Flash video stuttering?

[sv2]

I need help badly for this. Sometimes when I'm streaming flash videos (youtube and other sites) the video pauses, even though it has loaded the rest of the video. It usually locks up Firefox for about 20 seconds and then continues playing the rest of the video. What could this be? I am running the latest version of flash as well. Maybe I don't have enough cache allotted to handle it in Firefox?


Anyone?

 

[kastenbrust]

What computer are you using?

 

[robo456]

What computer are you using?

Actually, I've noticed this as well (not 'as bad' tho) with my brand new whitebook 2.0ghz with 4gb ram. I was a little disappointed. However there's a few threads on this topic already.

Hopefully one of them have a 'fix' for us!

--rob

 

[kastenbrust]

I know why it is, its because Flash is very processor intensive on the Apple operating system OS X, if you install Windows on your Mac you'll notice the problem isnt there anymore.

Upgrading the RAM will help very slightly and also making sure the video loads fully before trying to play it should help.

Also closing any other applications other than the browser will help and making sure you have no background applications running.

The reason i asked which computer do you have is the main deciding factor is the processor, and sadly not much can be really done about it.

 

[madog]

I know why it is, its because Flash is very processor intensive on the Apple operating system OS X, if you install Windows on your Mac you'll notice the problem isnt there anymore.

Yeah, Flash is kind of sad on the Mac. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just ported to Mac (or something similar) as opposed to being built specifically for the Mac OS from the ground up. That's why (during the early days of Intel Macs, and mainly before) most games for Mac suck. It's not because the Mac is inferior in any way, it's just that the developers are lazy and it's far less expensive to port something than it is to remake it specifically for something else. Therefore there's a lot of unnecessary code bloating up the program, and it's not truly optimized in any way to take full advantage of features specific to Macs.

If you have an older computer like me, getting AdBlock Plus for Firefox to block ads can significantly increase the speed of the browser when there are animated gifs/flash ads runnign in the background. Otherwise, if you use Safari, you can resize the window to only show the video or flash object you want which essentially blocks out all the animated jazz in the background.

 

[sv2]

What computer are you using?

As you can see, my specs clearly aren't the issue.

 

[dolphin842]

Indeed, Flash is really only a hardware problem for G4s and the like.

Have you installed the latest version of Flash? Maybe try ditching the plugin and reinstalling? Anything else going on in the background that's maxing out the processor?

 

[sv2]

Nope, nothing processor intensive really running in the background.

I re-installed flash, I'll let you guys know if problems persist.

 

[adrianbye]

these threads are a bit tiring where someone comes in and says it an issue with your machine specs or your browawe addons.

the reality: flash on mac is junk, its been a real disappointment after moving from the PC.

The best solution i've found so far is to downgrade to flash 9, that at least works better than 10. Maybe they'll do something about it in snow leapord. flash has become such an integral part of the internet that i think its time apple made their own flash plugin and replaced adobe's.

 

[poppe]

these threads are a bit tiring where someone comes in and says it an issue with your machine specs or your browawe addons.

the reality: flash on mac is junk, its been a real disappointment after moving from the PC.

The best solution i've found so far is to downgrade to flash 9, that at least works better than 10. Maybe they'll do something about it in snow leapord. flash has become such an integral part of the internet that i think its time apple made their own flash plugin and replaced adobe's.

I wish this was a solution for me. I downgraded and even then flash videos stutter. It has made it almost impossible to watch any hulu or youtube video.

I'm not really sure what else to do. I've downgraded, upgraded, closed every app; i mean I've done everything.

My computer is a 2.33 ghz, 2 ghz of ram MBP and still I can't watch flash videos????

 

[Cave Man]

Most flash stuttering problems on Mac notebooks are related to heat. Check you cpu temp while playing the video to see if it skyrockets.

