985194 - With IDM CC extension installed, Firefox consumes excessive RAM while watching streaming video and does not release it on video completion

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Raza]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140212131424

Steps to reproduce:

Windows 7 Sp1, 32 bit

When you are watching any online video, either through Amazon Prime using Silverlight or through Youtube using Adobe Flash, and have the video streaming for a long time, 1hr 30min or more, you will find that Firefox has taken a huge chunk of your RAM and Firefox does not release it on the completion of the video. You have to exit Firefox to recover this RAM.

This problem can be seen in real time, if you have the video playing in Firefox in the background and you are monitoring Firefox RAM consumption in the task manager, you will see the RAM consumption going up by about 2 mb per second.

You can speed up this process by using the skip back and skip forward buttons to skip the playing video stream forward or backwards. You can use your mouse to seek forward and backward on a video stream too to replicate this effect. So, for example, on Amazon Prime, while the video is streaming, you let it stream for 1 minute and then hit skip forward, then let it stream for 1 minute and hit skip forward, and so on. Once in a while after letting it stream for a minute hit skip backward. If you do this over 10-15 times and the video has been streaming for about 1 hr, you then look at the RAM Firefox is consuming, it will be around 1.2 GB i.e 1200 mb or more.

You can see this effect in real time as well, have the minimized window of task manager running while you follow the above defined procedure of streaming and skipping forward, you can see FireFox's memory consumption jumping by about 40-50 mb per skip.




Actual results:

On my system, I have only 3 GB of RAM, and when Firefox touches 1 GB of RAM, my whole system slows down and when it touches 1.5 GB and above, Firefox then crashes and you have to restart it again. Very inconvenient when you are in the middle of a movie.

When the streaming video is over, Firefox does not release the RAM back, even if you close the tab that was streaming the video. The only way to get the RAM back is to restart the browser.

This bug has nothing to do with addons and extensions, I have checked with all of them disabled.

This bug has nothing to do with the plugins Silverlight or Flash, as the RAM is being consumed by Firefox process, not the plugin container. The plugin container RAM consumption only goes up by about a 100-150 mb on average during the entire procedure described above.

This bug has nothing to do with the number of tabs open at the time, whether it is one or two or more tabs the result is the same.

I have been observing this bug in Firefox for more than a year now, I do not remember which version Firefox was on when I first noticed it.

Streaming HD content or SD content has nothing to do with this bug. It happens with both

I have not changed any advanced options in Firefox, my Firefox is running on default options.



Expected results:

What should have happened is that as soon as the streaming video was done i.e finished, Firefox should have released the extra RAM it had consumed during the streaming process, so that if the user wants to watch another streaming video back-to-back, their browser will not crash due to excessive RAM usage.

I have confirmed this proper behavior using Internet Explorer 11, when a video stream on IE is done, the browser immediately releases the RAM it had consumed during the process and during the time when the video is streaming, IE RAM consumption does go up, but not by the same amount as Firefox, so after streaming 1 hr of video on IE using skip buttons multiple times, the browser only goes as high has 500-600 mb, not more. This RAM is released as soon as the video streaming is done, even with the tab that was playing the stream still open.

Since Online streaming is such a big deal nowadays, it would be better for Firefox to handle this streaming properly otherwise it will lag the competition.

Comment 1

[Raza]

A small typo in my earlier post, when I listed that the Firefox's memory consumption goes up by about 2 mb per second, while streaming an online video, I meant 2 mb per minute on average, not per second.

Comment 2

[Raza]

After chatting with users on the Firefox support website, I have narrowed the problem down to an extension from a software "Internet Download Manager" called IDM CC. If I disable this extension, the problem goes away. I have contacted IDM support today and filed a bug report. I wanted know if someone at Mozilla can work on this problem with IDM, as most people will not bother to figure out what is causing the problem and will simply switch browsers. Firefox will be the ultimate losers in the end.

See my discussion at Firefox support website here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2815913

Comment 3

[VanillaMozilla]

Raza reports that the problem is caused by the IDM CC extension, which has been disabled by Mozilla.  More info here:  http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2815913&start=30 .  Is there any reason not to close this, Raza?

Comment 4

[Raza]

If there is a valid reason to close this then please do. The bug is still present and it is crashing Firefox.

I do not know the procedure that Mozilla follows for disabling an extension, because I have been using IDM with Firefox for the last 5-6 years and this extension is the only way that IDM hooks into Firefox. It is still enabled and working on my system. 

The thing is that although the problem is being caused by this extension, it is Firefox that consumes RAM and then crashes, not IDM. Isn't someone at Mozilla concerned with this?

IDM is quite popular software, according to CNET it has been download over 55 million times and according to Softpedia it has been downloaded over 7 million times. If these people are also using Firefox and then they use any streaming video site like Amazon, Netflix, they will encounter this bug and Firefox will crash. Lacking technical know how, they will blame Firefox and simply switch browsers. Isn't Mozilla concerned with this?

I have received a response from IDM support person that they have been able to reproduce the bug and have sent it to their development team for a possible correction. I will keep you updated if I receive further response from them.

Comment 5

[VanillaMozilla]

IDM CC has been disabled on AMO.  I think Mozilla can disable existing copies, and we can change the bug summary, but I need you to verify the actual name of the extension.  I think that's better than closing this bug.

Comment 6

[Raza]

I could not find the extension on Mozilla website. The extension's name and version number showing up in my browser are "IDM CC 7.3.69". There is no remove option available from the browser, only enable/disable option is available for this extension.

The extension is installed in Firefox when you install IDM. It can be removed by unchecking the Firefox integration module from inside IDM. 

See this FAQ from the IDM support site, on how the extension is installed.

http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/register/new_faq/bi4.html

I guess the best way for someone from Mozilla to test this is to install a trial of IDM on their system.

http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/download.html

Comment 7

[VanillaMozilla]

If you think Mozilla should disable this extension, then say so.  Otherwise let's wait on this.  The problem appears to be an extension, and Mozilla is not going to fix an extension.  I'm pretty sure no one is going to test it either.

Comment 8

[Raza]

VM, I know Mozilla is not going to fix a third party extension, all I wanted from Mozilla was to check this and get in touch with IDM that their extension is causing FF to misbehave and crash. Coming from Mozilla makes this a priority bug for IDM development team and they will want to fix it quickly. But I also see what you are trying to say here that Mozilla does not care one way or the other about this. If this is true please close this file, as I have already spent more time on this then I wanted to spend. IDM works fine with IE and I can always watch Amazon Prime, Netflix and Youtube on IE. I wrote this initially just to make Mozilla development team aware of this problem. 

Thank you very much for all your help and support. I do not know whether you work for Mozilla or not, but you are the only one to at least respond here. I do not know what Mozilla's paid support staff are doing.

Comment 9

[Raza]

Just wanted to update everyone that the bug mentioned above has now been fixed by the Internet Download Manager team. The IDM version 6.19 Build 9 released on May 15 2014, resolves the memory leak that was crashing Firefox.

Issue is resolved.