Some YouTube videos glitching for no reason.

[BrianHG]

Has anyone else experienced this.
I'm using FireFox and Win7 pro.

Youtube videos playback seems to pause and hitch, especially in 480p playing at 2x speed.

I usually need to try playing the video in 'Private browser mode', or if the bug happens in the private browser mode, then I have to play it normally logged into my google account.

During a freeze, I found the best way to unfreeze it would be to toggle the new 'stable volume' feature.

Also, if the playback stays frozen, my laptop fan will begin to go super high speed.

[Andy Chee]

In my recent experience, I had problems when I updated Firefox.  Several days later another Firefox update was released, and all was back to normal.

My current Firefox version is 130.0 (macOS Catalina 10.15.7)

One of the telltales for youtube problems was excessive memory usage, which you can examine by typing "about:processes" in the address bar.

[BrianHG]

I'm stuck on version 115.12.0esr (64-bit) as no newer version supports Windows 7.

[edpalmer42]

I've been seeing stutters, stalls, and sometimes the playback aborts completely.  I'm on Firefox 102 just because I haven't bothered to upgrade.  I use uBlock Origin and NoScript to keep the crap down to a tolerable level.  I assumed that the glitches were Youtube's latest attack on adblockers.

[Andy Chee]

I'm stuck on version 115.12.0esr (64-bit) as no newer version supports Windows 7.

That seems odd you can't upgrade Firefox any further.  My macOS Catalina isn't 'that' much newer than Windows 7, both OS are end of life.

[Gyro]

Maybe time to check out PaleMoon? That's a lightweight maintained Firefox fork. I was going to suggest LibreWolf, which is very 'Youtube tolerant' but sadly they no longer support W7.

[deadlylover]

Is this an older PC? Check what codec those videos are using (right click, stats for nerds), if it's not h264 and instead using vp9 or av1 then you won't have hardware acceleration and it'll use quite a lot of CPU usage.

Use the plugin 'h264ify' to force videos to use the older codec, this should help a lot.

[BrianHG]

Is this an older PC? Check what codec those videos are using (right click, stats for nerds), if it's not h264 and instead using vp9 or av1 then you won't have hardware acceleration and it'll use quite a lot of CPU usage.

Use the plugin 'h264ify' to force videos to use the older codec, this should help a lot.

Come on, 480p?
Even 144p?
In the exact same spots in the video, a dead halt?
Playing the same video again a day later is fine?
The stupid video buffer cache bar on the seek bar keeps on shrinking and expanding?
And CPU usage is usually around 5-10% ?

[Alex Eisenhut]

I see the same type of issues on Win 11 FWIW.

[BrianHG]

Is this an older PC? Check what codec those videos are using (right click, stats for nerds), if it's not h264 and instead using vp9 or av1 then you won't have hardware acceleration and it'll use quite a lot of CPU usage.

Use the plugin 'h264ify' to force videos to use the older codec, this should help a lot.

I'm going to test this.  Something is fishy with the online packets coming in.  Maybe forcing h264 might use older stream or alternate stream sources bypassing the problem.

[BrianHG]

Is this an older PC? Check what codec those videos are using (right click, stats for nerds), if it's not h264 and instead using vp9 or av1 then you won't have hardware acceleration and it'll use quite a lot of CPU usage.

Use the plugin 'h264ify' to force videos to use the older codec, this should help a lot.

Note that h264ify forces Youtube into the .vc1 format.
It seems to bypass the problem.

However, there is no reason why some days the new vp9 works fine, then other days, youtube's network streaming buffer begins to hop back and forth until it pauses and runs out as the picture skips, or the audio skips.

Just happened again in vc1 mode, however, its not happening once every 10 seconds, its happening maybe once per entire 45minute video.

[Andy Chee]

Did you check your resource usage?

type "about:processes" in the Firefox address bar

normal youtube memory usage should be less than 500MB, but faulty youtube easily eats up 2GB (and begins eating into your swap file)

[BrianHG]

Did you check your resource usage?

type "about:processes" in the Firefox address bar

normal youtube memory usage should be less than 500MB, but faulty youtube easily eats up 2GB (and begins eating into your swap file)

CPU usage went from 25% down to 20%.
Im still using only 480p
And I usually can playback AV1 at 1080p fine.

[Postal2]

... Youtube videos playback seems to pause and hitch, especially in 480p playing at 2x speed. ...

Try Windows XP:

[BrianHG]

Did you check your resource usage?

type "about:processes" in the Firefox address bar

normal youtube memory usage should be less than 500MB, but faulty youtube easily eats up 2GB (and begins eating into your swap file)

My swapfile is disabled.
I have 32gb system ram.

