Series 7 All Models: Bad Flash Video Scaling and Video Crashing

Samsung Series 7 Chronos NP700Z5A NP700Z3A NP700Z4A NP700Z5B

Issue: Flash Video plays badly in terms of image quality and sometimes crashes with a green and/or grey screen. Especially in Chrome.

If you have this problem, please do vote in the poll. Look below for instructions on how to vote correctly.

Please discuss the issue here, and we can then present the issue to Samsung when the thread matures.

 

New: A poll has been added for you to indicate your interest.

How to vote:

You may select one or both options.

You MUST select option 1 if you wish to vote.

Select option 1 if you want Samsung to fix.

Select option 2 if you feel you may wish to return the laptop if no solution is implemented.

Select both if you want Samsung to fix AND feel that you may consider returning the laptop if no solution is implemented.

 

I had to do a full wipe. And install Leshcat’s Drivers to avoid that. It did start fine at beginning but Samsung's drivers were not as good as latest drives.
Also I misclicked return =.= Since I already have it for almost two months.

 

The poll is meant to show Samsung the severity of the issue and give them an indication of the number of users affected in the NBR community. Please vote truthfully.

 

Say if they don't resolve the issue, you actually still reserve the right to ask them to refund, because technically some functions of the laptop are "broken".

Not sure about your country, but some countries have laws to protect consumers' rights.

 

I am from Canada but I brought it from United States. The many thing I want is self-switch for graphics would be nice.
Ahah more reason to just trade it for 17 inch version.

 

Possible. .

 

Hi guys, thanks for posting this. FIY I tried all of the current popular browsers out there, and other then the included IE, they all crashed playing flash videos on youtube higher then 480p, and in some cases bringing the BSD. Changing the power profile in the catalist center won't do any good either as far as power saving vs. performance. Quiet frankly the Intel 3000 is more then capable to play 1080p files on it's own, so I'm thinking this must be the issue how the two graphic solutions were implemented by Samasung that wrecks havoc here, and they must fix this. The problem is they might say that since the built in browser works just fine, they have no obligation to support a third party software, like Chrome or Firefox. Let's hope they are wiser that.

 

It's only happened to me in chrome. But it pretty much happens 100% of the time when playing a Vimeo videos. Sometimes the computer freezes up and the only option is to do a hard reset with the power button..

 

Hmmm, just got mine today. I've watched a Vimeo video and. YouTube Vid, both embedded in other sites. Both played fine but I did notice the awful scaling everyone is talking about when full-screening YouTube.

 

What browser do you use? For me IE works, but Chrome and Firefox doesn't. I don't like IE, but I just solved it by using IE Tab for Chrome and set it to run all Youtube stuff in it.

 

Chrome here. Is this an "all or nothing" issue? If it was gong to crash, should it crash pretty much every time or would it present randomly?

 

For me sometimes a video will play successfully in chrome.. But two or three HD in a row, especially on vimeo seems to crash it every time.

 

SO is samsung fixing this? Is it just a chrome probelm? driver?

 

We hope that Samsung are working on the problem (but they may have passed the buck to AMD). However, read this for a possible work-around.

John

 

Have had mine for nearly a month and have never noticed any problems playing youtube / Vimeo HD videos.
Using chrome 90% of the time, but tested with IE and FF also.
I'm using the leshcat 12.1 Preview drivers.

 

There is a solution for chrome and firefox crashes :

1. Open a youtube video in IE.
2. Right Click on the Video
3. Choose "Settings" from the list of options.
4. In the pop up that opens, uncheck the box that says, "Enable Hardware Acceleration".

This will take care of the video playing in IE, chrome and FF.

 

Wow this worked.
I tried it from chrome and it wouldnt work till i did it from IE

 

Yes, this tip actually works when you do it in IE.
Thanks a lot for sharing this information, Samsung7. =)

At last I can watch HD quality Youtube videos on full screen using battery only and Chrome browser with this laptop of mine.

 

Tried it, and HD videos is still pixilated in Chrome after doing that.

Atleast my IE tab sollution works fine.

 

Using stock or modded drivers?

 

Still using stock drivers. And never had any video do BSOD on me either btw.

 

I'd just like to post an updated information on this topic.

