Youtube videos playing extremely fast
Linux debian 8 / Firefox 68.9.0ESR Since Firefox crashed on me a couple months ago, all online videos play at excessive speed (at least 5x normal speed, probably faster). There is also no longer any sound, but that could be due to the speed of the playback (sound in all other programs work fine)?
I have rebooted my computer a couple times since then, and tried creating a brand new profile, but there is no change. I've been running this version of firefox for several months so that hasn't changed. I also had not applied any updates to my OS recently before this problem started happening, although I did try updating after the problem showed up... still no resolution. I assume the crash has nothing to do with this problem since a clean profile hasn't made a difference.
I'm stumped. There are tons of google results about videos playing too slow, but I've found nothing about videos playing at lightning speed. Checking youtube directly, playback speed is set to normal although setting it to 0.25 slows it down enough I can at least see what's happening. I just don't know what else to look for?
All Replies (9)
Is this with Firefox from the Debian repositories or with Firefox from the Mozilla server ?
This is from the debian repo. I could try a newer version, but that doesn't really explain why this version suddenly stopped working correctly?
Hi shdwdrgrn1,
cor-el asked the same thing I was going to ask. I had some major issues with Firefox ESR on one of my Linux systems and it was due to the repository I had used or the way I installed, I can't remember which it's been a while. My suggestion is 'sudo apt-get remove & purge firefox' and go ahead and do 'autoclean or autoremove' (which ever applies to your Linux distro) then install from the link he provided. Also, make sure your repository cache has not been corrupted. Instructions on how to fix corrupted cache are all over the internet. The problem with doing an install such as 'sudo apt-get install firefox' is unfortunately those repositories, even if official, are not handling updates to Firefox correctly depending upon your distro. The other thing is, due to the nature of ESR only high-risk / high-impact security vulnerabilities or major stability issues are fixed.
Modified by la3amon
Sorry for the long delay in getting back to this, but I finally got the chance to grab firefox 78.0.1esr.
Once again I created a new profile to start with, however yourtube videos are still playing an a very rapid pace. It screams through about the first 20 seconds before it even gets a chance to display a frame. After that, some videos attempt to keep displaying frames, others just give up, but the clock for the video position continues to advance at about 5x the normal rate.
So it's not a problem with my version of firefox, and it's not a profile issue. What else should I look in to?
Still hoping for a solution to this problem. I've noticed since installing firefox 78.0.1esr that about 1/3 of the videos on reddit now play at the proper speed (not including obvious things like gifv which continue to work fine). I don't usually browse youtube directly so I'm not sure if there are different types of videos that may be causing this, but everything I *have* clicked on youtube plays at rocket speed.
You can remove all data stored in Firefox for a specific domain via "Forget About This Site" in the right-click context menu of an history entry ("History -> Show All History" or "View -> Sidebar -> History").
Using "Forget About This Site" will remove all data stored in Firefox for this domain like history and cookies and passwords and exceptions and cache, so be cautious. If you have a password or other data for that domain that you do not want to lose then make sure to backup this data or make a note.
You can't recover from this 'forget' unless you have a backup of involved files.
If you revisit a 'forgotten' website then data for that website will be saved once again.
Wouldn't all of the data about youtube have been 'forgotten' when I created a new profile though? I thought the point of testing with a new profile was that it started the browser with everything in a clean, pristine state?
If you used the Profile Manager and not a refresh to create the new profile then this would indeed have removed all data. If the video play too fast then this could indicate that some timer is off or is not working properly, but I wouldn't expect that this only happens if you access the YouTube website directly.
Yeah starting firefox from the command line with the --ProfileManager option is the only way I know of to even access the profiles. I've seen the 'refresh' option, but it led me to believe that it would seriously screw up my existing profile and history so I've avoided that completely.
So just to clarify, I'm having trouble with most videos from all websites. Reddit is just a common example, but it also affects videos embedded in forums, on twitter and facebook. Basically any kind of video that isn't a simple animated gif works fine (for example, those on gfycat appear to be OK).