Embedded YouTube videos stuttering and not playing back smoothly

Bug #1418626 reported by Bill Filler
42
This bug affects 8 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Oxide
New
Undecided
Unassigned
webbrowser-app (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
High
Unassigned
webbrowser-app (Ubuntu RTM)
Confirmed
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

Related to bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/webbrowser-app/+bug/1417258.

Embedded youtube videos, like this:
http://m.bleacherreport.com/articles/2352016-papa-johns-airs-wrong-commercial-congratulates-seahawks-after-super-bowl

or this:
http://pages.ebay.com/shoptheworld/

do not play back correctly. They exhibit stuttering and stopping, with oxide-renderer process using over 100% CPU.

This was worked around on YouTube.com (and webapp) by using overriden UA string which makes YouTube send us a stream that we can playback smoothly. But this UA string is not presented to embedded videos within other sites.

We should figure out how we can send the UA override to embedded videos (if possible), and if not what change could we make to our default UA string such that YouTube gives us content that we can render more efficiently.

Other ideas?

Tags: youtube
Bill Filler (bfiller)
Changed in webbrowser-app:
importance: Undecided → High
Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
Changed in webbrowser-app:
assignee: nobody → Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
Changed in webbrowser-app (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
Changed in webbrowser-app:
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in webbrowser-app (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in webbrowser-app (Ubuntu RTM):
status: New → Confirmed
assignee: nobody → Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
Revision history for this message
David Barth (dbarth) wrote :

This is the same bug as https://bugs.launchpad.net/oxide/+bug/1414743. Justin is investigating the type of media element we are receiving in that case and why that creates that extra cpu usage, based on the UA string we send.

Revision history for this message
Justin McPherson (justinmcp) wrote :

At this time, and from experimentation - a change of UA has no effect on the container+codecs chosen by YT in the embedded case.

Changing the UA does affect the the mobile YT page.

Revision history for this message
Michael Sheldon (michael-sheldon) wrote :

It might be worth looking at what this extension does to ensure h264 videos are sent instead of vp8/vp9 (which I'm assuming is the issue here, due to the lack of acceleration for those codecs): https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify

Revision history for this message
Michael Sheldon (michael-sheldon) wrote :

Basically it looks like we should just stop reporting to YouTube that we support any codecs that we can't decode in hardware and then it'll only send us video in a format we can play smoothly.

Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
tags: added: youtube
Revision history for this message
Niklas Wenzel (nikwen) wrote :

Anything new here? I watched a movie on YouTube yesterday and due to the stuttering it took me two hours instead of the movie's normal length of one and a half hours.
This makes Youtube quite useless on my phone right now...

Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
Changed in webbrowser-app:
assignee: Olivier Tilloy (osomon) → nobody
Changed in webbrowser-app (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → High
Changed in webbrowser-app (Ubuntu RTM):
importance: Undecided → High
Changed in webbrowser-app:
status: Confirmed → Invalid
importance: High → Undecided
Revision history for this message
L D (leoubuntuone) wrote :

Videos on youtube are too slow and stuttery to be watched.

Additionally the rotation is unpleasant to the eye (both in normal mode and full screen) and in full screen mode there is a white line at the bottom of the screen (or to the right of the screen if you are watching in landscape mode).

Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
no longer affects: webbrowser-app
Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by "unpleasant to the eye"?

Regarding the white line, it seems to be specific to the BQ device (I’m not seeing it on a MX4). I’ve filed bug #1478905 to track the issue separately.

Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
Changed in webbrowser-app (Ubuntu):
assignee: Olivier Tilloy (osomon) → nobody
Changed in webbrowser-app (Ubuntu RTM):
assignee: Olivier Tilloy (osomon) → nobody
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