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embedded video tearing

  • 6 replies
  • 17 have this problem
  • 23 views
  • Last reply by Vivek

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I've been having trouble viewing embedded videos on websites recently. The videos all load, and display ok, but the video itself tears (meaning I'll get 1-2 seconds of clear crisp video, than it will freeze on a frame for half a second, than catch back up, repeating until I get frustrated and stop watching).

This isn't a hardware issue, as this does not seem to be occuring in Internet explorer, or Google Chrome, both of which run video quite well. Audio is also not a problem, as the embedded audio plays without skipping.

I've tried disabling all addons and clearing out cache's of both firefox and any local storage used by things like flash-player to no avail. I'm sort of at my wit's end on this one.

Furthermore it seems to happen with every conceivable type of embedded video file, streaming or otherwise, from every website I've tried.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I've been having trouble viewing embedded videos on websites recently. The videos all load, and display ok, but the video itself tears (meaning I'll get 1-2 seconds of clear crisp video, than it will freeze on a frame for half a second, than catch back up, repeating until I get frustrated and stop watching). This isn't a hardware issue, as this does not seem to be occuring in Internet explorer, or Google Chrome, both of which run video quite well. Audio is also not a problem, as the embedded audio plays without skipping. I've tried disabling all addons and clearing out cache's of both firefox and any local storage used by things like flash-player to no avail. I'm sort of at my wit's end on this one. Furthermore it seems to happen with every conceivable type of embedded video file, streaming or otherwise, from every website I've tried. Thanks in advance for any help.

Chosen solution

Ok, oddly enough it appears that Adblock Plus (the extension) may have been causing the problem. Before I got cor-el's solution I was tooling around with the extensions and trying to figure out if disabling was not enough. I completely uninstalled all the extensions and plugins I had (but doing it one at a time). Nothing seemed to work until I removed adblock plus. All of a sudden videos were displaying their non-rage invoking stutter-y forms. I've since reinstalled the addons I'd removed, and things are still running correctly. Is it possible it's a slow cache buildup within the addon that was just eating memory?

Anyway thanks for all your help in this endeavor, now on to watch cat videos and TED talks uninterrupted.

- Grant

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Hi,

You can also try to deselect Enable hardware acceleration for Flash by right-clicking on a video > Settings. You can also try to Disable all the Plugins except the relevant one for the website. Does this also happen on replay, after the video is fully buffered??

Troubleshooting Plugins

Testing Plugins

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Thank you for your reply.

Firstly, fully loading the video does not effect the problem positively or negatively. Enabling or disabling hardware acceleration is similarly ineffective in addressing the issue.

I've previously enabled and disabled plugins and haven't seen a change but I will try again when I return home this evening and report my results here.

Again thank you for your help.

- Grant

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Ok, I disabled all the plugins and tried to view a video in youtube (all websites have the same problem). When just running the java video it still skipped (all plugins disabled, but Java 6 runs as an addon). After disabling java addon and getting "can't display video" I enabled Only the flash plugin, and again video skipped.

Wash, rinse, and repeat, no matter which plugin is used, with all the others disabled I still get the tearing. So I'm starting to think it's not a plugin problem. Actually I'm beginning to wonder if it's a Firefox screen refresh issue, as even watching myself type in this reply window, I'm seeing a periodic delay in how quickly the words I'm typing appear. Thoughts?

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Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the extensions or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes).


Also make sure that you allow the plugin-container process in the firewall.

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Chosen Solution

Ok, oddly enough it appears that Adblock Plus (the extension) may have been causing the problem. Before I got cor-el's solution I was tooling around with the extensions and trying to figure out if disabling was not enough. I completely uninstalled all the extensions and plugins I had (but doing it one at a time). Nothing seemed to work until I removed adblock plus. All of a sudden videos were displaying their non-rage invoking stutter-y forms. I've since reinstalled the addons I'd removed, and things are still running correctly. Is it possible it's a slow cache buildup within the addon that was just eating memory?

Anyway thanks for all your help in this endeavor, now on to watch cat videos and TED talks uninterrupted.

- Grant

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Thank you for the helpful feedback.