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Video stutter issue in Big Sur

H

Hammer God

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 19, 2007
32
10
I'm having a video stutter issue in Big Sur on my early 2015 Macbook Pro. Happens in Safari mostly, but also in Chrome. Basically, the audio plays, but the picture stutters.

In Safari, it happens with videos embedded in Twitter. Also in videos at YouTube.com. Also in movies on Netflix.

In Chrome, I am able to watch Netflix. YouTube videos also seem to play okay. But videos embedded in Twitter don't play.

For the life of me, I can't figure out the pattern here.

Tried Apple chat support, but they didn't have an obvious solution, and I didn't have the time to stay online with them to try everything they wanted. May have to circle back to that when I have hours to devote to this.

Anyway see this issue?
 
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Having the same issue on my Early 2015 MBP 13". Video on YouTube only moves one frame every few seconds, but audio is fine. Makes YouTube pretty much unusable.

Edit: Found a fix! @Hammer God @dartheide @Aj6658

1. On Safari, go to Preferences > Advanced, and check the box at the very bottom, "Show Develop menu in menu bar"
2. Now on the Menu Bar, go to Develop > Experimental Features and disable "VP9 decoder"
3. Restart Safari
4. Go to Develop > Experimental Features and re-enable "VP9 decoder"; also enable "VP9 SW decoder on battery"
5. Restart Safari
6. YouTube should work now! If you want to hide Develop in the menu bar, go back to Preferences > Advanced and uncheck the box we checked in step 1
 
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Capeto said:
Having the same issue on my Early 2015 MBP 13". Video on YouTube only moves one frame every few seconds, but audio is fine. Makes YouTube pretty much unusable.

Edit: Found a fix! @Hammer God @dartheide @Aj6658

1. On Safari, go to Preferences > Advanced, and check the box at the very bottom, "Show Develop menu in menu bar"
2. Now on the Menu Bar, go to Develop > Experimental Features and disable "VP9 decoder"
3. Restart Safari
4. Go to Develop > Experimental Features and re-enable "VP9 decoder"; also enable "VP9 SW decoder on battery"
5. Restart Safari
6. YouTube should work now! If you want to hide Develop in the menu bar, go back to Preferences > Advanced and uncheck the box we checked in step 1
Click to expand...

Has this solved the problem for the OP? @Hammer God
I am considering whether to update but I definitely don't want to wreck something as basic as this.
 
I'm having a similar issue on an early 2015 MacBook 12". YouTube works fine for me, but on some sites the picture freezes completely while the audio continues to play.
 
dejayou said:
I'm having a similar issue on an early 2015 MacBook 12". YouTube works fine for me, but on some sites the picture freezes completely while the audio continues to play.
Click to expand...
This happens on pretty much every version of MacOS, where the image stops until you move the mouse cursor over it.
I think it is a problem with Safari (you can easily verify by trying with a different browser).
From time to time I have been seeing this with Mojave and with earlier versions of MacOS, usually resolved by erasing Safari’s caches and a reboot.
Google is full of complaints about this.
 
same her - would like to subsribe to the thread to see if there is a solution -> silver lining - I am not the only one - McB Pro 2015
 
I signed up just to say that I experienced this problem, too, but I was able to solve it by clearing PRAM/NVRAM.

Reset NVRAM on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

If one or more settings stored in NVRAM aren't working as expected on an Intel-based Mac, resetting NVRAM may help.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

My system: MacBook Pro 13" Early 2015; Core i5 2.7 GHz, MacOS Big Sur 11.0.1

Problem: Stuttering gif and video playback on all websites. Issue present in Chrome (87.0.4280.67), Safari (14.0.1), Firefox (83.0 (64-bit))

Solution (for me at least): Clear PRAM/NVRAM
 
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The situation, which I faced was that the audio kept on playing, but the video was frozen!
In the same time the whole system seemed to be frozen!

As Wando64 said in his comment, I tried disabling the 'VP9 Decoder' and everything seems to return to normality.

I am pasting the following in which there is pretty much the same problem posted in apple's developer section.
unable to play YouTube videos
 
Just updating that while my solution worked for YouTube videos in Safari, I'm still experiencing the same issue with videos on other apps such as WhatsApp and Discord. I'll try clearing PRAM/NVRAM as @kneedeepinlife suggested and will report back.
 
It looks like something is going on with videos on Big Sur. But I don't think it's related to Safari - as I don't use Safari at all (Edge/Chrome).

Here's what I experience on iMac 2017, 27", 40 GB RAM:

There are no issues if I just play YouTube videos

BUT things go wrong once I attempt to play a video uploaded from my phone (Samsung A50 but the make sure doesn't make any difference). The problem starts once I attempt to play the video in any form: in any browser, QuickTime or VLC:

-The video stutters while audio plays well

-YouTube videos also start stuttering

-The entire system performance goes to hell (sluggish menus, slow actions, slow scrolling etc.) Had to restart several times to restore performance while testing the videos.

-There was no issues on Catalina. There are no issues with the same videos on MacBook Pro with High Sierra and Catalina.

On Big Sur, the same problem starts every time I attempt to play any of the videos from my phone.

Will submit a bug to Apple soon.
 