It seems to me that watching flash videos is a trouble in all series 7 models but this only happens when on battery. It would explain why the reports vary.

Please take a minute to identify if your S7 experiences this problem. Disconnect your notebook from AC and watch this clip beautiful nature scenery (1080p HD) - YouTube
Do not forget to set the quality to 1080p. The screen should crash 30 seconds into the clip just like mine does.

Unfortunately, Leshcat's drivers seem only to make matters worse because the driver does not recover from the crash and the computer becomes completely unresponsive.

As far as the upscaling to 1600x900 is concerned, IMO this is not Samsung's fault. It's either Adobe's or Youtube's lack of support for this rare resolution. BTW surprisingly, it scales well in my Internet Explorer.

 

hmm - no crash for me. I get a new still image every 2 or 3 seconds. Nice slideshow. ohh - is that a movie? (firefox 9 using html5)

 

Yes, I forgot to mention, you need to use flash player.

The html5 version of youtube sucks anyway, as you've noticed.

 

Switched to flash, no problem. Then went into catalyst center and changed plugin-container.exe from power saving to high performance. After several seconds, I got the screen corruption and then the machine restarted without an error message. Using standard drivers.

 

Do you have the "hardward acceleration" setting enabled or disabled in flash?

 

So would leaving flash plugin running on power saving mode fixes the crash problem? Im assuming its not necessary to even run flash on high performance as intel graphic run flash pretty well already.

Would like to know. I am thinking of purchasing this notebook soon.

 

Yes. The issue here is definitely the AMD card - so either switching to Intel or disabling hardware acceleration helps. However, this is by no means a proper fix and until we get a straight answer from Samsung what exactly causes the problem, there is no certainty that this won't manifest in other programs that won't do without the AMD card.

Let's hope it's just a matter of buggy drivers. But how do we get Samsung to react?

 

I think it's all down to the AMD graphics card, youtube (no proper scaling for 1600x900 screens) and flash (for just being flash) for the bad video playback on youtube. Samsung failed in respect to the graphics switching.

 

Yes indeed. You can fix it very easily by letting the browser run in power saving mode. It's only when the AMD card is assigned to the flash player, the browser crashes. For me this is not a problem since the Intel HD graphics are pretty good with flash (see benchmark).

FIX
1. Open the browser you want to fix
2. Go to "Start" and type ccc and hit Enter. This opens the AMD Catalyst Control Center
3. Click "Switchable graphics"
4. Under Recent or Other applications click on the colored button next to the browser and make sure it's assigned to "power saving" mode. If you do not have your browser in the list, click the browse button and add you browser to the list. Next assign the power saving mode to it.

Adobe Flash in Chrome, IE and Firefox working fine here after this "fix" . You can keep the hardware acceleration option in flash enabled if you want (as you should ).

BENCHMARK
Flashmark in Google Chrome

Samsung 700z5a on Intel graphics HD (CCC power saving mode):
on battery (half processor power): 1374
plugged in (full power): 3078

My desktop: 3705. Intel Core i5-760 @ 3.3GHZ with an $400 AMD 6970 Graphics card. So the laptop performs pretty decent.

 

Am I the only one who's not ok with this? That's like changing the car because you have a flat tire (with the difference that we don't really know what's wrong with the AMD card).

 

I suppose it's a driver and not a hardware problem; AMD has lots of them. (I know this from my own graphics card).
I am not at all okay with the situation that I got a faulty laptop (driver or hardware), but the solution for this problem is not something I will loose much on; therefore I'm okay with this solution (instead of situation ).

In fact...one month before the warranty will expire, you can count on me to go to the store where I bought it.
Since hopefully the laptop won't anymore be available by then, after a view attempts of a repair, I can choose a new one based on this problem and the WIN will be on me .

 

LOL look at how sly you are!

 

my problem was the same.
now i can change the resolution of the video, but the quality won't be better with flash player. I can switch between 360p, 720p and 1080p but nothing happens.
only when i'm watching with activated html 5 I can switch to the higher resolution 1080p standard. html 5 is not the best solution, because the full screen mode isn't working.
did samsung fix the problem with the crashing videos by limitating the resolution with flash player?

i love the laptop and i don't want to sent it back, but the bad wlan and and the bad flash videos sucks!

