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I've had a developing issue recently with my ability to watch depraved porn Youtube videos and other streaming videos.

HP Pavilion laptop, Windows Vista 32-bit
Running Mozilla Firefox, latest version, and tested on IE with no better results.

This video is a great example (also a really cool video, watch it!)

It runs relatively choppy even in standard, but if I try and put it on 720P HD it's rendered unwatchable because I just get a frame every second or two. Same goes for any GameSpot videos or other streaming videos.

I updated my Firefox and Adobe Flash to the latest version, cleared my cache/temporary internet files, defragg'd, performed a disc cleanup, used HijackThis to verify a clean bill of health, no such luck in improving anything.

I am fairly savvy with using computers and fixing issues, but this one has me stumped. Anyone have any ideas of where to go next?

Sounds like a hardware issue.. Can you play video that's on your harddrive? Try doing that and see if it produce the choppy results. If it does, then I highly suspect it's your graphic card giving up on you. Go to the graphic card's vendor website and try to find the latest update for the driver.

Oh, forgot to mention that. Videos play just fine when they are being played off my hard drive, the only issue I seem to be having is when trying to watch streaming videos online, especially anything HD on Youtube, and virtually anything on Vimeo.

Watch a youtube video and then right click on the video and select Show video info. Check to see if the video is being rendered and decoded by hardware or software. I suspect this might be a new youtube thing, but I am not sure.

Here's what I got:

A lot of dropped frames.. have you consider it might be your Internet connection?

Perhaps. I am running WiFi from an in-house router, although I do not have any other issues with my web connection - downloads and everything are faster than they ever were!

Here I am running HD at a whopping one frame per second with 2,182 dropped frames just 1:20 into the video.


This post has been edited by Bubs on Sep 4 2011, 11:47 AM

So this is EVERY streaming video site? Perhaps your ISP is attempting to throttle streaming media. Do you have netflix? If not, try Hulu (it's free). See if those sites do any better.

Is flash up to date? I've had weird issues in the past with older flash versions.

WiFi? I suggest you check if there isn't any interference. Hell, try while being wired to your router and try again.

I don't think interference is the cause, because he said his regular download speeds are optimal. For some reason, it's just streaming media that's dropping fps.

You know what Bubs, Tessou just reminded me something. When I am at work, I can't watch Youtube because for some reasons, it load extremely slow and it just keep buffering. Other websites work just fine. I suspect this might be a bandwidth throttling problem. Phone your ISP and inquire them about this.

As far as I'm aware, it's the latest version. 10.6.something.

I'm not too sure because it loads up just fine, it can be loaded completely but the playback is choppy. Between that and my download / regular browsing speed being fine, I'm thinking it's more of a computer problem than an internet one. I thought I had too many programs running, but at this time I just have this browser open. Perhaps it's stuff running in the background? I just removed some piece-of-crap antivirus program that came installed with the computer that was slowing everything down.

Bubs, try this. Reboot the system and upon POST hit the F8 key several times until you are presented with a list of Safe Mode option. Select the Safe Mode with network option and see if the problem persists in Safe Mode.

@ Perry - not sure how his video will look in Safe Mode With Networking since the video drivers won't be loaded.

There's a TCP optimization tool available. Could try it and see if it helps.

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

You could also do a ping/tracert and check to see if you're having latency issues or dropped packets.

The fact that everything else runs fine does suggest ISP throttling though.

Use a grabber and get the video from the website and try playback from your PC - which I'm guessing you already did and it played fine - but that as well would suggest throttling.

Since you're using a router - try connecting directly to the modem or on a LAN port of the router (sound like an ISP CSR with that.........) and see if the problem still exists.

Waiting on your results.

This could also be the problem:


I noticed my CPU usage is very high even when I only have Firefox open. Does this look out of the ordinary? Seems weird that the Firefox "Plugin Container" would be using that much.

I have the latest Flash, and I also noticed that even something as simple as Facebook App does not run smoothly at all.

This post has been edited by Bubs on Sep 24 2011, 01:36 PM

Make sure you always use the "Show processes from all users" version of the Task Manager as without a full list of processes you don't actually know what's taking the RAM and CPU up.

Is your DirectX fully updated? Please keep in mind that DirectX is not updated through Windows Update. It can only be updated manually, and it the most common cause of video failure in machines that otherwise should be able to smoothly play back anything (SEE: any computer you buy in a retail store). Seriously, I've run the DirectX Web Update application on brand-new display computers at work only to have it report back that it needed to download 150MB (roughly 5 years' worth) of updates. Here's the link to the update application, which automatically scans for required updates:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35

Is your graphics card driver fully up-to-date using drivers from the graphics card manufacturer's website? Keep in mind that the drivers supplied by OEMs (HP, Dell, Gateway, etc.) are almost always well out-of-date compared to drivers from the companies that make the individual components. It's always best to get updates straight from AMD, Intel or nVidia.

Are you running the latest version of your browser?

Those are the problems that come to mind immediately. Good luck.

check the power options on your laptop, it sounds like you have it in power save mode which is downclocking the cpu which would cause the issues you are describing.

I performed that DirectX update as suggested, but it did not seem to make an improvement. I identified my Graphics Card Driver:
nVidia Geforce Go 6150
Went onto their site but could find updates for every other driver they seem to have except the Go 6150 (they have normal 6150 but it does not work), so I may need help trying to find an update if there is one available.

For additional info, I am indeed running the latest Firefox. The problem does not seem to change with IE, so I am leaning toward a graphics card issue.

Wow, you know what, I think that was actually the problem. I don't know why I never thought to check that myself. I guess I am too used to desktop computers. The battery life on this thing is s**t so I essentially use it as a desktop anyway, but never once thought that battery settings would affect performance that drastically. It was on "power saver".

Let's go back to my old friend, Jeb Corliss "Grinding The Crack" in 720P HD.

Before:


After:


Still some dropped frames here and there, but nothing really noticeable, especially in comparison with the previous performance. I'm going to say that solved the problem! Even full screen HD runs just fine, and the computer in general seems to be running much faster.

Thanks very much to everyone for their input. This just goes to show, just like in the world of automotive, it always pays off to start with the simplest potential causes first.

Nice. Will remember that one for future reference. Glad U got it sorted out!

There's a reason I get paid the small bucks to do this for a living

Unfortunately I don't think nVidia supports that with their universal drivers, meaning you either have to rely on the laptop manufacturer for drivers or hack your own. Also, if I'm recalling my chipsets correctly, the Go 6150 doesn't support GPU processing for videos anyway, so running the latest drivers or DirectX or Flash wouldn't help much. If it were a newer graphics chip, one that supported offloading video to the graphics chip, then yeah...

With the GPU out of the question, all that's left is the CPU, which Starion nailed with his power suggestion. Man, stupid power settings. I always overlook those.