbry.tv – Reliable platform for streaming and uploading, but just doesn’t quick have the popularity of Rumble or BitChute just yet. A slightly lesser known alternative video platform.

Dailymotion – Fast, reliable, servers for streaming and uploading – videos will always play – but a very mainstream style platform, so stay away if covering anything controversial, as they are likely to censor as the big players have. Fine for fun or leisure stuff.

Vimeo – Reliable servers, so videos will always play, but have censored certain content creators before, so can’t be trusted if you’re covering political or other controversial topics. Fine for leisure or non political/conspiracy stuff.

See our full article on alternative video sites to YouTube for more on all of these alternatives.

Oliver

I provide useful info on streaming services.

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