Firefox + YouTube Stuttering Problem

I just bought a new laptop, and after loading everything I noticed that YouTube will not play in full screen on Firefox without terrible stuttering. Full screen works fine on Chrome, IE, and Edge...but Firefox. I know what some of you will say, but I like FF...I don't want to use a different browser. I have searched high and low, but cant find a resolution to the problem. The kicker is, by other laptop is running Win 10 as well, ans full screen works just fine on it. I'm stumped....any ideas? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

@InkDigger Does your laptop use an integrated Intel GPU by any chance?

Anyway, I'm really interested in this as well because I have the same exact problem - also in FF and full screen HD videos.

To get some of the obvious things out of the way - GPU drivers and FF are up to date, Flash is not being used (it's HTML5 video), it's not related to AV software, internet connection is fast enough - 100mbps, CPU is definitely not too slow since other browsers do fine.
My issue is on Windows 8.1 notebook.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

 

Both integrated and dedicated. I'm running Win 10 on an i7-6820HK, GTX 980m, and 4K display. My connection is also fast enough at over120Mbps. It has to be something within FF, some setting...because it works fine on my other (much lesser) laptop.

 

hmmmm.... testing with a Lenovo i3 streaming a youtube 1440p.
CPU, IE 11: around 10% ....FF 45.0.2: up to 99% !?

Dell i7 no cpu usage problems, but IE generally quite lower than FF.
w 8.1

edit: html5 (default when opening anything on yt).

 

To add to confusion - my other notebook that has AMD dedicated graphics and runs Win 7 64bit has no problems whatsoever even though if uses the same internet connection, the same AV suite and the same version of FF that my Win 8.1 one.

 

If you are using NOD32 by any chance, this has been a long known issue due to its HTTP scanner. what AV do you use?

 

Avast Premier on both devices. But since one is affected with FF only and the other one is not affected at all, I'm inclined to think it's not AV related.

 

right, try this please and make sure you have the latest Flash Player for FF:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-video-player/

 

@Phoenix I did, and it works pretty much flawlessly. No stuttering and acceptable CPU utilization. I would have never thought that Flash video will work better than HTML5 video.

That's a useful workaround but I'd still like to solve the HTML5 video issue - Flash is on its way out and I know that this stuttering issue is not limited to YouTube (my client's website has a looped full-browser widow video as a background and it also stutters).

Unlike OP I'm not dealing with a brand new computer - I've had this one for over a year and for most of this time (until few months ago) HTML5 video worked great (and Flash worked like flash does - sometimes well, sometimes terribly) until it stopped working properly.

So I'm still open to suggestions on what to do.

 

1) show your about:support, graphics section
2) does your firefox icon show up in nvidia gpu activity in tray while on youtube?

 

I'm using Norton.

I'm sorry, I'm a bit of a noob, so I'm not exactly what you are asking for here.

 

Looks like I fixed it by accident, which is pretty much the way I have learned everything I know about computers. Anyway, I just changed my settings so that Firefox uses my 980M all the time, rather than choosing between dedicated and integrated.

 

@InkDigger That confirms my initial suspicion that the problem is an integrated Intel card and FF.
You haven't as much solved the problem as you've found a way around it, more or less in the same way I have, thanks to Phoenix's suggestion.

 

@downloads
flash indeed uses less cpu, especially with 'flash accelerate' userscript, but the problem is not in using flash, but in ways to decode html5 media, it will be more clear when you show us your about:support section of graphics
even when you force ff thru nvidia control panel, your cpu could still suffer:
try opening 8 tabs html5 on youtube 720p and check with hwinfo64 core thread usage + gpu usage, you should have core thread load 10-12%, while gpu video engine load 30-40% (depending on your computer configuration)

 

@batsign
Tanks for the tip. I actually don't have a dedicated card like OP (not in this laptop anyway) so I can only monitor usage of the Intel card, but you have pointed me in the right direction. Graphics section of about:support has one important tip, namely " Too many dropped/corrupted frames, disabling DXVA".

I checked the GPU load and it turned out that Intel is indeed overloaded - GPU core went t0 100% at times and that's when the stuttering began. This does not happen when Flash is forced though even though flash is hardware accelerated as well.

Now for flash the codec is H264 and this one is hardware accelerated and does not overload the GPU. The question is what is going on with HTML5.
When I enable statistics for nerds in HTML5 player it shows Mime Type:video/MP4, codecs="AVC.1.640028" which is the exact same thing that shows up when using IE - except when IE is used load on GPU is less than 20%, not 100% (while playing the same video).

 

Sorry for double-posting but a separate post is warranted for conclusions.
I tested FF45 (official), 46 beta11 and subsequent FF46 (soon to become official) and the same videos on IE11 while monitoring load on Intel GPU while hardware decoding and the short version is - FF does a terrible job.

If FF manages to decode HTML5 video with no issues it does so at the expense of at least twice the load on Intel GPU. When load becomes too high (for example for 60 fps HD videos), FF starts stuttering because Intel GPU can't keep up.
This however is not Intel's fault - it manages to do a good job in IE and used to be able to hardware accelerate 4K HTML5 videos in FF (I tested it at someone's request about a year ago, on the same computer I can't play 720p @60fps now).

That's nothing new - Flash used to work much better in FF as well right until the moment Mozilla introduced plugincontainer. From then on CPU load went up.
Mozilla is considering dumping Gecko and basically starting over with a new browser - maybe it's time because this ship is leaking badly.
Thanks for tips guys. Over and out.

