Closed Bug 477852 Opened 15 years ago Closed 7 years ago

Video (youtube, other video platforms) choppy/briefly hangs while audio continues ok

Categories

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Product:
Core Graveyard
Component:
Plug-ins
Platform:
x86
macOS
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

People

(Reporter: ndshore, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: perf, Whiteboard: [platform-rel-Youtube]) 

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011912 Firefox/3.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011912 Firefox/3.0.6

Embedded videos in websites through Firefox 3 are basically unwatchable as the video is not smooth. In relatively brief intervals the video will briefly hang while the audio continues without stopping. This creates a choppy viewing experience. When the video hangs, the video then skips to catch up while the audio continues uninterrupted. When the browser is freshly opened the problem is not so bad, but after some usage the choppiness becomes unwatchable, at least on my computer (MacBook Pro, 10.5.6, 2 gb ram). My Safari browser displays the same videos with no skipping problems at all. I have tried different Flash plugin versions, etc. but the problem still remains. Moreover,given that Safari works perfectly it appears that there may be an issue caused by Firefox.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to YouTube or any other video location
2. Watch video
3. Choppiness/brief hanging occurs
Actual Results:  
See Details description

Expected Results:  
Normal video watching as in Safari

Please feel free to contact me.
Always include the used flash version in a bug report.
The latest flash is flash 10 r12 on windows, should be the same on OS X.

If you have flash10 installed you should try the Firefox safemode.
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode
(In reply to comment #1)
> Always include the used flash version in a bug report.
> The latest flash is flash 10 r12 on windows, should be the same on OS X.
> 
> If you have flash10 installed you should try the Firefox safemode.
> http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode

i'll +1 this:

Shockwave Flash
    File name: Flash Player.plugin
    Shockwave Flash 10.0 r12
MIME Type 	Description 	Suffixes 	Enabled
application/x-shockwave-flash 	Shockwave Flash 	swf 	Yes

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009021906 Firefox/3.0.7

Mac OS X
  System Version:	Mac OS X 10.5.6 (9G55)
  Kernel Version:	Darwin 9.6.0

Model Identifier:	MacBookPro3,1
  Processor Name:	Intel Core 2 Duo
  Processor Speed:	2.4 GHz
  Memory:	4 GB


running top shows just the FF binary as sucking up CPU (playing HD video, it hovers around 120%). the thing that's kinda weird, and pulls me toward an issue with the plugin, is that the audio is prioritized and streams fine, it's just the video that stutters and skips. it settles down quite a bit once the whole file has been downloaded tho. safari playing the same HD video on youtube hovers around 95% and has no stuttering video or audio.

this is consistent across multiple sites, not just youtube. it seems to happen with any large video download and is especially egregious with multiple tabs downloading (paused) videos at the same time. what is also odd is that it's not a network saturation problem, if i have a large download through other means (e.g. wget), it doesn't seem to affect anything. seems like it could be something in the way FF and adobe play with each other in memory management.

or something.

hth,
randy
I experience this problem on my MacBook Pro MacOS 10.6 2.4Ghz Core2 Duo. Flash video pauses for one to two seconds once every minute but the audio keeps going. It catches up after the pauses. Safari never has this problem. I have a feeling this happens for all Mac Firefox installations.
Giovanni: Your comment is a little bit useless without the used flash plugin version number.
Component: General → Plug-ins
Product: Firefox → Core
QA Contact: general → plugins
Model Name:	MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:	MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name:	Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:	2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors:	1
Total Number Of Cores:	2
L2 Cache:	3 MB
Memory:	4 GB
Bus Speed:	800 MHz
Boot ROM Version:	MBP41.00C1.B03
SMC Version:	1.27f1

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042315 Firefox/3.0.10

Flash for MacOS Version: 10,0,22,87

This is my setup.
I also see this issue on OS X 10.5.7.  For me, it seems to correspond to simultaneously running an Ajax site such as Gmail or Facebook, but perhaps that's just a way of quickly running up the memory usage.  

Shockwave Flash 10.0 r22
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090616 Firefox/3.5 ID:20090616212246
I can confirm this issue on Windows 7 x64 RC:

Flash 10,0,32,18
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

OS Name	Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version	6.1.7100 Build 7100
System Manufacturer	Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model	GA-MA790X-UD4P
System Type	x64-based PC
Processor	AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 B50 Processor, 3516 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date	Award Software International, Inc. F5, 6/3/2009
SMBIOS Version	2.4
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)	4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory	4.00 GB
Total Virtual Memory	8.00 GB
Page File Space	4.00 GB


Possibly related to this bug: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-282

This bug is reproducible at: http://sandbox.headweb.com/sv/159766/filmer/pan-360-framebuffer-fail/

A lot of frame-dropping and tearing. It is so annoying to see flash stutter every minutes or so that I have to use Opera 10 when watching Flash videos. The above link both stutters and tears in FF 3.5.3, but it only tears in Opera 10. Hence, frame dropping is probably specific to FF + Flash 10 combo.