 

[baztastic]

http://www.ditii.com/2009/08/23/fix-for-flash-video-stuttering-in-firefox/

This has been annoying me for ages, I've been copying the URL for any flash I'm looking at to safari to stop the stuttering, and I finally found a fix for it on this blog:

Have you notice, that sometimes Flash-based videos stutter when you view them in Firefox, but work fine in other browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari? This turns out to be a problem of appears to be a problem of Firefox's session restore feature, that affects both Windows and Mac versions. So what's the solution? Well, you can either turn off the session restore feature altogether. Or simply lengthen the period of time between snapshots. To do this, type about:config into Firefox's address bar, then in filter box enter browser.sessionstore.interval. The default value’s 10000, which’s the number of milliseconds between snapshots. Setting the number to 120000 lengthens the period to two minutes, a more reasonable but still useful period. Of course, you can set it to whatever you want, as long as you keep in mind that you're dealing with milliseconds.

I changed it to 600000, or 10 minutes, just because that's the longest a youtube video can be, so at most I'll see one stutter in a ten-minute-long video. This might not be the best idea for the session restore feature, but I use flash more than I use that.

 

[le sacre]

http://www.ditii.com/2009/08/23/fix-for-flash-video-stuttering-in-firefox/

This has been annoying me for ages, I've been copying the URL for any flash I'm looking at to safari to stop the stuttering, and I finally found a fix for it on this blog:

unfortunately this workaround help some only partially, and helps others (like me) not at all. this is now a confirmed bug in firefox (and has been documented by users for some time, which is really quite baffling, given how common flash video is in the typical user's experience). here's the link to the bug report:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490122

PLEASE NOTE: it does no good whatsoever to leave a comment there saying "me too!" you need to register with bugzilla and click the "vote" link. more votes = more developers more motivated to work on it. also, if you are a software developer yourself, you can get in on the action there, or help them by providing new data to diagnose the bug.

also, see comment 27 there, which suggests a few other tweaks to limit the stuttering problem.

in the mean time, i either launch a different browser to watch videos, or for a youtube page, i use this to view the video as quicktime mp4 instead of flash:

http://www.joeyhagedorn.com/2008/04/16/youtube-in-mp4-via-quicktime-plugin

 

[MrMoonshine]

Firefox 4

I was experiencing this issue with the latest Intel I7-based Mac, and turning off Firefox's session restore feature did nothing to help.

How and ever, it seems that this issue may now be fixed with the release of Firefox 4 RC 1.

 

[rextilleon]

Same problem here--and to be quite frank, its been reported to be a problem for Windoz users too. Another reason to go back to FF 3.6

 

[Tonepoet]

http://www.ditii.com/2009/08/23/fix-for-flash-video-stuttering-in-firefox/

This has been annoying me for ages, I've been copying the URL for any flash I'm looking at to safari to stop the stuttering, and I finally found a fix for it on this blog:



I changed it to 600000, or 10 minutes, just because that's the longest a youtube video can be, so at most I'll see one stutter in a ten-minute-long video. This might not be the best idea for the session restore feature, but I use flash more than I use that.

Thank you so much. I reported having a this issue in several other threads and now I know exactly why Firefox is having the hiccups. That article suggests other browsers aren't having the issue, so I'll probably just stick with Chrome until Mozilla fixes the issue. I knew my specs weren't the problem because I'm running the 2820QM and never noticed Flash problems before. I hope this helps to resolve O.P.s problem.

Also, you might want to up your time up to 900000 if you never want stuttering on Youtube, since they upped their time limit up to 15 minutes per video just earlier this year..

 

[angelicious]

http://www.ditii.com/2009/08/23/fix-for-flash-video-stuttering-in-firefox/

This has been annoying me for ages, I've been copying the URL for any flash I'm looking at to safari to stop the stuttering, and I finally found a fix for it on this blog:



I changed it to 600000, or 10 minutes, just because that's the longest a youtube video can be, so at most I'll see one stutter in a ten-minute-long video. This might not be the best idea for the session restore feature, but I use flash more than I use that.

Just wanted to say thank you - this finally solved my stuttering video (MPB 2010). I'm disappointed that such an awesome machine as my MPB stutters (mouse, typing) when the hard drive is spinning or HD levels aren't optimum. Considering FF forces you to download items to a folder instead of viewing them, HD space is quickly filled with downloads. Still, better than all of the Chrome issues.