YouTube videos randomly changing quality to a lower one (1080p > 720p)
Categories
(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P3)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: groovin, Unassigned)
References
Details
(Whiteboard: [media-youtube])
Attachments
(3 files)
Loading.PNG
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:94.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/94.0
Steps to reproduce:
Hello.
1 - Open YouTube
2 - Browse any video
3 - Change the quality to 1080p (30 or 60fps)
4 - Browse / scroll through the video
5 - Load another video / browse through the video etc.
SPECS:
CPU: 2500k
RAM: 8GB
GPU: GT 1030 (DDR5) - hardware vp9 decoding
OS: Windows 10 and 11
Actual results:
Randomly, the quality changes from 1080p to 720p, without user interaction.
(note that this does not happen on Edge / Chrome / Chromium.
Expected results:
The quality should remain the same - 1080p (30 or 60FPS)
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Comment 1•3 years ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Graphics' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.
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Comment 2•3 years ago
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Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:96.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/96.0
Hi,
I have tested your issue on latest FF release 94, Beta 95 and latest Nightly build 96.0a1 (2021-11-15) and could not reproduce it using Windows 10.
If the issue is still reproducible on your end, can you please retest this using latest Nightly build (https://nightly.mozilla.org/) and report back the results? When doing this, please use a new clean Firefox profile (https://goo.gl/AWo6h8) to eliminate the potential causes.
Thanks for the report.
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Updated•3 years ago
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Hello. Thanks for your feedback.
I'm trying to reproduce the issue again and report back.
YouTube is responsible for changing the quality, but will be doing so based on metrics it's recording from the browser. If there's anything you're doing in the browser that you notice correlates with YT reducing quality, it would be useful to know.
(In reply to Bryce Seager van Dyk (:bryce) from comment #4)
YouTube is responsible for changing the quality, but will be doing so based on metrics it's recording from the browser. If there's anything you're doing in the browser that you notice correlates with YT reducing quality, it would be useful to know.
Hello.
I managed to reproduce the issue in a specific way.
- Just open a YouTube 1080p@60 fps video
- Change the playback speed to 1.5x (for example)
- Scroll through the video for a while
- Make the video full-screen
- Repeat the steps above (scroll through the video, change to full-screen etc.)
At some point, the video will change to 720p@60fps.
Note that I have only 1 extension installed - uBlock origin and the only specific setting I have enabled in Firefox is: HTTPS-Only Mode
Also enhanced-h264ify in order to disable AV1 videos as my GT 1030 does not have HW decoding for that.
Note that this issue never happened in any Chromium based browser, with the same extensions installed.
(In reply to Bryce Seager van Dyk (:bryce) from comment #4)
YouTube is responsible for changing the quality, but will be doing so based on metrics it's recording from the browser. If there's anything you're doing in the browser that you notice correlates with YT reducing quality, it would be useful to know.
Hello!
I managed to reproduce the issue today while watching this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3dqnQkN4-A
Steps:
1 - Open the video
2 - Set the speed to 1.5x
3 - Change to full screen
4 - Watch for a minute or so
5 - Use the mouse and scroll through the video
After this, the video resets from 1080p60 to 720p.
Also occured just a moment ago for this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYucAuUrdTs
Just open it > change speed to 1.5x > scroll right using the arrow keys > stop > scroll right and repeat
At some point, the video will change from 1080p60 > 720p - randomly.
This the YouTube stats info pop-up, after scrolling through a random video:
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Reporter | |
Comment 10•2 years ago
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I managed to capture a Profiler after the issues occurred:
Just watched a youtube video @1080p 60 FPS, scrolled through the video, then the quality randomly changed to 480p.
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Updated•2 years ago
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Updated•2 years ago
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Comment 11•2 years ago
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I can also reproduce this. Seeking can sometimes bump the quality down to 720p or 480p seemingly at random.
Also I didn't see it listed above but sometimes if you pause a video it will also decrease quality while it's still paused. The screen looks like it refreshes itself (goes to black for a split-second) then it's at a lower quality (1080p+ -> 720p).
