YouTube videos have small temporary freezes on Firefox

Problem

When I’m watching YouTube videos on Firefox, I often get small freezes of the video with the sound working well and the subtitles also. It can repeat every 5-10 seconds and other times it does not happen over 30-60 seconds. (or more, I’m not truly using a timer of course)

Did not see this bug on Odysee nor on Chromium.

Cause

Not yet known.

FireFox did not have this issue this computer when I used Artix Linux (Arch-based) and Pop OS.

Makes me think of garbage collector behaviors but Firefox is written in Rust, it does not make sense.

Related Issues

None

Workarounds

None yet.

2 Likes

I have the same issue on my Fedora 38, Firefox and Wayland.

Same here. ISP and LAN tested for issues - all is fine, only couple of Linux computers (including F38 box) are having this problem. It started in ~second half of August, after the upgrade within F38 line of upgrades. At the time couldn’t find more people having same/similar issues and thought that’s me unlucky.

1 Like

I experienced something similar after I installed the Fedora 38.
The issue maybe was after I installed unnecessary mesa drivers from RPMFusion (Howto/Multimedia - RPM Fusion).
In the end of day I kept the mesa-va-drivers and only installed mesa-vdpau-drivers-freeworld.
Of course not the i686 version (used in the 32bits blatforms).

2 Likes

Thank you very much,
I started with fedora 37 and then i upgraded first at Fedora 38 and then at Fedora 39. I hadn’t notice that after fedora 37 it is necessary to install the freeworld version of the mesa drivers to get the video encoders along with the drivers.

I may have found the definitive solution.

For me the problem was the rpm version, I installed the flatpak version (Flathub - stable) and now YouTube videos run smoothly.

Give it a try and let me know.

This is not always the solution, i have run both the Flatpak firefox, and the .rpm

While I did experience some issues since August, it was mostly because of my use of adblockers and privacy tools. Accepting Cookies and terms on the accounts I use (2 main accounts) The issues went away if I whitelist YouTube. On my alt accounts, the issue persist.

Can confirm, FreeTube is experiencing these issues as they are merely a front end for YouTube and block all ads.

Running the Flatpak can break your workflow with various apps, KeepassXC does not work if both are in a Flatpak. Along with other apps within a Flatpak to Flatpak communication.
Also note Google has been aggresive recently towards Firefox users.

I also have this but I am using Brave as browser. When the picture freezes I have to click the pause button so the sound also stops and then hit play again where the video rushes to catch on with the sound. I not only have that when watching Youtube but also when I watch TV via a website. Now that I know more people have it I know it is not my hardware which makes me kinda happy. No idea what is causing it.

I did’nt have the issue since some month.

So do I. I think the issue is gone

Also ran sudo dnf group install Multimedia.
And it helped
I had the same issue with zoom recording and I did not had the issue since