Why are all flash videos lagging a lot?

Question

Windows XP - SP3

I'm using both Firefox 3.5.2 and Opera 10 and I have this problem with both.

Flash videos stutter visually a LOT. During the short millisecond stutters the UI of the browser freezes a bit.

Things I done to try and fix this:

1. Completely formatted my computer with a fresh windows xp install.
2. Cleaned out my PC of all dust and grime.
3. Using a AVG as my antivirus.

What is causing this?

Edit: Thank you all for all the answers! :) I have a backwater ISP and I doubt they even know what throttling even means. I've never had this sort of problem with flash videos in the 4 years I have this computer. I have 2GB ram, and a Dual Core 2.7GHZ processor with nVidia 7300GT graphics card. My machines specs aren't the problem here.

Could it just be a problem with flash in general? What's up with that? :S

EDIT2: Forgot to mention it's not the connection at all, because the buffers loads up fine, at the same pace as usual. It's the playback that's laggy and completely bugges out my browser.

Solution 1

Recently there was a article about Firefox slowing down on videos due to the internal process that saves all open tabs every 10 seconds - you can increase this by going to about:config and increasing the timeout on browser.sessionstore.interval

Article

That however would not fix the problem with Opera.

Personally, I have a good graphics card and fast CPU and see random problems, slow downs and lag in various flash videos. I think the latest few releases are buggy and need refining as I never had this problem in a older version on a slower machine.

I hope the first solution helps you as I know it has helped a lot of people - just not me!

Solution 2

Opera and Firefox use the same Flash player, but not Internet Explorer. How is Flash playback with Internet Explorer?

If Flash with Internet Explorer is fine then the issue is with the Flash player for Opera/Firefox. The fix would be to upgrade or reinstall.

Solution 3

Simply reinstall the latest Flash Player.

Your computer sounds a little old, so maybe you're still using Flash Player 9. We are now on Flash Player 11, as Flash Player might not tell you it needs to be updated.

Comments

[John T]

What's your connection speed? Most ISPs throttle during peak hours and they may have started to throttle you recently if you've downloaded a lot lately.

[Phil]

Well... that's flash. All versions on all systems have performance issues