Adding a view with one HTTP request

http://video-stats.video.google.com...en=138.867&st=0.046&et=0.046&fv=LNX 9,0,159,0

Variables change based on what server it uses to pull the video from, but this is the actual request that tells YT to count a hit. Always returns a 204 for a no data response.

From what I can see, you can just refresh the same one a bunch of times and it does count, but seems to stop after a bunch. Probably need to get the new request URL and change some of the vars.

If you really want to know how it's done you could decompile the youtube swf and check it out or do some more sniffing and reverse engineering.

Thanks for the info dannyhw

The video-stats request has been in place for awhile now, but that isn't what used to do the updating. It used to be the /get_video?... request that updated the counter. Actually.. it still does update the counter, but only till about 200.

How many plays were you able to register through the video stats url?

I am looking into it more now.

Let me know if you discover the meanings of any of the query strings (other than the obvious ones)