4K Stuttering on YouTube

[mattspeer01]

I just bought a new Dell P2715Q UHD monitor which supports 60Hz 4K resolution. Before purchasing, I checked Nvidia's website to ensure my GTX 660 Ti supported this same standard, and it does over DisplayPort. However, when I try to view 4K content on YouTube, I experience extreme choppiness in the audio and video. Switching to any other resolution, even 1440p, results in smooth playback. I have a 2 generation-old Core i7 and 16 GB RAM and the latest video card drivers installed. Any reason why my computer doesn't seem to hack the 4K resolution? Is my video card to blame?

 

[Ketchup]

You have the display and video for it, but remember that higher resolution also means more data to stream. And you mentioned the indicator here:

"However, when I try to view 4K content on YouTube, I experience extreme choppiness in the audio and video."

You may need to upgrade to a faster internet service if you want to view these in 4k without the hiccups.

Also, I found this comment interesting:

"As beautiful as these are, unfortunately YouTube still mangles and chops up all 4K uploads. I know because I upload regularly in spotless, lossless 3840x2160 (4K), and without exception, YouTube turns every video into pea soup, regardless of the codec I use to render the vid."

Take of that as you will.

 

[mattspeer01]

I generally get over 100 Mbps down and it was around that speed when I was streaming, which should be plenty even for 4K. The videos all buffered just fine (the loading status bar was well ahead of the actual playback point).

 

[Ketchup]

Have you tried more than one video? I tried one just now at 4k and the audio was fine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pxRHBw-k8M

I will also say that whenever I am playing youtube on a vm on one of my laptops it will stutter from time to time if I am accessing the hard drive a lot.

Edit: I also noticed that this video requires flash, so make sure your version of Flash is up to date.

 

[Smoove910]

The ultimate way to test would be to download a 4k video somehow. Watch the video while it's playing locally... if it's still choppy, then you know it's something hardware related. If it's smooth, it's network related.

 

[denis280]

The ultimate way to test would be to download a 4k video somehow. Watch the video while it's playing locally... if it's still choppy, then you know it's something hardware related. If it's smooth, it's network related.

this:thumbsup:

 

[ninaholic37]

The ultimate way to test would be to download a 4k video somehow. Watch the video while it's playing locally... if it's still choppy, then you know it's something hardware related. If it's smooth, it's network related.

Thirded :thumbsup:

But that doesn't always mean network, it could just be Youtube+Browser sucks

 

[TheELF]

chrome but also youtube uses htlm5 for videos which is even worse than flash,look at your cpu utilization when you try to watch 4k ,my guess is that one of your cores maxes out and thereby slows down your playback.
See if you can use this plugin "Disable Youtube™ HTML5 Player" this will help somewhat.

Also about your VGA ,displaying 4k resolution,say as in the plain desktop, is something totally different than decoding h.265 which is much more demanding.

 

[mattspeer01]

chrome but also youtube uses htlm5 for videos which is even worse than flash,look at your cpu utilization when you try to watch 4k ,my guess is that one of your cores maxes out and thereby slows down your playback.
See if you can use this plugin "Disable Youtube™ HTML5 Player" this will help somewhat.

Also about your VGA ,displaying 4k resolution,say as in the plain desktop, is something totally different than decoding h.265 which is much more demanding.

Wow, so I just tried playing the same videos in Internet Explorer and they play smoothly. As soon as I switch back to Chrome, they stutter again. Downloading 4K videos also worked well. I wonder why Chrome has issues playing 4K content? Firefox also has no issues. I tried that plugin on Chrome and that seems to help the issue, although it doesn't look quite as smooth as IE or Firefox. My CPU utilization on Chrome is only around 55% when playing 4K video.

 

[Mark222]

Hm.. The hardware is ok

 

[ninaholic37]

My CPU utilization on Chrome is only around 55% when playing 4K video.

If it's a desktop i7, each core is only represented by 12.5% CPU, so 55% CPU could mean 4 pages are using 100% CPU (max) on 4 cores. Laptop i7 models can vary between 2 and 4 cores so 55% CPU could mean 100% CPU (max) on one core (Youtube) and 10% on another core (background tasks). Like TheELF said, it makes more sense to check each Core individually, but Windows (especially 8+) can do fast core-switching sometimes so it's harder to tell. 55% CPU does not mean the cores being used by Youtube aren't using 100% of what they can potentially use already so you may still be CPU bottlenecked in Chrome.

 

[Ketchup]

Wow, so I just tried playing the same videos in Internet Explorer and they play smoothly. As soon as I switch back to Chrome, they stutter again. Downloading 4K videos also worked well. I wonder why Chrome has issues playing 4K content? Firefox also has no issues. I tried that plugin on Chrome and that seems to help the issue, although it doesn't look quite as smooth as IE or Firefox. My CPU utilization on Chrome is only around 55% when playing 4K video.

That is interesting. The last time I used Chrome I did notice it using a bit more CPU than FF, but I assumed it was because I was using a VM with 1 core of a CPU and not as much video acceleration.

 

[inachu]

Chrome does a lot of prefetching that could be slowing it down.

There are advanced settings in chrome to make it stop prefetching so much so it acts more like a normal browser. I myself unchecked the prerender stuff so all that is done on my pc and not on the google servers.