Why are videos playing from Chow Tips, when I didn't click on them?

[coll]

Is it only me? I went to the video (something about muddling drinks) and stopped it, but it keeps playing. I never even look at Chow so it's weird.

[kpzoo]

For the first time in a very long time, a video started auto-playing all on its own, without me doing anything to activate it.

It was this page: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/788165 and the video was about making chocolate-chevre truffles.

[rworange]

That was happening to me occasionally and I finaly figured out that, like the share tab, if your cursor even touches the edge the video will start playing.

I wish this would be changed for both so that it would be necessary to actually click on the video or share tab to activate them rather than having them activate if the cursor touches them.

[kpzoo]

Hmm. I just tested this by moving my cursor over the video I reported earlier, as well as the one on this page, and they didn't begin playing. I have to click to activate.

[Engineering]

Well that's certainly not a good sign. The video player isn't even on the page when the page loads; we start out as a still image, then replace it with the corresponding video when and if it gets clicked.

To explore rworange's suggestion, did your cursor ever pass over the image, or did it turn into a video and start playing immediately after the page loaded / before you were able to interact with the page?

[kpzoo]

"did it turn into a video and start playing immediately after the page loaded / before you were able to interact with the page?"

It seems to me it was this option as the video started playing when I had another tab (from another site!) active in Firefox. As I mentioned above, I've tested a few videos by passing my mouse over them but not clicking, and the videos do not play. I'll report back if it happens again.

[mudaba]

I just saw that the fix engineering has come up with for this problem is being rolled out tomorrow. Soon, I hope, this thread will be null and void!

Meredith of CHOW

[cheesemaestro]

This thing has gone wild today. The same Chow Tip plays (substituting a wine bottle for a rolling pin) whenever I start up CH and every time I change from one board to another. I hope this gets fixed soon. It's a real PITA.

[lemons]

Just started yesterday evening, and yes, it's the chick with the wine bottle/rolling pin. All I have to do is click on Take Me to Chowhound - and then again whenever I go to a specific board.

[tzurriz]

Me too, it's happening whenever I go to the main chowhound page. Very annoying. I'm running Windows 7 and Firefox. If you need the sourcecode for the page, I'll be happy to provide.

[kpzoo]

The pie-dough video just started playing on its own when trying to open this board:

http://chowhound.chow.com/boards/22

Sounds like a fix is already in the works, but I'll email the code along just in case it could be useful.

I had no other Chowhound windows or tabs open at the time.

[zerlina]

It happened to me yesterday. I closed chowhound, went back to it a few hours later and had no problem.

Today, I had chowhound on one of four tabs. I was not even looking at chowhound when I heard the bell go off and then the rolling-pin Chow Tip.

[roxlet]

Mine didn't do it this morning, but started up again this afternoon. I clicked on another site, then clicked back, and it seems to have stopped. For now. I have a rolling pin, three as a matter of fact. Make her go away and take her wine bottle with her.

[Sarah]

just happened again!

[smtucker]

This is wildly annoying! make it stop.

[Sarah]

Still happening, as it has been all day...

[ghostpeppergirl]

Prior to today this did not happen but it is happening now consistently whenever I open the General Chowhound page even if all other tabs are closed and I've just turned on the internet access. I thought it might be the browser so I tried both Internet Explorer and Firefox and I'm having the same thing happen in both. I see someone posted that there is supposed to be a fix in January. It is super loud and super annoying - especially if you forget/didn't know to mute. Not suitable for libraries quiet/still sleeping households. I love ChowHound - please fix soon :-)

[rockycat]

Make those awful videos stop! I check Chow at work and can't have the noise going. Besides, I don't *want* to hear videos randomly. This just started for me today. It's enough to make me stop using Chow until it you fix the problem.

[mudaba]

I'm sorry to hear that this seems to be getting worse. Engineering has a fix that is going to go live in early January. They haven't solved the problem, but circumvented it by having an image, not the player, load when you hit a page. The player won't load until you hit play, hopefully. I'm hoping it works well. So know that it's coming.

Thanks, Meredith of CHOW

[beetlebug]

The problem is worse. Now, it's everytime I go into a new thread or back to the main page that I'm reading. It's mostly the damn pie one, but sometimes it is the how to tie meat. Engineering needs to bring out that fix sooner then early January.

[beetlebug]

And, what makes this unbearable is that if you try and ignore it, it just keeps looping.

[JasmineG]

Nope, didn't work, just happened to me again. Why can't you just stop having the videos on the pages, and just have a link to the video instead? This is really frustrating.

