Frustrating Video Player Puzzle.

[RiffRaff 10]

 

Toshiba laptop, Win 10 Home

Display Adapter = AMD E2-1800 APU with Radeon HD Graphics   1.70 GHz

Ram = 6GB

Realtek network adapter

 

Defaults to Firefox, but Edge also installed. Both have hardware acceleration disabled.
No plugins on either.

Videos are stuttering, to say the least!

Split second of video, then freezes, but the audio continues. Maybe 10 seconds later, video "catches up" with the audio, but again only lasts a split second before freezing.

Even the news videos on https://www.bbc.co.uk/news site do the same : audio continues, video freezes after just a split second.

 

This has only happened recently. No problems at all prior to Christmas-ish.

I've googled the problem, essentially asking for solutions/advice re Firefox, but I've since discovered the problem's the same using Edge.

There are various suggestions on a few forums, and I've messed with certain "true/false" ideas in Firefox's settings - none have worked.

Apart from the hardware acceleration business - which seems to be a very common solution to most video errors -  I think Firefox is actually back to default settings now.

 

I checked the AMD driver for updates - none better found,  although it's not particularly recent. 2015, without looking.

Also checked the network adapter - again, none better found.

To confuse me completely, I set my wife's HP laptop up next to the Toshiba.

Both wireless, same router, same latest version of Firefox.

The same video links play perfectly on the HP, so - to me, anyway - that must mean the problem is on my laptop - yes?

 

Have run Bitdefender and Malwarebytes just in case - clear.

For a while I convinced myself it must be something to do with the discontinued Flash, but I've stripped it all out as far as I can tell.

 

Open to any suggestions, please!

 

 

 

 

[alchresearch 214]

Open up task manager and look at the performance figures when you're playing a video.

[RiffRaff 10]

43 minutes ago, alchresearch said:

Open up task manager and look at the performance figures when you're playing a video.

Hadn't thought of that.

CPU 'utilisation' is varying between 55 and 99%. When at 99, video is stopped.

Memory is hovering around the 50% mark.

[zach 234]

If it's online video, it could just be a case of the system can't keep up with the newer video formats used for streaming.

 

What's the spec of the HP that works OK?

 

Although not always the same, if I try x265 on some older/slower systems, video just plays bad, or won't play at all. I don't think it's a virus or other nasty, just maybe too much for the system. I don't know exactly what format the BBC uses but it may have changed recently and the APU just can't decode it fast enough.

 

 

[RiffRaff 10]

42 minutes ago, zach said:

What's the spec of the HP that works OK?

Newer than the Tosh, but not by a deal.

Intel CPU (4415U) and also Intel graphics HD610.

Strangely, lower memory - only 4GB.

 

Out of interest, I've just opened the BBC News site with it, and clicked on the Biden speech video, and checked the performance info. (Not his, the laptop!)

The CPU ran at about 30%, with the memory almost to 'the top', using about 3.5GB.

Faultless.

 

 

[max 13]

2 hours ago, RiffRaff said:

Hadn't thought of that.

CPU 'utilisation' is varying between 55 and 99%. When at 99, video is stopped.

Memory is hovering around the 50% mark.

What is it that's causing the CPU to run at 99%?  Just in case you're not aware, you can click at the top of each column to determine which process is eating your CPU/Memory.

 

For instance, I found that unless you actually log out of Zoom, processes running in the background can use a lot of CPU.

[zach 234]

1 hour ago, RiffRaff said:

Newer than the Tosh, but not by a deal.

Intel CPU (4415U) and also Intel graphics HD610.

Strangely, lower memory - only 4GB.

 

Out of interest, I've just opened the BBC News site with it, and clicked on the Biden speech video, and checked the performance info. (Not his, the laptop!)

The CPU ran at about 30%, with the memory almost to 'the top', using about 3.5GB.

Faultless.

 

 

The 4415U is much newer architecture (2017) over the E2-1800 (2012)

 

I'm not saying this is 100% the answer, but the 4415U is a much better CPU (IMO) Although the 4415U isn't a powerhouse of a CPU, it will handle newer audio/video codecs much better than the AMD.  
 

