Problem playing videos

[GerryB]

I realize this issue has been raised before, but is there anything I can do to improve the rendering of videos in Pale Moon? The flow is anything but smooth, and that holds true for videos on all sites, not just YouTube. Frames are being dropped, so it looks more like 15 frames per second, which is like watching an old movie from the 1920s. Most of the video sites I visit use HTML5; only a handful still rely on Flash, so I don't suspect that the issue is caused by the version of Flash I've installed.

What I've tried so far is enabling/disabling hardware acceleration, which makes no difference at all. I'm also unable to update the video drivers for my machine. Perhaps there's an about:config setting that I've overlooked.

I run Pale Moon 27 on a Windows 7 laptop, and am using Firefox compability mode. Actually, the videos are no smoother using Firefox 45, but they play perfectly in another Firefox-based browser, K-Meleon (Gecko 31, UA spoofed to Firefox 53). They look fine in Chrome, as well.

[GerryB]

I forgot to mention that my computer has just x86 capability, and that the videos often play a bit more smoothly when not in fullscreen.

[Nigaikaze]

is there anything I can do to improve the rendering of videos in Pale Moon?

Under Options, on the Content tab, there are three MSE settings for video. Try enabling/disabling those. It may take some experimentation to see what combination of those MSE settings works best for your system.
(MSE support is still a work in progress and will continue to be improved in the next version of Pale Moon.)

[Pallid Planetoid]

I use the HTML5 Media Tuner and do not have any issues playing YouTube videos with the "Media Mode" for YouTube videos set at "HTML5+MSE" for this add-on.

FWIW, my PM "Options" > "Content" tab Video settings are the following:

video settings for PM.png

[GerryB]

Under Options, on the Content tab, there are three MSE settings for video. Try enabling/disabling those. It may take some experimentation to see what combination of those MSE settings works best for your system.
(MSE support is still a work in progress and will continue to be improved in the next version of Pale Moon.)

Thanks. I tried checking only the main option, "enable MSE", and one of the streaming webcams I visit reported a missing Flash plugin. My Flash plugin is present and enabled, and working fine on other sites, but oddly enough, that webcam doesn't use Flash, anyway. It changed to HTML5 a while back, so it shouldn't have been looking for Flash at all.

Next I tried enabling WEBM, but disabling MP4. The stream wouldn't load at all. With only MP4 enabled (what I had originally) it loaded, but the quality was poor. Enabling both seemed to have improved playback slightly.

[GerryB]

I use the HTML5 Media Tuner and do not have any issues playing YouTube videos with the "Media Mode" for YouTube videos set at "HTML5+MSE" for this add-on.

Thanks, the add-on helped a bit. It's still not perfect, but on YouTube I at least have the option of decreasing the video quality, which seems to improve the frame rate. I tested it on one of the HD videos. Maybe the non-HD videos will stream more smoothly without having to adjust the quality. I'll have to look into that. The Chromium-based browsers must use a different method for playing videos, because they are much smoother without having to make any adjustments. However, I'm technically challenged when it comes to that stuff.

[Pallid Planetoid]

I use the HTML5 Media Tuner and do not have any issues playing YouTube videos with the "Media Mode" for YouTube videos set at "HTML5+MSE" for this add-on.

Thanks, the add-on helped a bit. It's still not perfect, but on YouTube I at least have the option of decreasing the video quality, which seems to improve the frame rate. I tested it on one of the HD videos. Maybe the non-HD videos will stream more smoothly without having to adjust the quality. I'll have to look into that. The Chromium-based browsers must use a different method for playing videos, because they are much smoother without having to make any adjustments. However, I'm technically challenged when it comes to that stuff.

Google owns YouTube, so it's not surprising that they make sure YouTube works well with their Chrome browser and at the same time have minimal concern regarding other browsers.

[Moonraker]

I use the HTML5 Media Tuner and do not have any issues playing YouTube videos with the "Media Mode" for YouTube videos set at "HTML5+MSE" for this add-on.

Thanks, the add-on helped a bit. It's still not perfect, but on YouTube I at least have the option of decreasing the video quality, which seems to improve the frame rate. I tested it on one of the HD videos. Maybe the non-HD videos will stream more smoothly without having to adjust the quality. I'll have to look into that. The Chromium-based browsers must use a different method for playing videos, because they are much smoother without having to make any adjustments. However, I'm technically challenged when it comes to that stuff.

Google owns YouTube, so it's not surprising that they make sure YouTube works well with their Chrome browser and at the same time have minimal concern regarding other browsers.

So much for it being a "open" web.
How long before google gobbles it all up.

[GerryB]

Google owns YouTube, so it's not surprising that they make sure YouTube works well with their Chrome browser.

Yeah, but with at least one possible exception: In Chrome or one of its clones, the volume slider on a YouTube video can suddenly become inaccessible while the video is viewed in fullscreen. Hovering over the speaker icon displays the volume control, but often the slider can't be dragged back and forth; sometimes even the arrow keys don't work. Considering that many of the videos start at too high a volume in the first place, this can really damage a person's hearing if he's wearing headphones and takes too long to find and deploy his system volume control. My partner and I have both noticed this when using SRWare Iron, a Chrome-based browser which I've recently stopped using. I haven't encountered the same behavior in Pale Moon.

[GerryB]

So much for it being a "open" web.
How long before google gobbles it all up.

Who knows, maybe the next president sitting in the White House will be the Google CEO. But I don't want to start a rumor that turns into "fake news".