I don’t know whether this has happened for everyone or just my me (Windows 10/Chrome).
When I’ve tried to time a video, in the last month or so, the time markings will be accurate to +/- 0.5 seconds, which isn’t even close to giving an accurate BPM or audio/note timing. If I am to spam the [ or ] key, it will “snap” to 00:01.29, 00:01.79, 00:02.29, 00:02.53, 00:03.03 etc. The snapped-to decimals will change per playback, but are quite predictable after one another. If I time a four-bar loop at 125 BPM, the duration will be exactly 00:02.00 or 00:01.74 long (alternatingly, depending on where in the track it is); which would be 120 and 138 BPM respectively.
I often get it within less than a beat. It’s a little bit more about how good you are at counting beats and pressing the keys at the right time rather than clicking on the arrows.
It can be difficult if a song needs a point right at the start of the video or just before the end, both of which can cause the audio and piano roll desyncing.
Yes, this affects me too, in Chrome on Mac; I almost always need to use the arrow buttons to get an accurate sync now. There was an update a couple of months back (when Hookpad maybe changed to use a different YouTube API?) that seemingly both (1) made the start/end point setting less accurate, as your describe, and (2) introduced the “stuttering” of the playback cursor for the first second or two of playback, when playing along with YouTube.
Thanks for pointing this out. I agree that it must have happened when we switched over to the non flash based youtube api (as part of our transition to a flash free Hookpad). We’ll look in to whether there is some latency that can be reduced in the meantime.