Why does online video stutter on my Mac?
Friday, October 31, 2008 / Media Center, Software
I am working with OS 10.4.11 and do not experience any sound (stuttering - skipping) issues when viewing any QT or .wmv movies sent to me via email.
However, when I attempt to view a video on a cable news channel, the sound starts out stuttering - missing-skipping, as the clip plays longer, the reception (most of the time) does get better.
I went to the preferences folder, in hopes of finding a pref. that I might take to the trash. Unfortunately, not knowing exactly what to look for, I could not identify a particular pref. for Internet sound.
The files you watch via Quicktime or Windows Media Player are often different file types than the ones you are watching online. Most TV channel, in-browser, content is Adobe Flash format. This has been a sore subject with Mac users for many years. Flash playback on
Mac computers has historically been a resource hog, quickly driving up the system fans and stealing system performance from other applications. Just recently Adobe has released a new version of Flash for the Mac that tries to address these performance issues. In my most recent testing I have found the performance of Flash 10 to be much better and more reliable. It is particularly better during the downloading phase of the process - that is where you’re experiencing the greatest issue of choppy video. Your computer is having issue caching the content from the website and trying to play that same video back to you. I would recommend that you
update your copy of Flash here.
If that fails to help, or the site you are watching video from is not using Flash, then you may just need to pause the video playback and wait a few minutes until the video has fully cached in the browser. There is often a secondary progress bar indicating the amount of video downloaded.
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