 

No. Youtube doesn't support 1600x900 yet, that's all.

 

sry, what does sty mean? it's not in my english-dutch vocabulary (no joke.. )

If you are also experiencing the jagged youtube buttons. That's because youtube does not natively supports the 1600x900 resolution (as said above); therefore you get the jagged resized youtube buttons and video image. My desktop AMD 6970 does use anti-aliasing on the buttons and clip; this makes it look a bit better.. but still it doesn't look great.

A work around is to change your resolution to 1280x720 when you want to play a long youtube clip. Of course this is far from perfect, but at least now you know it's not because of your laptop; but because of youtube. Unfortunately Youtube in HTML5 is to demanding for the laptop; even on the dedicated graphics chip; hopefully Google/Youtube/Intel/AMD will work on this in the future; this would also "fix" the problem.
edit: html5 performance is improved with the new intel driver version, but you need a hacked driver to install http://leshcat.blogspot.com/

 

Try this:
How to fix YouTube pixelated Fullscreen - YouTube

It fixed my pixelation problem by replacing youtube with another player.

 

Which issues leshcat drivers fixed for you?

 

just the html5 performance .

 

Oops it is supposed to be sly. Haha.

 

thanks n0Ne! this worked a treat for me. HD now plays fullscreen smoothly in chrome and firefox without pixelation and jagged edges.

you can get the jw player scripts from Userscripts.org: Power-ups for your browser

 

Jusy downloaded the YouTube alternative Player - JW Player extension for chrome, and now playback works great without using IE Tab or simillar.

Great tip!

 

Thanks!!!!
it workes very well! One Problem with the samsung is solved!

I have read about intel 6230 wlan card. some people write, that it's not better with the card and some people write that the replacement of the card will help to get a better signal quality!
Tomorrow is the last day, when i can return my laptop and buy a new one.
it would be great if you could advise me to solve the wlan problem!
if it's possible to solve this problem too! because internet surfing with my 6 year old HP notebook was better than with the new samsung.
the router is below my flat, it's no problem with my old notebook (g-standard) but with the samsung the signal breaks down or sometimes it cannot log in into the network.
does somebody think that it's possible to get rid of this problem too?

thanks
Tom

 

I dont have any wifi problem with my s7 at home or at school. My room is on the third floor while the router is located in the basement. Maybe try another router, preferably a wireless N if you havent done that already. I recalled someone tested two of his wifi network at home, one gave him better result over the other.

 

Hey everyone, I just tried the JW-Player extension and it works nicely for me. Thanks for the tip!

Is version 2.2 the newest? Or is there also a version which supports not only 720p but also 1080p?

 

I thought I had nothing else to worry about when I installed jw-player...but I was crashing when using my Samsung unplugged. Thank you very much for this tip.

 

i found another method to avoiding the bad video scaling on youtube. when watching any video on youtube, you can right click on the video, and click on pop out to watch the video in a pop out window. From there you can hit F11 for fullscreen, instead of clicking on flash player's own fullscreen option. And then hd so you can watch the video clean and crisp without the bad video scaling. I don't understand why this works, but it just does. This is an alternative for those who don't want to install the jw-player.

(also, sometimes chrome doesn't want to go into fullscreen on the pop out window when you hit F11. Just minimize the pop out window, then restore it back, then hit F11 again. this mainly happens when you first open the pop out, then click anywhere on the flash window, like to go hd. so i recommend when you first open the pop out to hit F11, then once you are in full screen, you can switch over from 360p to hd)

hopefully this all makes sense

 

@RxChp: I don't have the "pop out to watch the video in a pop out window" thing

 

@Loweack: okay so you have to right click on the flash area of the youtube page, where your current video is playing. then from there you click on pop out. (see the 1st attached pic)

once you have the pop out window (2nd attached pic), hit F11 to get into full screen.

now once you are in full screen, change the resolution to hd to view in hd without the bad scaling. notice how the time bar on the bottom is clean and not distorted, along with the rest of the video. (3rd attached pic).


(also, if you are watching the video directly on a youtube channel (ie the profile page of an uploader), you won't find the pop out option when you right click. to get the option, you have to click on the name of the video underneath the playing video. this will redirect you to the page of just the video, not the channel. now from there you can right click and find the option)