Closed Bug 570374 Opened 14 years ago Closed 3 years ago

Flash videos stutter

Categories

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
General
Version:
3.6 Branch
Platform:
x86_64
Windows 7
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED INVALID

People

(Reporter: gargantulakon, Unassigned)

References

Details

Attachments

(2 files, 1 obsolete file)

My extensions list requested
795 bytes, text/plain
Details
about:support info for fx14
18.73 KB, application/octet-stream
Details 
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

I have had this problem for a long time since v3.0 of Firefox and I am frustrated that it has not been fixed yet. I noticed that my memory was around 700 MBs with 7 tabs opened. I was watching a full screen video on Adobe.com and noticed that it was stuttering (skipping frames) every 5-10 seconds. I tried safe mode and the videos stopped stuttering so I thought it was an add-on, but when I restarted Firefox in regular mode, Firefox was consuming around 200 MBs now and the same Flash video now does not stutter with the same 7 tabs! Is this a memory leak? Why the stutter? I had opened lots of You Tube videos in the "stuttering" session of Firefox so maybe it is a memory leak of Flash content. I have version 10,0,45,2 of Flash installed, not the new 10.1 that is currently in RC 7 stage. I have 6GBs of RAM on a Win7 x64 system with an NVIDIA 295 GTX GPU.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Loads lots of Flash videos
2. Play a video in full screen after memory consumption is high.
Actual Results:  
Video stutters

Expected Results:  
No stutters on an expensive and fast computer.
If this does not happen in safe mode, then it is most likely an addon. I would create a new profile and test there, http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles
700mb could be a memory issue. Restarting will always fix that for a short time and it doesn't matter if you start Firefox in the safemode or not.
You can only be sure that this is caused by an addon if you run Firefox in the Firefox safemode for a longer time. The safemode time depends on the time that you usually need to reproduce this issue in the normal mode.
A list of the installed addons would also help.

You should try the new profile if the safemode doesn't help
Oh, OK. Is there an easy way to export a list of add-ons and plug-ins for you from my Firefox installation?
You can try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3746/
Please attach the list as file (use the "add an attachment" link here ) and not as comment.

    
    

    
  
A new Flash version 10.1 was released since this bug report, so I will report if flash videos stutter again since I have a GPU enabled computer.

    
  
Version: unspecified → 3.6 Branch

    
    

    
  
How come this bug still hasn't been fixed? It's been in Firefox for YEARS, literally. Instead, we got themes and other questionably useful features.

My configuration is Core i5, 4GB RAM, Win7 Pro, Firefox 4.0b12, Flash 10,2,152,32. Lots of tabs, and Process Explorer reports about 1GB of Private Bytes and Working Set. Flash playback stutters really badly (frame rates of less than 3 per second), and the amount of time Firefox has been running seems to matter less than the number of open tabs. I've killed plugin-container.exe, but that didn't help.

Can we at least change the status from "UNCONFIRMED"?

    
    

    
  
Forgot to mention: the only installed add-ons are AdBlockPlus 1.3.3 and TestPilot 1.1.

    
    

    
  
Updated Flash to latest, 10,2,153,1. Still having the same choppy video playback issue (audio plays smoothly).

Anyone else?

    
    

    
  
and you have verified that you have the most recent graphics driver put out by the graphics card manufacturer?

    
    

    
  
I do have the latest driver (Intel HD Graphics) 8.15.10.2182, but really I don't think this bug has anything to do with the driver. Reasons:

1. I've seen it on Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 SP1, each on different laptops. If memory serves, I've seen this bug on a machine with an ATI video driver as well.
2. Opera (again with ~50 tabs open) plays Flash content perfectly, on the same laptop on which Firefox stutters.

    
    

    
  
The problem worsens in proportion to the number of tabs open. Increasing the about:config value for browser.sessionstore.interval . The greater the interval, the smoother the playback. I'm guessing for some reason polling the addresses of open tabs is a very intensive process, though I don't understand why- they are just text.

    
    

    
  
I think this should be resolved ASAP. I have to use chrome to view netflix and hulu. 
The problem worsens for HD content.

    
    

    
  
Hello Kshitij. Thanks for your comment, that's very good information. Much more is collected for session data than just the addresses. Regardless, the browser should not interfere with user activity in this way.

There is currently some work to re-architect how Firefox saves session data, so that it doesn't interfere with user activity. I've linked that bug to this one.

For now, a workaround might be to use the "restore tabs on demand" feature. Go to preferences and on the General tab check the box that says "Don't load tabs until selected". If that helps, can you comment here to let me know?
Depends on: sessionRestoreJank

    
    

    
  
(In reply to Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich) from comment #14)
> Hello Kshitij. Thanks for your comment, that's very good information. Much
> more is collected for session data than just the addresses. Regardless, the
> browser should not interfere with user activity in this way.
> 
> There is currently some work to re-architect how Firefox saves session data,
> so that it doesn't interfere with user activity. I've linked that bug to
> this one.
> 
> For now, a workaround might be to use the "restore tabs on demand" feature.
> Go to preferences and on the General tab check the box that says "Don't load
> tabs until selected". If that helps, can you comment here to let me know?

