Your problem is likely with Quicktime. This overzealous program tries to associate file types with itself that it really shouldn't. You need to go into your Quicktime preferences and disassociate it from being the default player for video files. Doing this fixed many video problems I was experiencing with my browsers.

If you have Apple update, you will need to fix this problem every time it automatically updates Quicktime, which is quite often. It is really annoying that Apple does this, apparently they think Quicktime is more important than any other player.

I traced it to my virus checker holding up the video for a few seconds until it could catch up. Then the video starts again.

I will not let Quicktime on my system for the reason stated above.

I'm having this "play for 2 seconds" issue as well.
I've read the suggestions above and found that the file association with Quicktime is NOT the cause of my problem, neither does waiting for 1min 30s for next 2secs worth. However, waiting for a LOOONG time will load the whole thing.

It's not an ISP issue as I have trouble on my laptop but not on my desktop PC.
I also noticed that an embeded YouTube on my website has trouble but watching directly from YouTube is ok. I don't know enough to comment on the relevance of this.

I use Firefox and so I tried switching to IE (sigh) and bingo, no problem.
I've raised a flag with Mozilla but in the mean time I've found that using the "IE Tab" extension in FF works fine. Saves switching browser.

I hope this info allows some genius to come to a suitable conclusion to this.

Cheers,
Pete

When I had this problem while running firefox, i noticed when the add-on ---Video Downloader 2.0-- was disabled the problem went away.. I would just disable it then restart firefox and all was good...


I then just left it like that and used another video download program....

After awhile I just uninstalled Video Downloader 2.0 add-on then downloaded the older version and all was good.

At least thats how i fixed mine...

Hope thats helps someone... let me know if that was the fix you needed

Haha. Thanks for the suggestion. You got me excited.
However, I had Download Helper 3.0.3 and tried disabling it but it made no difference to my PC.
I'm glad it solved your problem though. I could have lived without DH.

Cheers,
Pete

I never had "Download Helper" on my system, so I do not know about that add-on. Although I did try disabling different add-ons each time I restarted firefox. It only worked after I restarted it after disabling "Video download 2.0", if I enabled it and restarted firefox the problem returned.

Answer: I closed RealPlayer, because I had a session running. The RealPlayer feature that allows you to download Flash videos can get in the way of video playback.