[SOLVED] Choppy video when watching video in Firefox, VLC and Mplayer work fine

maples · 07-03-2014, 07:19 PM

Hi,
I have a Dell Inspiron 15R laptop. When I go to Youtube (or any online video) and try to watch a video, the playback is choppy. I've tried disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox, but that doesn't make a difference. I've noticed that I can watch 1 or 2 videos just fine, but anything after that is choppy. If I switch to a different deskop or minimize Firefox, the audio is still choppy, which makes me think that it is not a graphics driver issue. Restarting Firefox doesn't help. I have no idea what could be the culprit here. The only thing overly unusual is my audio setup...I had to set the default sound card to the speakers, not HDMI, then used dmixer to allow more than one application to use sound at the same time, as described on this thread. I never completely understood how that worked, only that it did (which makes me think that it could be the problem).

Code:

[anthony@newerLaptop ~]$ cat .asoundrc 
pcm.!default {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dsp0 {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dmixer {
  type dmix
  ipc_key 1024
  slave {
    pcm hw:1
  }
}

Code:

[anthony@newerLaptop ~]$ cat /etc/asound.conf 
pcm.!default {
	type hw
	card 1
}

ctl.!default {
	type hw
	card 1
}

Thanks!

ondoho · 07-03-2014, 11:24 PM

saying it works with mplayer and vlc but not in firefox, that's most probably a flash issue and has very little to do with your hardware.
since the adobe flashplugin is closed source, there's just no way of telling what's going on, but it's known to be a resource hog.

that said, you can watch e.g. youtube videos without the browser and thus without flash. plain old mplayer will do nicely, but there's also gui apps specially for that.

maples · 07-04-2014, 08:17 PM

Thanks for the reply!

Do you think it would be worth trying Chrome, since it has flash player built in? Since it's built into Chrome, it might yeild different results.

You mentioned that I could use Mplayer instead of flash in Firefox. Do you mean just download the video and watch it that way, or is there another way?

Thanks!

jefro · 07-04-2014, 09:01 PM

I'd suspect flash but top command may help. Chrome is not reported to be fantastically faster, just slightly more up-to-date.

I'd determine what the content of the media is first.

ondoho · 07-05-2014, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maples

Do you think it would be worth trying Chrome, since it has flash player built in?

just try?

Quote:

You mentioned that I could use Mplayer instead of flash in Firefox. Do you mean just download the video and watch it that way, or is there another way?

not in firefox!
many media players have the option to stream media directly from URL. some even support youtube playback. try smplayer.

maples · 07-05-2014, 01:08 PM

I just downloaded and installed Chrome, and so far it's working! Thanks for all the help!

273 · 07-05-2014, 01:12 PM

It's worth ensuring you have the mosy up to date Flash for Firefox also if you plan to use it at all. If you just installed the wrapper from the repositories chances are you"ll need to run the update.

maples · 07-05-2014, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273

It's worth ensuring you have the mosy up to date Flash for Firefox also if you plan to use it at all. If you just installed the wrapper from the repositories chances are you"ll need to run the update.

I will take that into consideration. Thanks for the idea!

ondoho · 07-06-2014, 02:07 AM

have a look here as well!

maples · 07-06-2014, 06:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho

have a look here as well!

Thanks! That looks like a great option!