Arch Linux

freyr

Member

From: Hungary

Registered: 2010-02-04

Posts: 131

YouTube playback lags in Chromium, not in other browsers

Hi!

So my problem is that in Chromium with most YouTube videos the playback's lagging, sometimes the picture falls apart and the video gets delayed behind the audio.
These occur always at the same frames of the given videos so first I though that the problem is with the videos but I couldn't find any reference to anything similar while googling about it. Then I checked Google Chrome and Firefox, they work just fine. So I started searching similar Chromium related issues, I did find a lot ranging from 2012 to this day but the answer is always the same: check the Flash player or the video driver. That would be obvious if this wasn't HTML5 playback and if I could reproduce the problem with any other browser. Note that if I do switch to Flash player, the problem persists and exactly at the same frames as with the HTML5 player. But only in Chromium. Interestingly though only newer videos do this, everything uploaded to YouTube before this August seems to be just fine plus this problem occurred from one day to another without getting any Chromium update. Since then there was an update to version 52.0.2743.85 but it didn't help.
Could it be that YouTube did make some changes and Chromium just can't cope with them?

Does anyone else have this problem?

---

What, so everyone's supposed to sleep every single night now? You realize that nighttime makes up half of all time?

berbae

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-02-12

Posts: 1,304

Re: YouTube playback lags in Chromium, not in other browsers

Can you give a link to a video lagging for you, so that I could try if it does the same for me.

freyr

Member

From: Hungary

Registered: 2010-02-04

Posts: 131

Re: YouTube playback lags in Chromium, not in other browsers

3 examples where it's clearly noticeable:

Rob Dyke - Why Would You Put That on the Internet? #102
SciShow - Babies With Three Parents
NerdSync - THEORY: Killing Joke's Secret Ending REVEALED!

I usually find lags starting from the middle of the videos ± a minute or two.

---

What, so everyone's supposed to sleep every single night now? You realize that nighttime makes up half of all time?

berbae

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-02-12

Posts: 1,304

Re: YouTube playback lags in Chromium, not in other browsers

I can't confirm what you present in your OP.
I looked the three videos you linked to using chromium/html5 in full screen HD quality, and I didn't see any lag nor delay between sound/image.

jwhendy

Member

Registered: 2010-04-01

Posts: 621

Re: YouTube playback lags in Chromium, not in other browsers

Is this still happening for you? All of the sudden my system is completely unable to play youtube with chromium! Firefox is working fine. For me, it's any youtube video, though (even from many years ago).

To be specific, the symptoms are:
- video appears to play in slow motion (maybe 1/2 speed)
- no sound

Firefox: regular speed, sound is fine.

Just updated today and chromium-widevine came through. Rebooted, issue persists. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but I noticed it starting a few days ago. I'm interested if it's still happening for you and/or what you did to resolve. I'll look more tonight and can post some further package details.