Audio and video fall out of sync on nearly every site
I have a Win10 64 bit pro system with tons of processor power, memory, bandwidth, etc. All patches and driver updates installed. FF 66. This problem has been here for months, doesn't seem to be version sensitive. At the start of nearly any video, the audio is in sync. Audio quality is fine (no hiccups or interruptions). But for every minute or so of playing, the audio and video fall about 1 second out of sync (usually, audio ahead of video...but not always...). If I hit pause and then resume play, everything is back in sync but will slowly fall away. Videos play fine in standard desktop viewers (e.g., .MOV, .MPG etc), so I don't think it's a windows problem per se. I've gone through all the suggestions in the first two pages of Google results, and gone through all the basic stuff within the FF forums. No change. But, I may well have missed something.
All Replies (4)
Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration in Firefox. Since this feature was added to Firefox it has gradually improved but there are still a few glitches.
You will need to restart Firefox for this to take effect so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.,) and then perform these steps:
- Click the menu button
and select Options (Windows) or Preferences (Mac, Linux).
- Select the General panel.
- Under Performance, uncheck Use recommended performance settings. Additional settings will be displayed.
- Uncheck Use hardware acceleration when available.
- Close Firefox completely and then restart Firefox to see if the problem persists.
Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!
If the problem is resolved, you should check for updates for your graphics driver by following the steps mentioned in these Knowledge base articles:
Thank you.
Hi, Well, as I mentioned, I've done all the basic stuff already.
Turning off hardware acceleration doesn't help (it may actually make it worse).
One thing that I failed to mention: my audio path. I normally pipe the digital into my monitor via HDMI, and the monitor does the D/A conversion. If I pipe the audio directly into the laptop's audio chip, same symptom...but I don't know if it's worse or better. If you want me to do some comparative measurements, I'll do that.
Another (perhaps) revealing piece of data: if I'm playing a series of Youtube videos (the ones that automatically play in sequence) the lag seems to build monotonically until I hit the pause button. IOW, if I have three 3-minute songs in a row, the lag builds even though YouTube loads a new video every few minutes. The only thing that re-syncs things is toggling pause/play button.
So what is the link in YT that is the problem video feed? If no one can go to the problem link to see what or where the problem is coming from that also makes diagnosing the problem even harder. And what kinda laptop are we talking about and what is the monitor? Monitors don't do a D/A AFAIK but without hardware specs that is all guess work here for anyone reading to find where or how to figure the problem.
WestEnd said
So what is the link in YT that is the problem video feed?
It's nearly any YT, but if you want an example, here's one
And what kinda laptop are we talking about and what is the monitor? Monitors don't do a D/A AFAIK but without hardware specs that is all guess work here for anyone reading to find where or how to figure the problem.
FWIW it's an HP Envy 17-ae1xx. It's got plenty of processing power (can have 5 non-browser videos running simultaneously). The two audio configurations are direct out thru the on-board D/A chip, and thru the monitor (it gets the digital stream via HDMI, converts to an analog out). It's an RCA "TV" that I'm just using as a monitor. Monitor settings seem to make no difference.
BUT--I just discovered what DOES make it better. Rebooting windows. Now my homework is to find what program(s) or system events cause the problem to occur.
I'll let you know when I figure that out.