2024138 - Images, icons, and videos randomly don't load on some sites and high memory usage.

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P3)

Description

[r310k]

Attachment: reddit screen.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:148.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/148.0

Steps to reproduce:

Randomly when opening a page on Reddit some icons, images, and videos will be missing and reloading doesn't always fix it. On Tiktok consistently when clicking on a video they will not load. When browsing any site normally if there is a video that is trying to load it may not load the video like on Tiktok. If a video was already playing in a tab and I open another tab with a different video if the page tries to load the video there will sometimes be a gray flash on the screen then the video player in some or all of the tabs will turn to a black or green screen like they crashed.

Actual results:

I have included a screenshot of the Reddit issues. Tiktok and the videos work fine in Chrome so the issue seems to be just with Firefox. There is also the issue of Firefox rapidly using up RAM in one of processes listed under Firefox in Task Manager. It does not always occur but it occurs 100% of the times when the videos crash or freeze. Ending that process usually fixes it for a little while unless it was caused during a video crash and I try to play the video again. Usually the RAM usage for Firefox hovers around 20-30% for my system but when this happens it just keeps rising. In less than 30 seconds while typing this Firefox went from 65% to 72% RAM usage and I had to end that process to bring it back down.

This has been happening for months through multiple Firefox versions and disabling extensions or running in incognito mode with them disabled do not stop them from occurring.

Expected results:

Images, videos, and icons should load normally and there should not be high RAM usage.

Comment 1

[r310k]

Attachment: firefox memory.jpg

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Audio/Video: Playback' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 3

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Could you help us out by trying to capture a Firefox performance profile when this happens? Visit https://profiler.firefox.com/ for more information and to enable the profiling toolbar button. When capturing a profile, please follow these steps -

1. Navigate to about:logging
2. In the logging preset drop down, select 'Graphics' and then click 'Set Log Modules'
3. Click 'Start Logging' and conduct your testing. Keep this part short. Capture the issue well.
4. Upload the resulting performance profile and post the url provided to this bug.

Thanks!

Comment 4

[r310k]

(In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #3)

Could you help us out by trying to capture a Firefox performance profile when this happens? Visit https://profiler.firefox.com/ for more information and to enable the profiling toolbar button. When capturing a profile, please follow these steps -

1. Navigate to about:logging
2. In the logging preset drop down, select 'Graphics' and then click 'Set Log Modules'
3. Click 'Start Logging' and conduct your testing. Keep this part short. Capture the issue well.
4. Upload the resulting performance profile and post the url provided to this bug.

Thanks!

Here is a link to the profile.
https://share.firefox.dev/4sQY3Xx

It hid the name of the sites when I uploaded the profile. I believe Web content 2 is https://www.tiktok.com/ and Web content 1 was Youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTrsIT4N_6I.

Comment 5

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Hey, could you please post your about:support text? thanks.

Comment 6

[r310k]

Attachment: about:support

Comment 7

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Could you please answer a couple quick questions to help us narrow this down?

1. Did this issue start with a specific Firefox update? Specifically, do you recall if it worked correctly in Firefox 146 or earlier?
2. Could you test a workaround? In a new tab, go to about:config, search for media.ffvpx-hw.enabled, and set it to true. Then restart Firefox and see if images and videos load correctly on the affected sites. Please let us know if this helps.

Thanks!

Comment 8

[r310k]

(In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #7)

1. I remember it occurring around the time of one of the Firefox 144 versions but it could have started in an earlier version and I don't remember. This started sometime in 2025 though so it should not have started on any versions released before then.

2. I set it to true but unfortunately the problems still occur.

Comment 9

[r310k]

Attachment: Firefox Bings.png

I have noticed in the past couple weeks that despite my resolution being set to 4K Bing background images will display in 1080p and be blurry when on Firefox. If I open the page in Chrome it's in 4K.

Comment 10

[r310k]

Attachment: Chrome Bings.png

This is the Chrome comparison for the previous Firefox screenshot. When the image is opened in the viewer the difference may be harder to see since the image is in a smaller window. If you open them in a new tab it should be easier to see the difference.

Comment 11

[:theuser]

Easily reproducible on https://old.reactor.com

Comment 12

[:theuser]

Disabling http2 fixes the issue network.http.http2.enabled
Looks like the image request is not made at all. I can see a request in the network tab, but it looks like it wasn't sent? It says 0 bytes transferred.

Comment 13

[:theuser]

Attachment: bad request entry in the network tab 1

Comment 14

[:theuser]

Attachment: bad request headers

Comment 15

[:theuser]

Attachment: bad request timings tab

Comment 16

[r310k]

Based on the info the user above posted I noticed the background image on Bing.com that I am having an issue with shows 404 in the Network tab when trying to get the 4k image from the link Bing is sending it. I checked in Chrome and it is being told to go to a different link which is why it loads it in 4k.

In Firefox today it says get the image from https://www.bing.com/th?id=OHR.Fujisan_EN-US6479372200_3840x2160.webp&w=3840&h=2160&c=8&rs=1&o=3&r=0

In Chrome it says it gets the image from https://www.bing.com/th?id=OHR.Fujisan_EN-US6479372200_3840x2160.avif

I have tried using the Refresh Firefox feature and also uninstalling Firefox and removing the folders from the Local and Roaming folders for a clean reinstall. However neither of those fixed the issues. I still had broken images and links on Reddit and Bing still loaded a 1080p image. I have checked Windows Defender and it seems to show that Firefox is allowed through the Private Firewall. But under about:support in the Security Software section it doesn't show anything under Antivirus, Antispyware, and Firewall so I am not sure if that is an issue or if it's supposed to be blank. I am also on the latest version 152.0.2.