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Unibody MBP: Flash Video stutters constantly!

A

adster

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 7, 2008
235
2
Hello peeps! I have a Late 2008 Unibody MacBook Pro. I love it, it's great. I upgraded to a 500gb HD and 4GB of RAM.

Since I purchased it, Flash videos (Vimeo, YouTube, etc..) are jerkey in both Safari (3.0 and 4.0) and in Firefox (3.0 and 3.5). I've tried updating my Flash player, and just nothing seems to work. The audio plays fine, but the video stutters almost every few seconds. My video settings are on "Best Performance".

Does this happen to anyone else? I'm just getting fed up. :( Thanks!
 
hey,

have you checked your activity monitor to see if anything is eating up your cpu ?

is your temp's high ?


just curious what hdd you upgraded to ...model?

thanks
 
First, Late 2009 MacBook Pro's don't exist. It's not even "late" 2009 yet. Your MacBook Pro shouldn't have any issues playing Flash video. My mid 2007 MacBook has no issues with 720p (not the stuff YouTube calls HD) flash video. You should have no issue. Make sure you have Flash Player 10 for hardware acceleration. It is true that Flash for OSX simply sucks.
 
Sneakz said:
First, Late 2009 MacBook Pro's don't exist. It's not even "late" 2009 yet.
Click to expand...

My apologies! It was supposed to read "Late 2008" Sorry! I corrected it.

Anyways, I run Firefox most of the time. Actually, I run Shiretoko (the Intel-only build of Firefox) and it has been much better at managing memory then Firefox was. When I'm watching a Flash video, my CPU is at about 65-70%. Actually, even if I'm just on a site that uses Flash my fans kick in.

As far as harddrive, I use the Seagate Momentus 5400.6 drive from Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148371

Someone mentioned adjusting my video settings. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, or how to do that. Thanks for everyone's responses!
 
Safari seems to do flash better on macs. Try that over firefox and see if it helps. Firefox is just badly coded for osx =\
 
Sneakz said:
It is true that Flash for OSX simply sucks.
Click to expand...

I second this. Generally speaking thats been the case for a while now. Although to the OP, flash does work perfectly fine (even HD ones from say Gametrailers) on my mid 07 MBP. I have 4GB as well. Although, under Windows 7 through Bootcamp, flash material say on YouTube or Vimeo do happen to work somewhat smoother. I dunno if this is an OS X thing or whether its an Adobe thing, but there is a difference in performance (even though its not BAD or anything on OS X)
 
adster,

I have the exact same setup as you and the exact same problem. I bought a MacBook Unibody the day they came out, and very soon after upgraded it to 4GB ram and a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 HDD. I am quite confident this is an issue with the hard drive, and let me explain.

When using a site such as YouTube.com, the video will on occasion stutter while the video is still being buffered. It seems to happen when the underlying flash player has buffered enough content that it writes some to disk. If I wait long enough for the entire video to be downloaded, then video playback is stutter free.

Something with the Momentus 5400.6 causes my MacBook to ever so momentarily freeze (aka, the "stutter") when doing anything HDD intensive. Maybe this is a firmware issue with the drive? I'm not sure, but it definitely came about when I swapped that drive in. Trying to run a Virtual Machine when the VM is hitting the disk brings my entire MacBook to its knees, significantly worse than it did with the OEM drive.

I'm going to dig around and see if there is any sort of firmware update for the drive, and I'm tempted to contact Seagate regarding this issue...
 
Watching youtube/vimeo is not at all HDD intensive. HD video stuttering is due to the badly implemented flash player on osx. If letting video buffer completely helps, than connection speed may be a factor. And changing "higher performance" and "better battery life" will make no difference (apart from more heat) because it only changes GPUs and nothing else, and flash player is processed by the CPU. Hopefully Adobe will take advantage of the new tech in SL, and take advantage of the GPU power in later versions.
 
I also believe it is due to the 5400.6. My flash videos stutter in the same manner now after the HD installation. Sure, this could be from other issues but it didn't begin until I put that drive in. Another thing to consider - I play Team Fortress 2 under bootcamp but since the 5400.6 drive install, the darn thing stutters constantly at video settings that previously ran perfectly. Nothing else changed. Wish there was a fix! Any thoughts?
 
heet said:
I also believe it is due to the 5400.6. My flash videos stutter in the same manner now after the HD installation. Sure, this could be from other issues but it didn't begin until I put that drive in. Another thing to consider - I play Team Fortress 2 under bootcamp but since the 5400.6 drive install, the darn thing stutters constantly at video settings that previously ran perfectly. Nothing else changed. Wish there was a fix! Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have a thought. I think it's the installation of the Seagate 5400.6 hard disk. :D:p

Try Western Digital? I have a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB and it's as smooth as sailing on a lake.
 
LedCop said:
Yeah, I have a thought. I think it's the installation of the Seagate 5400.6 hard disk. :D:p

Try Western Digital? I have a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB and it's as smooth as sailing on a lake.
Click to expand...

Thanks, any ideas besides buying a new HD?
 
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