Flash player stutters for 1 second then continues normally

[marbik]

Hi all,

Problem is very weird. I have Mozilla Firefox, IE, latest flash (11.9), Win 8.1 All latest updates. Online video playback with flash player stutters in a very weird way - even if video is fully downloaded it stutters for a second irregulary and then continues normally as if nothing happen. This stutter is similar like someone just opened something on a slow hdd and thus makes the flash playback stutter for just a second (even though i have an ssd that is very fast; rest of computers is i7, r9 280x, so a fast and modern computer). This happens in irregular intervals on both browsers. Video is watchable but this is very annoying. I tried reinstalling just about everything except the OS itself. I disabled hardware acceleration and set cash to unlimited in flash settings, still nothing. This happens with youtube as well as all other flash video in both browsers. Ofcourse other video playback is fine (.avi, .mp4 etc). It can happen 5 times in 5 minutes, and than nothing for half an hour and then starts again.

Anyone else had a similar problem?

[turreublog]

New Flash 16 didn't fix the problem

[paaoradouglas38]

Great news, after patching this out for a few months the problem has returned with the latest flash updates. Top notch stuff I tell you.

If Adobe comes around to an actual fix for this issue might they consider
A. Having a separate build for 8.1
B. Having an easily downloadable hotfix that can be applied to each new rebuild of Flash player.

[johnw33800223]

This is happening on Chrome as well.

[Guest]

I am having the same issue with Windows 8.1 Pro x64. This is a major issue for me as I use my PC a lot for BBC iPlayer and Plex Web Player which both use Flash.

It is an odd stutter in that it doesn't just stop and restart. It is more of a extreme slowdown for a second before then going into "fast forward" for a second to catch up. This happens randomly about every minute. It isn't my internet connection as my laptop can play the same stream perfectly fine. Even, as part of a test, at the same time.

The PC in question is an i5 4690K (not overclocked) with 8GB DDR3 1600 memory and a nVidia GTX 760 2Gb video card.

Could someone please confirm that this is only a Windows 8 issue. I am considering downgrading to Windows 7 as this is a major issue for me.

[paaoradouglas38]

switch the core affinity to a single thread in the meantime and wait it out, win 10 isn't far off (it's free too)

[Guest]

As far as I know, you would have to do that every time you run the Flash player. That is not an acceptable solution for me. I would rather downgrade to Windows 7.

So my question still stands - is this a Windows 8 problem only? Is Windows 7 stutter free on the same hardware as people who are having problems in Windows 8?

[S3ndG]

Hi ReddFour, as a workaround you can use this software to change cpu affinity automatically : Punigram Co. Ltd. Software FLAAS

[paaoradouglas38]

As far as I'm aware the issue is based around windows 8 not handling well when it tries to use multicore processsing for flash.

so yes it's win 8 that's the problem, but it;s only become a problem again after at least 5months of being fine.

[turreublog]

Thank you S3ndG So far this fixed the problem!

[Guest]

Thanks but I would never install software from an untrusted source.

I've now ordered Windows 7 anyway. I'm not a fan of Windows 8 so removing it from my system isn't a big deal.

[shawnt2014]

Thank you for the download S3ndG. It works well. I was wondering if it affects the PC when you're not running flash? I'd hate to run a weaker system the majority of the time just for an occasional video.

[S3ndG]

The program "Flaas" takes up only 4 or 5 MB of memory (RAM).

[turreu]

It helps a lot but there is still some amount of skips. Twitch lags almost constantly

[S3ndG]

I now use cyberfox 64 bits browser and I have no problem with flash.

Please notice that firefox 38 will be released with a 64 bit version.

[turreu]

Cyberfox does fix the problem, it does crash often though

[S3ndG]

Sorry but it never crashes with my laptop.

But be patient and wait for the release of the official Firefox 64 bit

[jsljustin]

I can confirm that flash player 16 still has problems in firefox 35.0.1. in fact, I have had problems with all firefox versions, all flash versions for over a year. Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 Update 1, all firefox versions and flash versions I have used since at least the start of 2014 have had problems. Firefox browser stuttering if there is any flash content anywhere in any tab that invokes the flash player plugin. And I have a Haswell i7-4770 With 8GB 1600 RAM with a samsung 256 SSD, and a Nvidia GTX970 3GB 1400MHz GPU. Tried GPU acceleration both on and off, makes no difference. Videos stutter (take your pick out of the 10,000 to 20,000 videos that have done it the past 13 months). Not only that, have has the same problem with Maxthon browser. Any version from the past year. It causes game stuttering really bad. But not just me. For the game I am referring to (wgt) there are literally thousands of posts from people with similar problems: flash game stuttering. Wgt had 100,000 users worldwide as of 3 years ago. There is probably more than half a million wgt game users now. Half a million gamers worldwide who are at the mercy of adobe and longstanding buggy flash.

I wish web-developers world-wide would abandon flash. Or that Adobe would do the right thing and make flash source open source, so that these issues could be fixed. I find it unusual that adobe can't reproduce the problem. I can't see how the problem wouldn't occur to almost anyone on almost any browser! Seriously, what does adobe testing do? Put a hardcopy of flash source over a peanut-butter sandwich?

I might add that wgt golf game is for real money. Players have to buy credits to do most things. perhaps a law suit from 500,000 angry wgt players against adobe might shake things up a bit. Sorry, but I quite expect as has been the case for Adobe not to fix this, not reply, not give a hoot. But it isn't right nor is it fair to internet users worldwide to be at the mercy of one company with buggy and closed source adobe flash code. I mean, html isn't owned by anyone. In fact, most ubiquitous code that the web is built on is NOT proprietary. Flash is the only code and content that is quite ubiquitous, closed source and buggy. It is both wrong and unethical for adobe to hold the experience of a large portion of the web (which doesn't belong to any one company or individual) in their hands. Wake up adobe! Do the right thing: either fix your code, release it as open source, or shut it down altogether. You don't own the web, so do the right thing!

[S3ndG]

HTML5 is getting better and better, youtube won't use flash in firefox 36.

And an add-on, Shumway, is developped currently so we can have a workaround of flash in the next few months.

[turreublog]

HTML5 doesn't support 5.1, no way I'll use it

[alexs20]

Is windows 10 TP also affected by this bug?

[S3ndG]

The video sometimes still stutters, i've made a try with Firefox 39 beta 7 32 bit.

I didn't try Firefox beta 64 bit because the stable version won't be release soon on the face of it.

I guess it will work better with firefox 64 bit.

[jeromiec83223024]

This clearly a lot of passionate posts here, but this thread is crazy long, provides some really suspect advice and has drifted pretty far from the original issue.  There's not a lot of utility left.  I'm going to lock it.

If you're experiencing a specific video playback problem, I'd recommend a few things in order:

1.)  Please work through the video troubleshooting guide.

      https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/video-playback-issues.html

2.) See if the issue happens in multiple browsers (it's a really useful data point).  Chrome/IE/Firefox on Windows, Safari or Firefox and Chrome on Mac will give you a good survey of the available plugin architectures.

If you're still stuck, please follow the directions in the video troubleshooting guide on providing the dxdiag report (if you're on Windows) or your the specific make and model of your machine (if you're on mac) and include additional information about what you tested and saw in a new post.  We'll do our best to help get it resolved.

Thanks