 

[RiffRaff 10]

18 minutes ago, zach said:

The 4415U is much newer architecture (2017) over the E2-1800 (2012)

 

I'm not saying this is 100% the answer, but the 4415U is a much better CPU (IMO) Although the 4415U isn't a powerhouse of a CPU, it will handle newer audio/video codecs much better than the AMD. 

Bigger age gap than I thought, then.

Take your point, but this has only started happening in the last fortnight or so, and no hardware has been changed.

 

Just back to the Tosh for a minute, here's something that may have a bearing on things?

I've Task Manager 'open', and I've the Firefox desktop open as well, but not doing anything.

The Processes screen keeps altering of course, flitting between TM itself, System interrupts and occasionally W Explorer using x% of CPU.

Down the list appears Firefox, but followed by (5).

If I click on Firefox (5), it does actually drop down to show 5 different items.

If I now type an address featuring a video in Firefox, and try to play it, TM Processes now show Firefox (7). 

"Performance" still bangs up to 99%.

If I pause the video, it plummets and rolls along around 8-12%....

 

That give any more clues?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ghozer 112]

in the "last fortnight or so" Flash player was ended... and websites had to move from using Flash to 'HTML5' or other alternate (Java, or other) type players..

Maybe this is something to do with it?

[RiffRaff 10]

3 hours ago, Ghozer said:

in the "last fortnight or so" Flash player was ended... and websites had to move from using Flash to 'HTML5' or other alternate (Java, or other) type players..

Maybe this is something to do with it?

Yes, the same thought occurred to me - I think I mentioned it in my opening post.

Coincidence, maybe....dunno.

As far as I can be, I've stripped all references to Adobe/Macromedia flash, but I do remember there was always something 'weird' about uninstalling/updating.

Sometimes an update/new version would work, sometimes it wouldn't, and when it didn't a user was potentially in for hours of fun!

(I'm going back some years, though - 10+? - to when I used to mess with SwishMax, which was a cheaper way of producing fla and swf files.)

 

What I've done since my post #8 is "refresh" Firefox, which supposedly is akin to uninstalling and reinstalling.

It's not made a jot of difference, needless to say!

 

Edit : Oh, this is new! I can still type, but not in the desktop search box! Just tried to access device manager and found out! What the hell is going on now!!

Edited January 21, 2021 by RiffRaff

[swarfendor437 14]

Just done a quick search for Lightweight browsers.

 

I picked a video from the BBC about Boris talking about the current lockdown, used the same Window size with each Broswer and Memory usage by Midori is about half that of Firefox ESR. CPU usage is roughly the same at 3%.

 

Firefox ESR: https://ibb.co/87Kfjkn

Midori: https://ibb.co/fXS9VLr

 

Have to also admit that I am running a rig with AMD Ryzen 7 Processor, 16 Gb RAM and Nvidia GT1030 2 Gb graphics Card.

 

See if you get any better performance with Midori:

 

https://astian.org/en/midori-browser/

 

No guarantees but might be worth a try?

[RiffRaff 10]

1 hour ago, swarfendor437 said:

Just done a quick search for Lightweight browsers.

 

I picked a video from the BBC about Boris talking about the current lockdown, used the same Window size with each Broswer and Memory usage by Midori is about half that of Firefox ESR. CPU usage is roughly the same at 3%.

 

Firefox ESR: https://ibb.co/87Kfjkn

Midori: https://ibb.co/fXS9VLr

 

Have to also admit that I am running a rig with AMD Ryzen 7 Processor, 16 Gb RAM and Nvidia GT1030 2 Gb graphics Card.

 

See if you get any better performance with Midori:

 

https://astian.org/en/midori-browser/

 

No guarantees but might be worth a try?

Well, the no-type-in search-bar problem was easy enough to solve - the windows search facility had become 'disabled'.

But how? When? Why?!

I'm reading that it's a fairly common fault after a Win10 update....

 

Anyway, success with Midori!

I avoided BoJo about lockdown (!), and instead picked the same tutorial video I'd been trying for a few days - ran perfectly, without having to alter the (Vimeo) resolution! So thank you! I did think about trying Brave earlier today, but got sidetracked...

Going to try again now, and check the performance figures for interest's sake.

 

EDIT : How interesting. Video running fine, performance varies between 96 and 99%, memory spot on 50%.

 

 

 

Edited January 21, 2021 by RiffRaff