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Reporter | |
Comment 12•2 years ago
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(In reply to theryuu from comment #11)
I can also reproduce this. Seeking can sometimes bump the quality down to 720p or 480p seemingly at random.
Also I didn't see it listed above but sometimes if you pause a video it will also decrease quality while it's still paused. The screen looks like it refreshes itself (goes to black for a split-second) then it's at a lower quality (1080p+ -> 720p).
That also happens to me!
It's really annoying when it happens, for me on regular basic.
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Comment 13•2 years ago
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Youtube will downgrade resolution when they detect poor performance. This is likely the cause of this.
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Comment 14•2 years ago
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To confirm do people see this at regular 1x speed as well as 1.5x speed? Does the problem happen in Chrome at 1.5x speed?
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Updated•2 years ago
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Comment 15•2 years ago
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It happens while seeking, playback speed is irrelevant to the issue. It also occurs after normal playback, you pause the video wait 10-30 seconds and the screen will appear to go black for second and it's at the lower quality.
None of this occurs in Chrome or any chromium based browser while seeking or paused.
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Comment 16•2 years ago
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I've attached my support page because hardware performance should not be an issue here. This does not occur in any Chromium browser.
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Reporter | |
Comment 17•2 years ago
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(In reply to Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel] from comment #14)
To confirm do people see this at regular 1x speed as well as 1.5x speed? Does the problem happen in Chrome at 1.5x speed?
Can happen at 1x, as well as at 1.5 speed.
Never happened on any Chromium-based browser.
as @theryuu mentioned, this is not a performance issue. (I can also reproduce this issue on Ryzen 5800x3d, RTX 3060ti, as well as on i7 3770, GTX 1050ti)
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Comment 18•2 years ago
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I get this issue as well and have attached sample video of it happening. I skip to random timestamps on a YouTube video and at some point it will show a white/black loading page for 2-6 seconds and the quality will have dropped to 720P or in rare cases maybe 480P and then the video will resume.
However not all the times will it drop the quality, sometimes it will show that white loading screen for 2-6 seconds and then resume the video with the same quality setting. this was tested on a newly installed Firefox 105 without any addons or changes in settings. I check Windows 10 task manager and notice that the network utilization for Firefox shows 0mbps so its like its losing network connection then resumes
I do the same steps in Google Chrome and it does not occur.
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Updated•2 years ago
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Updated•2 years ago
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Comment 19•2 years ago
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(In reply to dogastaza from comment #18)
Created attachment 9295550 [details]
Video showing the issueI get this issue as well and have attached sample video of it happening. I skip to random timestamps on a YouTube video and at some point it will show a white/black loading page for 2-6 seconds and the quality will have dropped to 720P or in rare cases maybe 480P and then the video will resume.
However not all the times will it drop the quality, sometimes it will show that white loading screen for 2-6 seconds and then resume the video with the same quality setting. this was tested on a newly installed Firefox 105 without any addons or changes in settings. I check Windows 10 task manager and notice that the network utilization for Firefox shows 0mbps so its like its losing network connection then resumes
I do the same steps in Google Chrome and it does not occur.
Further to this, I've tested this on 3 different machines with different network connections - even download speeds up to 1000mbps from speedtest.net at work office location and I'm able to reproduce the issue, although the quality drop does not tend to happen as much but still causes the random white loading screen
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Comment 20•2 years ago
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The issue still occurs in Firefox 107.0.
Same steps, same behavior.
It's seems that this is not an isolated case, as per the comments above.
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Comment 21•1 year ago
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I too am seeing this. I've recently made the switch back to Firefox from Chrome where this was not an issue.
Set video resolution to 1080p on YouTube
Skip through the video and a drop to 480p may be seen
I hope a fix can be found as it's an annoying bug. I am aware of an extension that forces a set resolution but I really want to avoid installing extensions for such a thing.
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Comment 22•1 year ago
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Is this really a Firefox bug?
