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dawnie1977
dawnie1977
Participating Frequently
October 12, 2014
Question

Poor quality/low resolution playback in flash

  • October 12, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 6450 views

I have recently been experiencing problems with poor quality video playback, ie videos appearing low resolution/pixelated. This problem only started in the past week and I noticed that when I downloaded a video from a friends facebook timeline and play it though windows media player, the issue is resolved, so it cannot be a problem with the file itself, but is more likely to do with flash player. It is also worth noting that when the downloaded video is played via Realplayer (which I believe uses flash) it is again pixelated / poor quality.

I have tried performing a clean install of flash, including installing various previous versions and also tried using different browsers – firefox, chrome and internet explorer, but the problem is still present.

I am really baffled by this as up until a few days ago I didn't have any problems.

I am using a laptop which runs Windows 7.

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1 reply

H
Harikon
Participating Frequently
October 12, 2014

I have seen the same issue ever since the last update. It happens on both windows 7 and windows 8 OS systems.

Tried going back a couple version of Flash, but no effect.

but it is only the plugin, the flash player 10 I have install with the Flash suite works fine.

dawnie1977
dawnie1977Author
Participating Frequently
October 12, 2014

Thank you Harikon.  Do you have a link to the one you installed?  I'm a bit of a novice - sorry!

dawnie1977
dawnie1977Author
Participating Frequently
October 16, 2014

Ahh, sorry but realplayer is a different program from flash, so the flash player issue I had is not the same.

Basically you might want to look at the bandwidth/network speed of your connection to the server that is hosting the movie you want to watch.

First, is the file you are trying to get from the server the same file that you are using on your PC using Media player?

If the file plays in Windows media player, then you really don't need realplayer to watch the movie.


Hi Harikon

As I understood it, Realplayer uses flash, as when I uninstalled flash Realplayer wouldn't play any videos and a message popped up saying I had to install flash.

Apologies for the confusion over the issues I'm having, perhaps if I explain in detail what happened it may help, so here goes!

I first noticed a quality issue when streaming videos on a site called jibjab.com.  I have been using this site for many months and playback quality had always been acceptable - not HD but generally ok.  I used their site most days so I immediately noticed when recently the videos appeared poor quality/pixelated.  I contacted their customer support and after many checks established the problem was not at their end. Later that day, I noticed that a video one of my friends had posted on facebook also appeared pixelated. When I downloaded this particular video to my laptop and played it through Windows Media Player, there was no pixelation.  When I opened it in Realplayer, it was once again pixelated.  Today, another video which appeared on facebook seemed to be playing ok, and I noticed it was in HD, when I switched it to SD it became very pixelated (more so than you would expect from SD).  I am not sure when it was in HD if it was truly HD but I know the quality seemed ok.  Also, I have not noticed a huge difference in quality when watching videos on youtube (which again is confusing as I thought youtube used flash).

The reason I am so keen to get this issue fixed is because certain videos cannot be downloaded to my laptop in order to watch them using Windows Media Player.  I know that jibjab charge for every download and the only way to avoid this is to watch online.

These issues have got me completely baffled and being in no way technically minded my knowledge of what 'checks' I can perform to establish the reasons behind this is limited.  If anybody can point me in the right direction it would be very much appreciated.

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