YouTube full screen slow, but only if ACTIVE window

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Firefox
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Selbi
Posts: 7
Joined: September 24th, 2010, 9:48 am

YouTube full screen slow, but only if ACTIVE window

Post by Selbi »

My RX 580 arrived yesterday and replaced my old GTX 770. It does a fantastic job at gaming so far and overall I'm satisfied with it. My monitor is a 1440p@144Hz monitor that supports FreeSync, which is the primary reason why I upgraded to an AMD card instead of a new nVidia one.

But there's one huge issue that doesn't make any dang sense to me:

Watching YouTube videos at 720p or above in full screen puts severe stutter to them. But that's not the main head scratcher: it only happens when Firefox is the active window! So when I turn on full screen and then click on a blank space on my secondary monitor, the video playbacks completely fine. When I click back into the video the stuttering kicks in again.

It's not like the card isn't capable of rendering the videos fast enough. Heck, it does 4K@60FPS just fine when I click away from video. It's only when I set focus to Firefox that it does this obnoxious stuff.

The problem definitely lies within Hardware Acceleration (not a real surprise, really). It does not happen in Safe Mode, but manually disabling all add-ons and themes changes nothing. Disabling HA fixes the issue somewhat, but it introduces consistent sluggishness to Firefox as a whole, so not a suitable workaround.

It also doesn't happen in Chrome or even Edge. I've already updated my drivers to the latest version and also played around with FreeSync, GPU scaling, and whatnot. All to no effects.

Any ideas?

DxDiag file: https://pastebin.com/FyeuZaWn
CPP_Meister
Posts: 2
Joined: May 23rd, 2017, 12:54 pm

Re: YouTube full screen slow, but only if ACTIVE window

Post by CPP_Meister »

Hi Selbi,

I've got the exact same issue: GPU AMD R9 290, two monitors, one is freesync capable (120hz over displayport, 1080p though), youtube in fullscreen mode stutter like crazy after ~3 seconds of watching.
Just updated all my drivers, it didn't resolve a thing. As you said, by loosing the focus of the fullscreened window it goes back to normal. Also no issue on other browsers.

Interesting facts:
- For me it works great when I deactivate freesync on my screen.
- For now, I've only got this issue on Youtube, not on Dailymotion for example.

Waiting for someone that could explain this, I have no clue.

DxDiag: https://pastebin.com/HP8xx6Lg
Rayonant
Posts: 1
Joined: May 5th, 2017, 6:35 pm

Re: YouTube full screen slow, but only if ACTIVE window

Post by Rayonant »

Just so that others are aware, I also used to have this issue, as CPP_Meister pointed out with Freesync disabled the problem was gone. On the drivers 17.4.1 and before the issue was not present, however the new version 17.7.2 has this noted on the "Fixed issues" section:
Some video playback applications may experience stutter in fullscreen with AMD FreeSync™ technology enabled.


And I have confirmed that it does fixes the problematic behaviour for me on Firefox, I have an R9 380, hopefully this will aslo be noted by others.
Last edited by Rayonant on July 27th, 2017, 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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JayhawksRock
Posts: 10433
Joined: October 24th, 2010, 8:51 am

Re: YouTube full screen slow, but only if ACTIVE window

Post by JayhawksRock »

So, you are saying that users who have not polluted their Mozilla Firefox setup with a system installed app (AMD FreeSync) have no worries.... Correct?
"The trouble with quotes on the internet is you never know if they are genuine" ...Abraham Lincoln
CPP_Meister
Posts: 2
Joined: May 23rd, 2017, 12:54 pm

Re: YouTube full screen slow, but only if ACTIVE window

Post by CPP_Meister »

Thank you Rayonant for pointing that out.

Also, the newly available driver from AMD fix other issues about Freesync and fullscreen video playback.
Fixed issues:
- With Enhanced Sync enabled Video playback on desktop or YouTube playback in Google Chrome may cause tearing choppy playback.
- FreeSync displays may experience stuttering when watching fullscreen video content.
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... Notes.aspx

So I'll recommend anyone having Freesync enabled to go straight to the driver 17.8.1
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