Come on already, this has only begun to happen around 10 days ago...
Something else is going on as I have had no problems with BOTH of my PCs, laptop and desktop, for 7 years now.  Now, both of them glitch.

The network buffer is hip-hopping back and forth.

h264ify seems to have stabilized the network buffer problem for the most part.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Did you check your resource usage?

type "about:processes" in the Firefox address bar

normal youtube memory usage should be less than 500MB, but faulty youtube easily eats up 2GB (and begins eating into your swap file)

just press shift-esc to get that in Firefox
ctrl-shift-esc for task man in windows

[deadlylover]

Have you tested with a VPN to rule out crappy routing from a CDN? (Or tether with phone for a quick test) It could have just been a network change.

Edit: it can also be a stutter due to Adblock (stutters when an ad should be served), they’ve been clamping down on that a bit.

[Alex Eisenhut]

I'm stuck on version 115.12.0esr (64-bit) as no newer version supports Windows 7.

I have "115.15.0esr" on Win 7. Check that there isn't a "click to restart" or whatever in your Firefox About, it's waiting to install updates.

[BrianHG]

I'm stuck on version 115.12.0esr (64-bit) as no newer version supports Windows 7.

I have "115.15.0esr" on Win 7. Check that there isn't a "click to restart" or whatever in your Firefox About, it's waiting to install updates.

Nope, check my thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/how-to-permanently-disable-firefox-updating/

[BrianHG]

If I had to describe the problem based on observations and my background in studio/broadcast video equipment, I would have to conclude that I am receiving corrupted packets which my software based YT player cannot cope with.

[thm_w]

Youtube is constantly testing out new adblocking features. I did sometimes used to get pauses, then change the resolution and it would resume the video. I would guess ublock fixed it as that hasn't happened for a while.

You can always try freetube as well: https://freetubeapp.io/

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/20586
https://www.reddit.com/r/Adblock/comments/1c7kpw9/issues_with_youtube_pausing_randomly/

My swapfile is disabled.
I have 32gb system ram.

I would just set it to 1-2GB, disable is not going to help anything.
https://superuser.com/questions/810170/should-i-disable-swap-file-if-i-have-lots-of-ram-or-should-i-move-it-to-a-virtua

[SiliconWizard]

Do you use some adblocker?

YT constantly changes the way they stream their videos in order to fight adblockers. I've noticed recent changes which make ads play a bit longer than before (initially, adblockers blocked them altogether and you never saw ads nor had any slowdown, then they changed things so that ads would briefly flash, and recently more changes have made ads now often play 1-2s, so that even if adblockers still technically block them, you now see the beginning of most ads. In some cases, when an ad plays, instead of showing just 1-2s, it just hangs the player and you have to reload the page. So maybe that's just your problem here, unless you don't use adblockers.

[BrianHG]

Do you use some adblocker?

YT constantly changes the way they stream their videos in order to fight adblockers. I've noticed recent changes which make ads play a bit longer than before (initially, adblockers blocked them altogether and you never saw ads nor had any slowdown, then they changed things so that ads would briefly flash, and recently more changes have made ads now often play 1-2s, so that even if adblockers still technically block them, you now see the beginning of most ads. In some cases, when an ad plays, instead of showing just 1-2s, it just hangs the player and you have to reload the page. So maybe that's just your problem here, unless you don't use adblockers.

Then using this plugin should have no effect:

Is this an older PC? Check what codec those videos are using (right click, stats for nerds), if it's not h264 and instead using vp9 or av1 then you won't have hardware acceleration and it'll use quite a lot of CPU usage.

Use the plugin 'h264ify' to force videos to use the older codec, this should help a lot.

On the other hand, maybe the .avc1 codec doesn't support swap-able stream injection....
Live with .avc1's slightly larger file sizes and clean playback.

[SiliconWizard]

You can try using VLC to play YT videos. Although for me, VLC hasn't been able to play YT videos for a while - but apparently, it works for some others.

I otherwise now use mpv when I don't want to use the browser player. I mostly use Linux these days, but there are binaries for Windows and this project does add a Windows GUI to it: https://github.com/mpvnet-player/mpv.net

mpv allows playing YT videos without (with rare exceptions) any trouble or interruptions. So far. I don't know for how long though.

[Bryn]

Although I don't bother with YouTube, I've not seen any glitches when watching a video there. Then again, I too am a Windows 7 user but use Firefox 78 ESR (and I'm stuck at that for the reason that Proton doesn't please me, especially as someone who doesn't use Aero).

Furthermore, I too have an adblocker like virtually everyone else (uBlock Origin) so if YouTube was to ever stop me using it just so that Google gets more money in its pocket, so be it.