I guess it makes sense that the issue would only exist in Google's web browser since we shouldn't expect it to be compatible with Google's video hosting service.

Been getting that for the past day or two, yeah. Any ideas?

I have also experienced this. I was mildly annoyed when I thought it was just me, but now that I know it's not my shitty computer, let's gather our pitchforks and other sharp farming implements!

It's just the Chrome/Flash combo and embedded YouTube videos, right? HTML5 embeds working fine?

If so, you can either switch to HTML5 or try this workaround for the time being: deactivate hardware/GPU acceleration for both Flash and Chrome.

1) Add "--disable-accelerated-compositing" to your Chrome shortcut, so that it links to: /chrome.exe --disable-accelerated-compositing
2) Right-click on the video -> settings -> left-most tab -> uncheck hardware acceleration
3) Restart Chrome

Again, that's just a workaround until they fixed whatever is wrong with it.

yes, same happens to me and I'm also using Chrome

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Also having this same issue on the Mac.

Me 2.

Me too. Seems to be only embeds.

same here. chrome on macbook pro 10.6.8

Has anyone tried the workaround? Works for me on Ubuntu 10.4 and Vista.

Count me in with an affirmative assessment.

Go to chrome://flags in your browser and change the GPU compositing to disabled instead of default. That fixed it for me on Mac.

Me too, but only on videosift, not on youtube or other sites with embeds. Does anybody have a link to a non-videosift site where this occurs?

Glad you pointed that out @sanderbos.

I did a bit of experimenting and determined the cause of the issue is the "wmode=transparent" that we use in the YouTube embeds. This value is necessary because without it pop-up contents on the page are hidden under the video, but it causes the flickering preview thumbnail...

When it started happening I always had the idea that it is caused by the banner ads in the youtube videos. It is in that general location where youtube's banner ads appear, it usually happens a few seconds after the video starts playing, and it doesn't matter whether you you 'scrub' or not (insert TLC no scrubs link here).

You mean this isn't supposed to be a new "feature"????

Ok. The fix I reported above didn't stick for me, for some reason.
So, I tried inserting an iframe-embed with the wmode set to window instead of transparent or opaque. It seems to support both the menu overlaying it, and no flickering.
Worth checking out?

Good idea. I've put in that fix for now. Hopefully that will resolve all related issues.