Isn't it just YouTube trying to reduce their bandwidth costs?
Does installing the "Auto HD/4k/8k for YouTube™" extension provide a workaround?
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Comment 23•1 year ago
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(In reply to Brian Gregory from comment #22)
Is this really a Firefox bug?
Isn't it just YouTube trying to reduce their bandwidth costs?
Does installing the "Auto HD/4k/8k for YouTube™" extension provide a workaround?
Yes it's a bug, Chrome does not exhibit this behaviour.
People have suggested the extension, but I haven't tried it. I really have no interest installing an extension to make something work how it should by default.
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Comment 24•1 year ago
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(In reply to Brian Gregory from comment #22)
Is this really a Firefox bug?
Isn't it just YouTube trying to reduce their bandwidth costs?
Does installing the "Auto HD/4k/8k for YouTube™" extension provide a workaround?
Hi
I've attached the video of this happening in comment 18.
I will open a YouTube video lets say https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBLeUx9EYnY and set the quality to 1080P as my preferred quality setting. My PC plays 1440P fine but i prefer 1080P. and 4K wont play well on my computer.
while skipping to random time stamps on the video on some cases i will get a white loading screen (if in default view) or black loading screen (if in theatre or fullscreen view) and this will last either 1 second or up to 5 seconds then resume playback
After this this is what will happen to me
- The video resumes playback with quality set to 1080P
or - The video resumes playback with quality set back to 720P or in some cases 480P and i have to put it back to 1080P
I have been using this script - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/23661-youtube-hd which forces YouTube videos quality at your preferred quality option as well as the the YouTube Enhancer add-on which has a setting as well to select what quality a video should play automatically - both function the same and work. I am able to skip to different time stamps on a Video while maintaining the same quality setting, However - I still get the white/black loading screen as i mentioned above and this again will happen maybe for 1 second or up to 5 seconds then resumes playback - but the quality remains 1080P which is good.
I do the same steps in Google Chrome (without any script or YouTube enhancer Addon ) and i cannot reproduce this issue. The quality remains the same as what i chose while going to different timestamps on the video and there is no white/black loading screen - only 1-2 second buffering but that's it.
I also have i5 2500k CPU same as mentioned from the reporter as well as a 2GB GTX 770 GPU.
I've also tested this on another machine with i5-10310U and Intel UHD Graphics and was able to get the issue to happen
as well as other people reporting same in this bug thread
I notice in Firefox 96 https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes/ there was a fix mention "Plus, we’ve fixed video quality degradation issues on certain sites." Wonder what websites were having issues and if its similar to this bug
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Updated•1 year ago
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Comment 25•1 year ago
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I've noticed another issue now when skipping to different timeframes in a video, some cases it will just be stuck on the loading icon screen with the icon just spinning. The YouTube stats for nerds show network activity 0KB and buffer health 0.00s and just keeps staying like that
To get the video playing again you have to skip to another timeframe on the video like 2 seconds ahead or 2 seconds behind, i had to do this twice to get the video to resume. Or just refresh the page buts annoying.
This doesn't happen for all videos only a few. Ive tested this in Firefox nightly - 116.0a1 (2023-06-15) (64-bit) with only uBlock Origin installed and issue occurs as well as the standard 114.0.1 release version even in troubleshoot mode.
The example in this screenshot is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpMKUQLeIZU if someone wants to test. No issue when tested in Chrome
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Reporter | |
Comment 26•1 year ago
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@dogastaza
I'm the OG bug reported :)
I experience the same issue as you clearly explained.
Thanks for sharing the greasyfork solution. Now the quality remains the same but i get a black screen sometimes.
I guess nobody cares about this issue.
NOTE that it never happens in any Chromium based browser.
It's clearly a Firefox bug.
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Comment 27•4 months ago
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Just to add another datapoint: I use YouTube on both Firefox and Chrome every day, but this problem never ever happens on Chrome, only Firefox. Currently using Firefox 125.0.3 on Fedora 40.
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