I do use the Restore tabs on Demand feature. I just tested it again, and loads of unloaded tabs fare much better than loads of loaded tabs- it's much more watchable, but the occasional hiccup is still there, not as breaking but still happens often.
However, usually I already have a bunch of tabs loaded up so this doesn't help- I must either restart the browser, watch the video stream, then use restore previous session option, which is very experience breaking, so I just fire up chrome/IE side by side.

    
    

    
  
Restarting in safe mode fixed the problem at least for now. I'll test all addons one by one and get back here. See which ones a problem.

    
    

    
  

      
      
      
      

        Attached file
          
        List of my extensions and other info (obsolete)
        — 
      

    


  

    
    

    
  
OKay I disabled a bunch of addons but playback still suffers. The rest of the system doesn't slow down so this couldn't be a memory hog problem, sinc the videos play fine on IE and Chrome irrespective of Fx memory use.
I have attached the new list of my addons.
I'm no tech guy perhaps it is because of the plugins used to play the videos in Fx.

Does no one else face this problem?

    
    

    
  
Same problem here. It's been going on for ages, but I'm not sure exactly when it started for me (sometime between version 4 and version 9).

I mostly get freezes and stutters every 10 to 15 seconds on all videos on YouTube, Faceook, Vimeo and others. However, sometimes video will go for a minute or more without stuttering, so it's not something that is consistently apparent.

The problem doesn't seem to happen in Safe Mode (although Firefox is so unusable for me without my fave extensions that I haven't done long-term tests in safe mode over an extended period of time).

Adjusting browser.sessionstore.interval made no difference in my case.

I assumed that the problem was caused by an extension, and I have therefore been disabling and enabling extensions in various combinations over the last 2 months to try to track down the culprit, but to no avail.

None of my extensions cause the problem when run on their on, so either it's an interaction between two or more extensions or it's something in Firefox itself.

    
    

    
  


  

        Attachment #594505 -
        Attachment is obsolete: true

    
    

    
  
The stuttering problem seems to have disappeared even with a respectable tab load (all loaded) and HD. Have uploaded my info.

    
    

    
  
I think I finally figured out what is causing it, I disabled all of my add-ons and slowly enabled them. It seems that DownloadHelper causes it.

    
    

    
  
Maybe not... it still happens. Maybe the Tab utilities program? Safe mode runs the video nice and smooth for me too all the time when I disable the add-ons.

    
    

    
  
Which version of firefox are you using?

    
    

    
  
v12

    
    

    
  
try firefox aurora build v14

    
    

    
  
I noticed that a background process for Carbonite affects flash videos and causes them to stutter. I paused it and the stutters went away. I have a quad core so I would hope the threads run on different cores. I am slowly enabling my add-ons to see which one may cause it.

    
    

    
  
I honestly don't get this. I've had this error as long as I can ever remember. And I've been using Firefox since 2005 or so.

I've just read this thread. I'm trying to watch a Netflix movie in Firefox on a MacBook Pro Retina with 16 GB ram, and I've given up. It normally stutters. It stutters if I change browser.sessionstore.interval to something higher (like 120000). It stutters if I open it in safe mode with all my add-ons disabled. It stutters on high-speed connections. It always stutters...

But if I open Chrome, Netflix works perfectly. It's the same computer, the same Internet, the same everything but the browser.

And why is this still on unconfirmed? Several people have confirmed it! I've had this problem on my old MacBook Pro, and on my "old" quad-core PC with a nice graphics card (highest quality settings in Crysis didn't stop it). Why can't I play simple videos in Firefox?

I really hope somebody starts looking into this soon. It's embarrassing that I have to swap browser to watch YouTube...

    
    

    
  
The problem has disappeared for me ( I am among one of the people on this list). Which version of firefox are you using? Does the problem still occur in safe mode?

    
    

    
  
Is hardware acceleration enabled?

    
    

    
  
For me the problem was there until Nightly 30 then disappeared. Flash version 12/13 came out around the same time. One issue that still remains for me is when I go to full screen sometimes the screen goes black, then I exit full screen and go back to full screen and the problem is solved.

    
    

    
  
I too am having same issues with video streaming in Firefox. I have tried unchecking hardware acc, I have started up FF in safe-mode, update Flash, Java, etc. Oddly enough, the same videos play perfectly in Chrome using flash whether hardware acc is enabled or not. This is a Firefox problem for sure. Is there a way we can install a second copy of FF with it's own profile, and not install any add-ons except Flash I guess, for testing purposes? Then we could open problem videos (most of them are a problem) in the test version of FF. I'll wait for a response.

    
    

    
  
We're in the process of removing support for plugins (bug 1677160), so I think this bug is irrelevant now.


Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 3 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID

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