[roxlet]

This is happening to me today -- every time I click another page, the chowtip about rolling out pastry dough begins to play. It's extremely annoying!

[small h]

Was not a problem before today. Is a problem today. And if I hear that whooshing sound one more time...

[Stephanie Wong]

I just had the same experience for the first time this afternoon AND I did not hit play.

[rworange]

FWIW, Here's the link
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/7512...

For me it seems to happen with two conditions
1. I leave the tab with chowhound open and don't access the site for a long time.

In this case the tab was open a few hours without me looking at Chowhound

2. I open multiple tabs at the same time.

I went to Site Talk. There were three topics marked new. I opened all of them at the same time. After reading and closing two tabs, the third tab just started to play. I did not touch a thing on the page because it had not even displayed yet. I had just clicked close on the second tab and my cursor was at the upper right of the page.

The video was Chow Tips, the first something about flattening a chicken breast. Then a Target Ad, then something else about meat, then rolling out pie crusts. They didn't even complete with only the first few seconds playing before the next one started.

And ... as always ... when I refresh Site Talk and and click on the link a second time, the video doesn't play.

I can see how this is difficult to reproduce. I have my Chowhound window open all day while I'm working on other stuff and this only happens once every couple of weeks or so.

[Caitlin McGrath]

Lucky you. Happens way more frequently for me. Not actually sure how frequently, as I am now muting the speakers whenever it happens; then I turn the sound up when I want it for something, and it stays that way until a video starts its auto-play and I mute again. Under these conditions (sound muted at least half the time), it still happens at least once every day or two. Various threads and board indexes, both actively looking at them and when I am on a non-CH site in another tab. I always have multiple tabs open, but most of the time only one is CH.

[rworange]

Maybe it is a percentage? I haven't been all that active on the boards in the past few months. You certainly read more than I do. Before I started taking Spanish classes I read a lot more, but at that time I kept my netbook on mute because I Google a lot and can't stand sites that have unwanted music or sound. So when I read Chowhound more, I wouldn't have noticed it. Now that I have the sound on, I don't read Chowhound much so it has been infrequent.I just keep the CH tab open for those times I need a break and absolutely can not learn one more *(^&*# irregular verb.

[mudaba]

Hey folks, Our engineer has asked me if any of you smart people might be able to grab source code from the page that it's happening on as it happens. I see that we already had a note that the code was NOT set to auto-play, and the engineers are aware of that, but he is asking for more code in the hopes of figuring it out. Seems as though they are really stumped. Meredith

[rworange]

When this just happened again, I selected "source" from my IE view menu. There was a lot of code, so I sent it via email to the mods. If that is not what you are looking for, let me know.

Same conditions for me as always ... a couple of tabls open, a lag before it started, videos not copletely playing and once again "Chow Tips"

[mudaba]

Jacquilynne forwarded the email, rworange, thank you so much for doing that! Our engineers continue to be stumped--one of them is trying to speculate: "Is it possible that when multiple tabs are open, the browser accidentally translates clicks on one tab to clicks on another?" because I believe this has always happened with multiple tabs open at the time? I just try to continue dutifully updating the engineering bug, hoping we will make some kind of headway on it.

M.

[rworange]

I can't say what others experiences are, but for me it has always been with multiple tabs and it allways seem to be the last tab. So if I have tabs 1,2, 3, 4, it will be tab 4 ... after some sort of lag.

I leave my profile open and check it occasionally. If there's anything new, I open them in new tabs but don't always get to them immediately. So the tabas are open, I go back to working on something else and that is always the surprise ... a few minutes later there is this burst of music or talking.

[BobB]

Just started happening to me too - I'm on Chowhound pretty much daily and it's never happened before. I almost always have multiple tabs open - at the moment Chow is on tab 1, something else (which I was not clicking) on tab 2. I'm using Firefox V3.6.13.

I captured the source code to a Word doc, if you want it just tell me where to e-mail it.

[Mother of four]

Just happened to be for the first time. Once I clicked on Chowhound they began,stopped, clicked on a topic started again. Just turned off the sound!

[Georgia Sommers]

I am experiencing that right now. Here's the thread I'm on:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/7408...

[walker]

The chow tips just started again on their own when I opened this:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/507079

[mudaba]

Hi walker, I've reported all of your findings to our engineering team. I'm really hoping they are able to reproduce it soon, and fix it, somehow. But so far they've just told me that they can't get it to happen on their end...

