Frame-drops with YouTube (Possibly a Chromium issue)

[absinthe]

Hey there,
I’ve recently noticed stuttering while playing videos on YouTube, especially when they’re set to higher quality (1080p & 4K), this happens with only and all Chromium based browsers I’ve tested, Firefox seems to work fine.

I’ve tried disabling Hardware acceleration but it only makes it works, tried disabling extensions but not avail with that as well.

Brave / Chromium (1208 of 14130 frames dropped)

Firefox (0 of 18633 frames dropped)

Any help is much appreciated.

[Mattches]

@absinthe,
It’s likely a Chromium issue that will be fixed upstream – I will ask the team and see if they can confirm that. I am curious what you have your Shield settings set to for youtube though – can you share a screenshot of your Shields panel (as I’ve done below)?

[absinthe]

Thanks for replying. Here’s my shield settings.

[caldercay]

@absinthe

I’ve recently noticed stuttering while playing videos on YouTube, especially when they’re set to higher quality

So, you’re stating that videos “worked as expected” previously … and now, for whatever reason, they’re stuttering ??

“what changed”, from when it worked, to when the “stuttering” happens??

[absinthe]

Yeah didn’t have this issue previously, granted I didn’t check the frame-drops but can’t say I ever did notice stuttering. As for what changed, as far as I can remember just my GPU drivers (RX570, 20.4.2 drivers), and Brave / Chromium updates.

[Mattches]

@absinthe,
Would you mind testing the frames with Shields down on Youtube? Easy way to test if Shields are responsible for the dropped frames – if that’s not the case its highly likely due to an issue with Chromium.

[arcinin1]

I got the exact same problem, disabling Brave shields or even disabling all addons and resetting all the settings didn’t change a thing. Full Brave reinstall and GPU driver reinstall also don’t work. Frames don’t drop on browser like Opera, Edge or Firefox, and in Brave, the problem only occurs when the video is played at fullscreen - in default or theater mode no frame drop noticed. Overriding hardware acceleration only make frame drops more often. I must say I got AMD RX 480 which is pretty close to RX 570 absinthe has so it maybe AMD drivers issue.

PS. I’ve installed raw Chromium 88.0.4313.0 and not a single frame dropped

[arcinin1]

I’ve figured it all out, in my case, disabling the AMD Freesync in driver settings solved this problem. Seems like Freesync and Brave don’t like each other much. Also when I dragged Brave window with Youtube opened to my second monitor, which doesn’t support Freesync, it also worked perfectly. Hope it will be fixed soon.