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Resetting SMC actually fixed it for me, and the whole system seems a lot more responsive. Gonna reset NVRAM too anyways, per the recommendations.
 
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I've had some horrendous problems on my 2017 iMac too. To summarize:

• Sometimes after waking from sleep, no media plays – movies in QuickTime Player, audio in Music, videos on YouTube, nothing.

• Twice so far, my system has entered a state (seemingly unrelated to media) where it's response for a full second, completely unresponsive and frozen the next second, and this pattern alternates indefinitely.

I've tried resetting the SMC twice and haven't seen that last scary issue since the second time, but the former is still there and survives into macOS 11.1.

I'll try disabling VP9 in Safari and resetting the non-volatile RAM next; I'm glad this thread was around to remind me. Thanks to Capeto, Hammer God and the contributors here.
 
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Capeto said:
Having the same issue on my Early 2015 MBP 13". Video on YouTube only moves one frame every few seconds, but audio is fine. Makes YouTube pretty much unusable.

Edit: Found a fix! @Hammer God @dartheide @Aj6658

1. On Safari, go to Preferences > Advanced, and check the box at the very bottom, "Show Develop menu in menu bar"
2. Now on the Menu Bar, go to Develop > Experimental Features and disable "VP9 decoder"
3. Restart Safari
4. Go to Develop > Experimental Features and re-enable "VP9 decoder"; also enable "VP9 SW decoder on battery"
5. Restart Safari
6. YouTube should work now! If you want to hide Develop in the menu bar, go back to Preferences > Advanced and uncheck the box we checked in step 1
Click to expand...

This didn't work for me. MacBook Pro 15" 2016

Resetting SMC also didn't work for me
 
anoobis said:
This didn't work for me. MacBook Pro 15" 2016

Resetting SMC also didn't work for me
Click to expand...
Try resetting NVRAM - that’s what the recommendations say, my issues just happened to be fixed when I reset SMC instead.
 
Resetting NVRAM/PRAM and SMC fixed the issue on 11.1 running on MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015).
 
Reporting back – almost a week later, I haven't experienced either horrendous video problems. It might have been either resetting NVRAM or disabling VP9 stuff in Safari.
 
Ack – reporting back again. I haven't had the same issues I described earlier, but twice now I've experienced media (e.g. video in QuickTime Player or Safari, audio in Music) simultaneously halting for perhaps 30 to 60 seconds before the system somehow recovered. I also noticed laggy and stuttery video in apps and Notification Center during this time. Wild.
 
I have a 2017 MacBook Air and was having the same issues with video after upgrading to Big Sur, and not being a computer geek, was hesitant to try some of the above fixes. Today I happened to install an update to Keynote and then was searching around for flash player folders to delete and came across Migration Assistant in Utilities. Didn't know what it was, so I clicked on it, then couldn't close it, so I restarted the computer, and now the video seems to be working fine. Don't know what fixed it, but glad it's working again.
 
I don't think resetting pram or smc is going to fix this. My opinion is this is judt how Mac OS is designed... When a program is running in the 'background' the OS puts the program in a 'sleep state' to conserve resources. Which stalls video unless you are actively moving your cursor over the browser so the OS knows not to slow the program. This happens in Safari or Chrome. The reason I believe this is the culprit is even my 'webcam' would studder when the OS thinks it is not active. The developers of the camera software I use had a fix to prevent Mac OS from 'sleeping' the camera program. The fix is to open a terminal window and input: defaults write com.gopro2webcam.vcamtool NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES ***then hit the enter key***. So, while really Mac OS, Safari, or Chrome really should have their own setting to activate such a setting, maybe one of yall can tweak that command to alter Safari and Chrome behavior so we will have our fix? Seems like someone could alter that NSAppSleepDisabled command by changing the 'com.gopro2webcam.vcamtool' part to the safari and Chrome path. I could try this myself but I'm sure one of yall are more quickly capable. Please post the lines of code for us if it works! -Nate
 
Thank you. It seems to work by resetting the SMC but to be honest I don’t know how long will it last. I will keep an eye on “stats for nerds”.

On YouTube it cannot keep a constant connection speed. Hovers around 50mbps then suddenly drops to 8mbps and everything stops. Now it seems able to recover, but it is annoying.

initially I thought this was due to some bug on the T2 firmware.

Edit: it does not work. Still drops and freeze but at least it is able to autonomously recover some speed.

Another edit: something is wrong with VP9. Disabling it, I can see a stable full width connection speed, enabling I go back to see the speed drop with freezes etc.
 
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Hi. Same problem here. Installed Big Sur 11.1 on my MacBook Air from 2015. Upgraded from Catalina. Had major issues with Netflix, Youtube etc when it came to streaming. Picture froze and sound crackled. I tried the suggested VP9 decoder of/on suggested by the Mac developer forum - didn't improve much. Then I tried to restart in fail safe mode - it worked for Youtube, but not Netflix. Then I tried a "reset all to previous"-command. I turned the computer off and then - just after pressing the power button - I pressed down the keys " R + alt + cmd + P" simultaneously and kept them pressed down for 20 seconds. The Apple sound sounded 3 or 4 times during these 20 seconds and the screen flickered a couple of times in black and white. Then I stoped pressing the keys and the computer restarted. After log in everything worked perfect for me in safari. Hope this might help someone.
 
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