Flash Player streaming video keeps freezing while audio continues

[ChrisP500]

Hi,

I have been having a problem with flash player for a couple of months now. When watching streaming video's the video will freeze for a second every 5-10 seconds constantly, but the audio continues uninterrupted. I have tried everything, enabling/disabling hardware acceleration; reinstalling flash player 11; trying flash player 10; updating the graphics drivers. I have also tried it on 5 different browsers: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Seamonkey (mozilla browser), and Opera. The same problem occurs on all of them. Yesterday I thought I had cracked it when I realised I had several versions of java installed and once I deleted all the old versions flash player worked fine. However, today the problem has started all over again, and for some reason flash player had deleted itself when I turned the computer on this evening.

I have checked my internet connection speed online and am running an average speed of 5Mbps. I have 2.5 GB's of RAM, and a 2.2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor. I am using Windows XP. I have never had any problems with flash player on this pc (which I've had for 6 years), and as far as I can tell this problem started occurring a couple of weeks before flash player 11 was released.

I'd be very grateful for any help anyone can give resolving this problem.

Regards,

Chris Perkins

[Guest]

Can you post a couple of links where this problem occurs?

[ChrisP500]

Hi Xircal,

Not sure what you mean, this problem occurs with all streaming video I try and watch in fullscreen (and sometimes in small screen) regardless of the site.

[Guest]

ChrisP500 wrote:

Hi Xircal,

Not sure what you mean, this problem occurs with all streaming video I try and watch in fullscreen (and sometimes in small screen) regardless of the site.

So if you try to view this video, you get the problem? http://youtu.be/LMhBuSBemRk

[ChrisP500]

Yep, every couple of seconds the picture freezes, but the sound carries on ok.

[Guest]

Try running Firefox in Safe Mode. That disables all your add-ons which are located in the Extensions menu (press CTRL+SHIFT+A to access), but leaves your plugins running.

To restart Firefox in Safe Mode, press the ALT key to get the text links (only necessary if you're using the interface with the oblong orange Firefox button top left) and then click "Help" | "Restart with add-ons disabled" When you see the menu, click the button called "Continue in Safe Mode" without checkmarking any of the boxes.

If it runs properly in that configuration, then one or more of your add-ons is the culprit.

[ChrisP500]

Unfortunately this only made it worse. I still think something must have updated/downloaded on my pc at the end of September (when the problem first started) which is conflicting with flash player, but I can't think what?

[Guest]

Try running the videos in HTML5 instead of using the Flash player. To do that on Youtube, go to http://www.youtube.com/html5 and click the link at the bottom called "Join the HTML5 trial". Then try viewing a few again.

[Guest]

Hi guys

i have posted the same question without seeing yours Chris. the perfect match is the period when it occured and the flash player behaviour. i have tried a lot of solutions ( if you want to check it, please read my post, maybe something will work for you). thanks for your solutions Xircal, unfortunately they didn't worked, none of them.

[Guest]

Mozillazine has a good troubleshooting page to address Flash issues. Can you both have a look at that? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Flash#Flash_player_not_working_on_certain_websites

[ChrisP500]

Unfortunately none of the entries I can see relate to the problem. Anyway, as I am having this problem across all browsers (as giuliano is) I don't think the issue is with Firefox. I think the issue may be related to Silverlight which I think was released in September when we both started getting this problem. DIsabling it does not work, so I'm still not sure how or if it really is causing this problem.

[Guest]

ChrisP500 wrote:

I think the issue may be related to Silverlight which I think was released in September when we both started getting this problem. DIsabling it does not work, so I'm still not sure how or if it really is causing this problem.

If the player is Silverlight, you'd be able to see that by right clicking the video.

Can you go to Youtube, play any video and then right click it and choose "Take Speed Test". That will take you to a graph where you can see what your download speed is in relation to your ISP, your location and other data. If the black bar is way down compared with others, then I would suspect that something, or somebody else is using your bandwidth. Do you have wireless? If so, change the security code. It may be being used as a wireless hotspot by your neighbours.

You can also play the test video which will show data usage in real time.

[Guest]

Thanks for your answers. Yes indeed i suspected myself of silverlight wich i disabled and uninstall a month ago. But nope. Nothing happend. About the network connection.......this is very interesting because now i live in a block (the problem started when we moved, so,  i don't know if this is a coincidence or.....) and all the neighbours have the same antena, so we have a public network connection. If this is the cause, well,...... this beats me off, because i don't think i can do to much about it. What do you think? Can this be actually the real problem?

[Guest]

giuliano.m wrote:

Thanks for your answers. Yes indeed i suspected myself of silverlight wich i disabled and uninstall a month ago. But nope. Nothing happend. About the network connection.......this is very interesting because now i live in a block (the problem started when we moved, so,  i don't know if this is a coincidence or.....) and all the neighbours have the same antena, so we have a public network connection. If this is the cause, well,...... this beats me off, because i don't think i can do to much about it. What do you think? Can this be actually the real problem?

Very difficult to say. I would think your first port of call should be to your ISP's helpdesk. They have the tools to check your connection and determine if there are any problems with it.

Do your neighbours experience the same kind of problems as you?

[ChrisP500]

The HTML5 trial works fine, thanks Xircal. I also seem to have accidentally fixed this error in relation to Lovefilm (which is what I use flash for most). I went into the Silverlight application and looked at the various tabs then exited. When I next went into Lovefilm (a few minutes later) the problem was gone and the font size and style of the player had changed slightly. Still not sure what has caused this problem or how I actually fixed it for Lovefilm as that didn't fix Youtube till I tried the HTML5 trial. Thanks again for all your help.

[Guest]

You're welcome.

[francis_w_]

I am having this similar problem, but I also discovered I also see the effects when I'm typing. Even though all the keys that I typed are accounted for, it freezes for a moment and catches up to where I was.

The pauses were in sync with the video streaming pauses. I tested and confirmed it by watching stream video on one window and typing this message in the forum in the other.

However, it seems to be only effected in Firefox browser, not in Google Chrome. (I haven't check Ethernet) - So it may be a browser issue.