MacBook Pro video playback questions

Matthew

Matthew

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Display name:
Matthew
Something I've noticed:

MacBook Pro - most current version of Mac OS:

Embedded videos or even the full YouTube versions seem to have the same behavior: Video/audio starts up properly, the progress bar is displayed across the bottom and the mouse cursor is visible. After a few seconds, the playback/progress bar and mouse cursor disappear as expected to give an unobstructed video area. When that happens, video playback starts getting very choppy, almost like it's buffering, but the audio continues uninterrupted.

If I bump the mouse, the cursor and playback bar reappear and the video is resynced.

So, the only way to get it working properly is to continually slide the mouse around while viewing a video.

I was going to post this late last night and I wanted to double-check the behavior befoe I did, but it seemed to have "fixed" itself at least for the time being.

Any ideas on what causes this? (Note: I'm away from that Mac for most of the day, so I'll get back to it either late tonight or sometime tomorrow.)
 
Safari.

I'm now sure about anything Flash related. I'll have to check to see what's loaded and if there are any settings.

On my Windows PC I've seen all kinds of different behaviors when changing hardware acceleration levels on the video/graphics settings. I don't know if the Mac has anything similar.
 
Matthew said:
Safari.
Click to expand...

Try Chrome. Not that you want to switch, but if you see the same thing there then you know it isn't a browser issue.

FWIW: Chrome + latest OS does not have that behavior on my laptop. Neither does Safari.
 
I was about to suggest a chrome issue... I've been seeing this on my mac and linux systems lately and the only really common factor is the browser.
 
I might be able to get to this again sometime late tonight. If not, it's going to have to wait until tomorrow.

It's limited to the video only, not the audio. The audio track will be fine, but the video will play a frame or two and then pause for as many as 5-10 seconds before it plays another couple of frames. But if I bump the mouse to re-display the cursor and the progress bar, it's all good.

I thought I solved this problem once, several months ago, but I'm not sure what I did. I THINK I cleared YouTube cache and some other things. But I've also installed updates since then, and I noticed it again recently.

I haven't tested any DVD videos, just embedded and normal Youtubes (I think).
 
I also have Flash Player installed on that Mac. I think Pandora and one or two other streaming sites I use require it. I need to go into those settings and make sure there isn't something funny going on.
 
OK - I've been messing with it for about an hour. Trying different Safari settings, clearing cache, whatever. Nothing seems to work. Video playback, example in Facebook, gets choppy unless the mouse is being moved. I installed Firefox, and it works right.

I went back into Safari and now it's working fine. I DID go into Safari>Preferences>Advanced and check the box "Stop plug-ins to sve power". I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

Will have to see how long this lasts.
 
I think you solved your own problem. Safari doesn't want to use Adobe Flash (and it's extremely intrusive.) Safari wants to use HTML5. You can try to go to

Safari -> Preferences -> Security

Under Security, you can click "Plug In Settings" and turn off Adobe Flash.

Now close Safari, and re-open and navigate to YouTube. See if this solves the problem.

I also have Chrome installed on my Macbook. If a website won't load a video (e.g. a streaming web cam from L35 - Big Bear Airport) using Safari, I can usually open Chrome and see the video there.
 
Flash sucks. I don't have it installed on my Mini. For sites that absolutely insist on using it, I use Chrome for its built-in player.
 
rtk11 said:
I think you solved your own problem. Safari doesn't want to use Adobe Flash (and it's extremely intrusive.) Safari wants to use HTML5. You can try to go to

Safari -> Preferences -> Security

Under Security, you can click "Plug In Settings" and turn off Adobe Flash.

Now close Safari, and re-open and navigate to YouTube. See if this solves the problem.

I also have Chrome installed on my Macbook. If a website won't load a video (e.g. a streaming web cam from L35 - Big Bear Airport) using Safari, I can usually open Chrome and see the video there.
Click to expand...
I suspect that's the effect I ended up with. Pandora requires Flash, though. I have other devices I can use as work arounds for that, but I'd rather not. Sounds like I have some answers to my problem, though. Currently I do have Flash installed, I uninstalled and reinstalled last night. So far, so good. I noticed my previous install had both PPAPI and NPAPI installed, now I just have one. I think it's NPAPI, bit I'm away from that computer until late tonight.
 
It's back. Whatever it is, it seems Flash related.

Downloading Chrome right now.

rtk11 said:
I think you solved your own problem. Safari doesn't want to use Adobe Flash (and it's extremely intrusive.) Safari wants to use HTML5. You can try to go to

Safari -> Preferences -> Security

Under Security, you can click "Plug In Settings" and turn off Adobe Flash.

Now close Safari, and re-open and navigate to YouTube. See if this solves the problem.

I also have Chrome installed on my Macbook. If a website won't load a video (e.g. a streaming web cam from L35 - Big Bear Airport) using Safari, I can usually open Chrome and see the video there.
Click to expand...

I followed your steps and disabled Flash. Verified inside Safari that Pandora wouldn't work (requires Flash). Also, verified the video playbacks had gotten choppy again.

Installed Chrome, fired it up, re-entered passwords for Pandora, works great. Videos are nice and smooth. Pulled up Safari, verified that videos are working correctly now. Strange, maybe I didn't shut it down and re-start after I disabled Flash.

Here's one of my test videos:

 
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