 

Oh ok ...like I said, I don't know "a lot" about computers. So you could say, I accidentally

I apologize for being such a noob, but is this the info you are asking to see?

 

about:config

webgl.disabled=true
webgl.force-enabled=false
webgl.disable-extensions=true
webgl.min_capability_mode=true


next step you go to
https://youtube.com/html5
and get a screenshot of it here

will show you some features, maybe @downloads will get back to us

 

@batsign My about:support graphics section looks exactly like InkDigger's except for a the fact that I don't have a secondary GPU, my driver is slightly more recent and that mine shows the dropping frames DXVA error I mentioned earlier.
Other than that it's the same, so hardware acceleration is enabled and all the things you pointed to with arrows in the screenshot are identical as well.

I checked WEBGL according to your post above but that made no change either way.

As for HTML5 checklist on YouTube, mine supports everything except WebM VP8 and MSE & WebM VP9 which is to be expected.
Everything else - HTMLvideoElement, MSE, H264, MSE & H264 is checked as supported.

This whole experiment caused by this thread made it work a lot better though - 1080p full screen videos work fine now even though I use the same version of GPU driver. Somewhere along the way I ended up with FF46 beta and since now videos work a lot better than in FF45.0.2 I'm not inclined to get back to stable release.

That said IE11 still manages half the load on GPU while hardware decoding the same exact youtube video in the same resolution.

@InkDigger You might want to test FF46 beta and see if it makes things any better.

 

@downloads, this should help, just direct paste from my config, sure you know where to put it to

// Unlocks WEBM VP9
// 4 + 6th blocks + high resolutions 1080p60 or 4k + preload
user_pref("media.mediasource.webm.enabled", true);
user_pref("media.mediasource.webm.audio.enabled", true);
user_pref("media.mediasource.enabled", true);
// 3 box - WebM VP8
user_pref("media.fragmented-mp4.enabled", true);
user_pref("media.webm.enabled", true);
user_pref("media.wmf.low-latency.enabled", true);
// Only with Skylake
// https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9#Hardware_Encoding.2FDecoding_Support
user_pref("media.webm.intel_decoder.enabled", true);

 

I have also gmp & gstreamer disabled, everything works out of the box, no need for additional plugins

user_pref("media.gmp.decoder.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.gmp-provider.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.gmp-manager.url", "");
user_pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.autoupdate", false);
user_pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.provider.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.gstreamer.enabled", false);

 

@downloads , are you having any success?

I shipped my computer back to dell. The display was defective, and I don't want a computer that needs warranty service right out of the box. So, it will be a couple weeks, I assume, until I am able to re-address this issue.

 

@batsign Thanks but that did not help - neither VP8 or 9 are supported after those values were added or changed.
The reason is most likely Intel GPU as the same values are perfectly fine and everything is supported on a different notebook with AMD graphics.
These might have worked for other Intel cores but not mine - in the same way that HVEC hardware acceleration or VP9 hardware acceleration were added in new drivers but not for all IGPs - mine wasn't included.

@InkDigger FF46 made it a lot better - everything works fine up until the moment you get to 6o fps videos which overload the IGP and stuttering returns.

So the problem is sort of resolved although FF still uses far more GPU power to hardware accelerate video compared to IE11 which will be visible in battery life. But still since FHD full-screen videos now work without stuttering I consider it a problem solved (that is untill next FF update breaks it)

 

just out of curiousity, can you try disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox then restart it and see if the stuttering goes away?

 

@Phoenix This stuttering caused by dropped frames does go away. But instead high CPU load comes in...

 

can you tell me your driver version please and if you have tried an older more trusty driver? That may be related to the issue.

Please tell me your GPU model and driver version

 

@Phoenix Driver version is 10.18.10.4358 (for Win 8.1). It used to work fine with this version until FF update and it does work fine-ish now after another update, so I wouldn't blame the driver.
It's more confusing with the GPU model - it's obliviously called Intel HD graphics because Intel can't fathom that naming those differently could be helpful.
HWInfo32 says it's Intel HD Graphics Gen7 4EU aka Valleyview. Whatever that means.

EDIT: @batsign and @Phoenix - your help and time spent on this matter are much appreciated. Thanks guys.

 

sorry I may have not have read every post of this thread but if your system has Optimus, then why not set Firefox to use the GeForce Graphics Card always in the global settings?

 

@Phoenix No, mine does not - the OP's do, but that is not really a solution. Intel's card is easily powerful enough to support hardware accelerated video decoding in every player and every browser except for FF. (That is not exactly true because it does OK in FF46 but still at higher GPU load compared to other browsers).
My system is integrated only, so I can't just push it onto nVidia card and pretend it's fine. It's Intel or nothing for me but as I said, as of now 1080p full screen @30fps works fine, so it's not a big deal. When this thread started both me and OP were not capable of playing 720p @30fps full-screen...

 

I can attest to this happening on every single machine listed on my sig.

Chrome plays the same youtube video so smoothly now :|

 

Did you try this latest driver BTW:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/latest-intel-drivers.782418/page-3#post-10248405

 

@Phoenix Sadly, these are not for my chip.

 

Whats funny is, the old HP 2000 I am on right now plays full screen YouTube videos in FF perfectly fine.

 

Actually I'm having tearing issues in FF. Horizontal lines on top of screen and bottom, very annoying to look at.

Gaming and movie (using mpc hc) works fine.