This should be a high priority issue since most users watch YouTube and the like on a daily basis.
Forgot to say that browser.sessionstore.enabled;false reduced the stutter notably, but it is still present. It might be a starting point in resolving this issue.
not sure if this helps, but i did some timings between video pauses. this was done by hand and not completely accurate, but should give an idea of the timings.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tNzwOc1fccyCoWa8WPZ061A&output=html
Is it only Flash that hangs on the Mac platform?
On Windows we have a couple of similar bugs (see below), but it's not only Flash - it's the whole visual behaviour that hangs. Animated GIFs, window scrolling, GUI updating, etc. But not the sound.
Generally the problem gets worse with more tabs and longer time of using the application, seemingly dependent on application memory growth and/or the OS paging memory to the hard drive.
Raising the browser.sessionstore.interval reduces the problem, but only to some extent.

Bug 490122 - "Firefox periodically becomes unresponsive/freezes: video jerks/pauses/halts; links, tabs, menus stop responding"

Bug 484964 - "Flash players stutter during video or game playback every ten seconds or so - lasts for 1 to 2 seconds, then continues."

Good luck. :-)
i've noticed it consistently on my mac with flash video (any video player) and flash games. i do not have the same problem with safari on the same computer. the severity can vary, but is never eliminated.
>>10

Same here. Firefox on Windows is very jerky not just with flash. I hope this gets solved once for all. It's a shame to see it jerking/stuttering on high-end quad-core machines :)
One more thing, why is this still unconfirmed when links confirming the issue (the video link that I posted) are there?
(In reply to comment #10)
> Is it only Flash that hangs on the Mac platform?
> On Windows we have a couple of similar bugs (see below), but it's not only
> Flash - it's the whole visual behaviour that hangs. Animated GIFs, window
> scrolling, GUI updating, etc.

Again, I ask you Mac users to see if also stutters on animated GIFs etc:

http://www.emoticones.com/emoticonos_bananas.php

It's important to find out if it's the same (Flash-unrelated!) problem as the Windows bug reports mentioned, or if it's something completely different.
i have not noticed any stutters on animated .gif files. i checked with both those short ones in that link and much longer ones here:
http://www.geekstir.com/the-original-star-wars-trilogy-in-animated-gif-format
mr@analogue.org, it's much more than video - it's FireFox on a whole that pauses, just like that Windows bug. If I open a large page and hold down the arrow keys to scroll up and down then I encounter the same type of pause as with the video. Holding down a key in a text box exhibits the same kind of pause. This is extremely annoying, and I'm likely going back to FF 2 until this is fixed.
Good! (I.e., not good.) Then this is a possible duplicate of the Windows equivalent Bug 490122 , where some progress has been made the last days.

(In reply to comment #7)
> This should be a high priority issue since most users watch YouTube and
> the like on a daily basis.

That was in the case of "only video player" problems.
I would like to modify that sentence to point out the severity of this bug as it destroys the whole visual behaviour of the whole browser. So:

This should be a high priority issue since most users are likely to
* scroll
* write
* click
* see cursors
* see animated GIFs
* move the mouse pointer over the browser
* use the browser's user interface
* switch between programs
* move windows
* watch movies on the web

The word "showstopper" is something that this kind of bug would be directly associated with in ANY commercial business.
I noted this problem initially, and while the new version of Firefox improved things a little, the pattern is still pretty much the same and as before gets worse the longer the browser is open. I also experience choppiness when viewing the animated icon pages posted above.

I'm running:
Mac OS X 10.6.1
Firefox 3.5.3
Flash: 10.0.32.18
This may be a duplicate of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490122. Since that bug is confirmed, perhaps your contributions would be needed there.
I forgot to say that this problem is not specific to OS X. It appears in the same fashion on Linux and Windows.
Keywords: perf
platform-rel: --- → ?
Whiteboard: [platform-rel-Youtube]
platform-rel: ? → ---
Resolving old bugs which are likely not relevant any more, since NPAPI plugins are deprecated.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 years ago
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
Product: Core → Core Graveyard
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