Something changed in a recent Chrome update, which caused some YouTube videos to get stuck prior to playing. This is ironic, as both are Google products, yet no other browsers seem to be affected.

Anyway, if you want to fix this problem, do this:

1) Enter “Chrome://flags” in the address bar.
2) Find an entry that says “Disable hardware-accelerated video decode.”
3) Click “Enable”
4) Close Chrome and restart

This should permanently fix the problem.

This was happening to me and it was freaking annoying.