Meredith

[walker]

I've been keeping my computer on mute so maybe it has happened more times. It had been unmuted because I wanted to listen to a youtube video.

[walker]

It just happened again -- I DID NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING, only this thread:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/741650

[ceviche]

this happened to me when i was viewing the sf bay area board (not a specific posting, just the main list of postings) and also when i was composing a new topic. i'm using chrome 7.0 on windows XP.

[JoanN]

I had it happen repeatedly this morning when I was trying to access Site Talk. I had one tab open to my Google home page and was clicking on "Site Talk" from my "Show Saved Boards" list on my profile page. I would click on "Site Talk" and the audio (not the video) would start to play. I'd hit the back button just to get it to shut up as quickly as possible. But when I clicked on "Site Talk" again, there it was. Happened at least three, maybe four, times in a row.

[Chris VR]

I just had it happen on http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/3581... The video was a guy with a lemon making a cocktail. Then it ocntinued on to an advertisement, at which point I closed the wndow so I didn't see which ad it was.

I had opened a few posts, and had to scroll up on each window to see which one it was and to see the video, so it wasn't me accidentally clicking on it.

[rworange]

It just happened to me again and it is NOT a matter of clicking accidently on anything.

I was reading a post on Site Talk, clicked on the link at the bottom to go back to the Site Talk main page. The page had not displayed yet and I had to walk away to answer the phone. I am sitting half a room away from my pc and five minutes later ":CHOW TIPS" starts blaring.

So not only didr I NOT accidently hit anything, I wasn't even near my pc.

Because of the infrequency, it is not the biggest problem in the world, but when it happens it is really jarring.

What is disheartnening is the mixed messages from Chow on this thread.

The first asking posters to note what is happening so engineering can track it down.

The most recent saying "But all videos are set NOT to auto-play, so not sure how to fix your problem!"

[mudaba]

There are no mixed message here, rworange. I am doing everything I can to track down the issue and send it to the engineers. But having examples that they can replicate of it happening will make all the difference. That page Chris VR passed on did replicate it, though. Fingers crossed that the engineers are able to see it, too.

Meredith

p.s. If you can't tell, I'm not an engineer.

[Caitlin McGrath]

I suspect that the problem with replication is that this bug is quite random, happening on many, many pages on many boards, as well as on board indexes, but not happening consistently on any of them. Since it just happened to me again, I will add the page where it happened (the video was for making coffee ice cubes for iced coffee): ttp://chowhound.chow.com/topics/745031

I know for a fact that I have never mistakenly clicked on these videos, because I have never been able to even see the video player when it has happened to me; either I am on a Chowhound page, but the sidebar material is not visible because I am scrolled too far down (easy even on short threads like this one when using a laptop), or I have CH open in one tab, but am looking at something else (non-CH) in a different tab.

[mudaba]

I got it to happen! On that page! Let me send to engineers...perhaps this will help them solve it!

[Chris VR]

Oh I"m glad- when I reloaded to see if I could replicate, it didn't do so, but it was also a different video the second time, which is why I mentioned the lemons one. Maybe there's something about the particular video, rather than the page...?

[rworange]

I did a lot of documentation on my first post in this thread about the problem. Which is why the second response from Chow was a bit startling to me because I thought people were supposed to report as much as possible.

It is not page related. When you return to that link, the video doesn't play.

It is not a specific video.

I am suspecting that it is timing related. Both times when it happened, I had opened the page and then let it sit for quite a while without reading it.

[Chris VR]

That wasn't the case for me- it started up pretty immediately after I opened the window.

[walker]

It just happened again when I opened the cooking site thread on David Libowitz cookies. I had to mute the volume again. Don't know if my mouse accidentally slid over the chowtips box.

Isn't there anyway to make this NOISE stop once it starts?

[mudaba]

Hey walker,

The videos shouldn't be playing unless you're clicking them--just scrolling over won't do it. To make the noise stop, your choices are: hit pause; hit mute; or close the page.

I really hate it when videos start playing when I didn't initiate them myself, so I feel your pain. But all videos are set NOT to auto-play, so not sure how to fix your problem!

Meredith of CHOW

[kpzoo]

Hi Meredith - this is definitely a bug in the system, as it's happened to many people, myself included, but only intermittently. I checked the code myself the last time it happened and saw that as you say, it was NOT set to auto-play, but it was auto-playing nonetheless - I never clicked Play.

I know how difficult this sort of intermittent problem is to fix, so if there's anything I can do to help, please let me know! For what it's worth, it hasn't happened to me in quite a while.

