Member Avatar for cunnijo

Hi guys.

I am having issues playing HD clips on Youtube using the Chrome browser. When trying to run them the videos have a tendancy to freeze for a couple of seconds at a time and the audio is choppy. I have installed the latest version of flash player from Adobe with no success. I have even disabled Chrome's own "pepper" flash plugin as recommended from other forums/websites and still no joy. I have no such issues with either IE11 or Firefox, just Google Chrome.

Any suggestions for a possible solution would be appreciated.

Many thanks

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rubberman

Dani AI

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Given already tried Flash swaps and other browsers (IE/Firefox) play fine, the problem looks specific to Chrome’s rendering path or profile. and are correct to flag system load, but Chrome has a few browser-specific places to check before assuming a hardware fault. The steps below are a focused, Chrome-first diagnostic routine.

  1. Open an Incognito window (Ctrl+Shift+N). If HD plays smoothly there, an extension or profile setting is the likely cause.
  2. Open Chrome Task Manager (Shift+Esc) while a video runs. Note which process spikes CPU or memory. That identifies whether a tab, plugin or extension is triggering the stutter.
  3. Toggle hardware acceleration: Settings > Advanced > System > uncheck/check "Use hardware acceleration when available" and relaunch Chrome to test both states.
  4. Force HTML5 playback (visit https://www.youtube.com/html5) to see if the HTML5 stack behaves better than Flash.
  5. Clear only YouTube site data (cache/cookies) or test with a fresh Chrome profile to rule out profile corruption.

For deeper checks: inspect chrome://gpu to see which GPU features are disabled or blacklisted. If the GPU is blocked, either update the graphics drivers from the vendor or, as a temporary diagnostic, enable "Override software rendering list" in chrome://flags (use with caution — that can cause instability). When testing flags or profiles, back up bookmarks and sync settings first.

If none of the above helps, try installing the latest stable Chrome channel (or a Beta/Canary build for testing) and check whether the issue persists there; if Chromium channels also stutter, a system-level graphics driver or codec issue is likely. Avoid long-term use of forced flags — prefer stable fixes like driver updates or a clean profile.

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Member Avatar for Hiroshe

It probably has to do more with your computers hardware capabilities and your computers current load.

Make sure that theres nothing runing in the background that you don't need (including junk services and things like that).

A more roundabout solution is using SVP (and the associated SVPTube application that comes with the installer). When configured properly on Windows, the playback is rather amazing.

Member Avatar for rubberman

Each tab open in Chrome creates a new system process, and uses a lot of memory. This is the most common cause of such behavior as the system may have to hit the virtual memory swap space. Try closing other tabs or add more memory to your system.

FWIW, I switched back to Mozilla (Firefox) because of this issue.

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