Solved firefox streaming framerate is horrible since 2026Q1

PMc

PMc

Hi,
I just noticed firefox(esr) streaming videos are unwatchable, about one update per second slowly scrolling down the screen. :(
This happens in fullscreen mode on WQHD (2560 wide). HDTV (1920 wide) seems to work ok.
chromium also seems to work ok.

Also, some providers would not even send the stream and instead suggest to install Adobe Flashplayer.

I checked the forum, found this one, and, accordingly for a quick test reverted to ffmpeg-6 and ff-esr 140.5
This does indeed fix the FlashPlayer suggestion. But it does NOT fix the horrible framerate.

So I did now revert the entire machine to 2025Q4, and voila, playback is fine again!

Something else must have been botched in 2026Q1 (to be added to an already long list). Any idea what, anybody?

Next thing I tried was to apply the patch from PR 291974. This failed because the patch is already applied. :(

So this patch does not seem to solve the FlashPlayer requirement, neither the horrible playback speed.
 
nxjoseph said:
The patch for the bug has been committed to the tree, you may have the patched version of firefox-esr already.


Fixed version is: 140.7.0_2,2.
Click to expand...
Yes, that is my pkg name, and is present in my ports.git repo. So it clearly is applied - I don't recall exactly when I pulled the fresh repo, but no question it is applied already.

The point is, it doesn't help.
I do not bother much about the Flashplayer suggestion from some provider, this must be a very obviousely missing codec.
The bad playback is more worrisome, because it happens with apparently all providers, no matter the actual download resolution, and is apparently not related to ffmpeg. So maybe X or the GPU driver, something not so straightforward to identify.

nxjoseph said:
I am using the main branch and I don't have any issue anymore, i use a 1366x768p monitor currently, though.
Click to expand...
It doesn't seem to happen on my second attached monitor in 1920x1080p. only on the primary in 2560x1440p.

nxjoseph said:
Can you check your codec support in firefox? go to about:support and ctrl+f codec
Click to expand...
Thank You, that will be helpful for comparison.
 
With the system downgraded to 2025Q4, I upgraded first firefox-esr, then ffmpeg 6 -> 8.
Everything was still fine.
Then upgraded again everything else to 2026Q1. And the bad framerate is back!
The "install Flashplayer" however did not reappear. And the codec support is all green.

Now searching for the culprit - it must be one of the other ports.
 
It sounds to me like video hardware acceleration broke with the upgrade, maybe some incompatibility with drm, OpenGL, or other dependency that caused Firefox to fallback to software rendering?
 
And the winner is... the window manager! x11-wm/icewm

There is even a bug report https://github.com/ice-wm/icewm/issues/218 - but that bug report does not make anything clearer to me: what has a window manager's "variable refresh rate" (whatever that is) to do with this issue?

Anyway, reverting the commit mentioned in that report solves my issue.

marq said:
It sounds to me like video hardware acceleration broke with the upgrade, maybe some incompatibility with drm, OpenGL, or other dependency that caused Firefox to fallback to software rendering?
Click to expand...
That was my first thought too, but then I would see a surge on CPU compute - which wasn't the case.
 
Wow -- great work root-causing and fixing your problem -- I would have never guessed a window-manager could cause super-slow framerate like that. Congrats, and thank you for sharing..
 
PMc said:
There is even a bug report https://github.com/ice-wm/icewm/issues/218 - but that bug report does not make anything clearer to me: what has a window manager's "variable refresh rate" (whatever that is) to do with this issue?
Click to expand...
Does IceWM do compositing?

With Xfce's compositor, window dragging/scrolling is visibly laggy if I use Intel DDX, but everything's smooth with modesetting. I disable compositor for fast-speeds everywhere (Intel DDX has TearFree)
 
marq said:
Wow -- great work root-causing and fixing your problem -- I would have never guessed a window-manager could cause super-slow framerate like that. Congrats, and thank you for sharing..
Click to expand...
Hehe, You're welcome :) Me neither.

But this was just yesterday's bug-of-the-day. Today it is this one, which insisted on reappearing and really being a nuisance. Let's see what becomes of that.
And, interim I finally solved the PR 289714 - which was a rather lengthy and elaborate thing full of red herrings. It actually resolved into four distinct issues (and took almost four days to resolve), and I was just in the process of doing the writeup, when the other one came in between - so stand by.

Bugs seem to love me, they come to me like flies to a rotten sausage - and I never figured out why...
 
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