[walker]

I DEFINITELY never, ever clicked on a video. I've just kept my volume on mute so I don't even know if it's happened again.

I know it's happened to others, too.

[beetlebug]

This has happened to me the last 2 or 3 days. I never click on the video and it happens on random boards/threads. Just a few minutes ago, I clicked on the Home Cooking board and I just heard it click on. I had to scroll down to the video section to pause it.

I only click on chowhound boards (and usually only check 3-4 boards regularly). Never visit the chow main site.

[mudaba]

Hey beetlebug, Is it possible that in your clicking you are hitting the side bar player? That is the only way the video should start playing. The players do live on the right hand column, so if you click them, they will play...

[beetlebug]

Nope. No chance at all. I was reading a thread, clicked back to the main page and walked away. I heard the player go off in it's own. Similar experience to a couple of other hands. I do have multiple tabs open, chowhound being one of them.

[walker]

It just happened again: I had clicked on the "perfect choc cake" and the continuous chow tips go on and on -- I minimized that in order to reply on here.

[mudaba]

Hi all, I'm not sure what's happening for you, since autoplay is definitely turned off on all of our sidebar video players, but I've put through a request to investigate the issue with our technical team. Any specifics you can give about when this happens, if you have other windows open when it does, have you hit play before or not, and is it as soon as you open a new window would help us figure it out. Since there are only a few of you who have had this problem, it might take a while to figure out, but we'll do what we can.

Thanks! Meredith of CHOW

[Engineering]

We are having problems reproducing this - the videos are NOT autoplaying for us. For those of you having this problem, is it just happening on certain threads? If so, could you post links to threads that are having that problem?

Thanks

[kpzoo]

It happens on random threads - if I had to guess - maybe 1 in every 200 I open. I *do not* press play before the video starts - it starts completely on its own. The next time it happens I'll link to the specific thread here. Thanks.

[rworange]

OMG, this is awful. It just happened to me. The video section usually scrolls off to the right of my screen, so I never notice them. Usually I turn my sound off, but I'm taking online Spansh classes so I have the sound turned on to full blast and all of a sudden I hear this unwanted noise. It just loops over and over, never stopping.

Here's the specifics

IE.8 - Notebook - Windows 7

1. From my profile page I right clicked to open three unread threads in new tabs. When I'm in my profile page, I always click on 'replies' so the thread skips the OP.

2. I went back to my Spanish lesson (silent written part) and the video started playing

3. I had never even looked at the newly opened tabs so there is zero chance I accidently clicked on something

4. It is in this topic on home cooking, a rather long one
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/6696...

5. In addition to the lavander sugar video which loops a few times, it then moves on to coffee, then making your own pectin, occasionally a bunch of commercials pop up. Now it is randomly looping through lots of other videos, some of them cut off before they complete. In fact the longer it plays, the more likely the commercial or video abruptly ends and goes to the next one.

6. I've had my sound on for about a week now and this is the first time it happened. However, I haven't been on Chowhound as much as usual lately. I have opened that thread a number of times this weekend and never had that problem until today. I just reopened it and no problem. It displays the diluted iced coffee video ... but does not play this time.

Since this didn't happen immediately when I just re-opened the topic, I'll leave it open in a tab for a while. It seems like it didn't start immediately, since I was working on the Spanish lesson. So far it's been up for about 10 minutes and is not playing.

[JasmineG]

It was definitely happening to me too, I think it's happening to more people than just those who posted about it. It hasn't happened in a week or so, but it would definitely just start playing on its own as soon as I clicked into a new page.

[Caitlin McGrath]

I find it happens not only when I load a new page, but also if I have a board index or thread open in one tab, and am on an entirely other website in another tab - I may not have even looked at Chowhound for some time, but have the site loaded in a tab I am not using. Suddenly I hear the audio from a Chow Tips video playing.

[focioncroci]

it happens to me ALL the time! It happens when I visit the Ontario thread

[walker]

I thought my mouse accidentally hit something and I could not find a way to stop it.

Terribly annoying!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[focioncroci]

It keeps happening to me. It is the most annoying thing ever!!!

[nsxtasy]

It's not only you. Did you look at the list of topics here in the Site Talk forum? Someone else asked the same question a few days ago ( http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/730580 ). It has not yet been answered though.

[coll]

Thank you so much. I always think I got a virus, paranoid I know but it starts with some loud alarm sounds. This just started with me so I didn't look too far back.