626181 - Flash Video Stutters During Buffering On ASUS Netbook 1201HAB (WinXP Only)

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[donb]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b9) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b9) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b9

At the start of any (members area) video, playback stutters for about 3-5 minutes and then plays fine.  I have noticed that while the video is background buffering is when it stutters and plugin-container.exe is vigorously writing to a tmp file the whole time.  Once the file writing is completed, the stuttering ceases.  The problem only occurred since 4.0b8.  4.0b7 did not stutter.  3.6.13 does not stutter either.  I do not see this problem on my Win7 dual-core box.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go to www.clubsapphic.com
2.Enter Members Area 
3.Watch [any] video.

NOTE: 30-second preview videos do not stutter.
Actual Results:  
Video playback stutters for approximately 3 minutes.

Expected Results:  
Playback flash video [without] stuttering in the beginning (like ff 4.0b7 and 3.6.13).

I can provide my username and password temporarily for confirmation/testing purposes if needed.  I do realize this is an ADULT CONTENT SITE but I was unable to locate any other websites that stutter like this.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Please disable the hardware acceleration as test (alt)/tools/options/advanced/general followed by a restart and test again

Comment 2

[donb]

Disabling hardware acceleration did not fix it. 

I noticed once again that the stuttering coincides with the downloading of the video.  What I mean by this is that the video starts playing and you see a time marker showing the current play location and then there is another lighter bar that shows how much of the video has downloaded.  Using Process Explorer I can see plugin-container.exe majorly writing to a .tmp file.  At the precise second the file is done downloading (ie. plugin-container.exe is done writing the file) the video instantly ceases stuttering.

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

It would be great if you would find the regression range with downloading nightly builds between b7 and b8. With the exact build that fails we could probably pin down the change that caused this.
You can find the builds here : ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/ (use the comm-central ones)

This could be also caused by an installed addon (try http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode first) or an update of the flash plugin.

Comment 4

[donb]

Got it.

firefox-4.0b8pre.en-US.win32.installer (nightly 11-10) did NOT stutter.

firefox-4.0b8pre.en-US.win32.installer (nightly 11-11) had stuttered playback.

Safe Mode made no difference.  

Flash update made no difference.

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Thank you very much !
Can you please give me the build revision (build from) that you can see in about:buildconfig for both builds ?
Sorry that I forgot to mention that earlier.

Comment 6

[donb]

firefox-4.0b8pre.en-US.win32.installer (nightly 11-10) did NOT stutter.


about:buildconfig
Source

Built from http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/df1d1ff6b489
Build platform
target
i686-pc-mingw32
Build tools
Compiler 	Version 	Compiler flags
d;D:\mozilla-build\msys\mozilla-build\python25\python2.5.exe -O e;D:\mozilla-build\msys\builds\moz2_slave\mozilla-central-win32-nightly\build\build\cl.py cl 	14.00.50727.762 	-TC -nologo -W3 -Gy -Fdgenerated.pdb -DNDEBUG -DTRIMMED -Zi -Zi -UDEBUG -DNDEBUG -GL -wd4624 -wd4952 -O1
d;D:\mozilla-build\msys\mozilla-build\python25\python2.5.exe -O e;D:\mozilla-build\msys\builds\moz2_slave\mozilla-central-win32-nightly\build\build\cl.py cl 	14.00.50727.762 	-GR- -TP -nologo -Zc:wchar_t- -W3 -Gy -Fdgenerated.pdb -wd4800 -DNDEBUG -DTRIMMED -Zi -Zi -UDEBUG -DNDEBUG -GL -wd4624 -wd4952 -O1
Configure arguments

--enable-application=browser --enable-update-channel=nightly --enable-update-packaging --enable-jemalloc --enable-tests

Comment 7

[donb]

firefox-4.0b8pre.en-US.win32.installer (nightly 11-11) had stuttered playback.


about:buildconfig
Source

Built from http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0f17e5f1eb01
Build platform
target
i686-pc-mingw32
Build tools
Compiler 	Version 	Compiler flags
d;D:\mozilla-build\msys\mozilla-build\python25\python2.5.exe -O e;D:\mozilla-build\msys\builds\moz2_slave\mozilla-central-win32-nightly\build\build\cl.py cl 	14.00.50727.762 	-TC -nologo -W3 -Gy -Fdgenerated.pdb -DNDEBUG -DTRIMMED -Zi -Zi -UDEBUG -DNDEBUG -GL -wd4624 -wd4952 -O1
d;D:\mozilla-build\msys\mozilla-build\python25\python2.5.exe -O e;D:\mozilla-build\msys\builds\moz2_slave\mozilla-central-win32-nightly\build\build\cl.py cl 	14.00.50727.762 	-GR- -TP -nologo -Zc:wchar_t- -W3 -Gy -Fdgenerated.pdb -wd4800 -DNDEBUG -DTRIMMED -Zi -Zi -UDEBUG -DNDEBUG -GL -wd4624 -wd4952 -O1
Configure arguments

--enable-application=browser --enable-update-channel=nightly --enable-update-packaging --enable-jemalloc --enable-tests

Comment 8

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=df1d1ff6b489&tochange=0f17e5f1eb01

That could be bug 596451

Comment 9

[donb]

I see no similarities at all.  Plus that bug is tagged as fixed and if it was fixed and similar, then I would no longer see the stuttering.  But I still see the stuttering in 4.0b9.

I have also noticed that plugin-container.exe uses 30% more CPU resources on the stuttering build versus the build that does not stutter.  Upon writing to the .tmp file whilst playing the video is when the video stutters and at the precise instant the .tmp file is done writing to (file closed), the video immediately stops stuttering.

Comment 10

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

It's called regression. You fix something and something else breaks.
One of the checkins (see my link in comment #8) caused your problem and this is a major change in the plugin code.

Comment 11

[donb]

I work in Engineering and we have regression here also.  I feel the issue most likely has to do with writing to the .tmp file or some event that coincides with such aforementioned task.

Comment 12

[donb]

I found another site that exhibits the same exact phenomenon (it is adult also).  I have emailed technical support and they are working on getting me information on what method they use to stream their flash content.

Comment 13

[donb]

I can't believe I fixed it by disabling plugin-container.exe (ie. dom.ipc.plugins.enabled=false).  I'm not sure why I didn't think of doing that in the first place.  In addition; CPU resource usage went from 100% to 82% and the aforementioned videos are no longer stuttering with 4.0b9.

Comment 14

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Resolving old bugs which are likely not relevant any more, since NPAPI plugins are deprecated.