what causes streamed videos to freeze in certain spots? And other freezing probs

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DaRuSsIaMaN

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 22, 2007
Messages
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It happens often to me that I'm watching videos, and at some points they will "hiccup": the visual part of it freezes for a sec or two, while the dialogue (or music/singing) goes on, and then it skips forward and resumes playing normally. This can happen with music videos or other clips. So if this effect happens in the same spot, can I conclude that the video at that point is too much for my computer to handle fully? I was running a performance tracking software, and most of the time as I'm watching, the CPU usage hovers in the 90%'s hitting 100% occasionally. So is it my CPU that is not quite keeping up or is it my video card? If I were to upgrade one of the 2, which would help more in solving this, a better cpu or better video card?

**
Another thing. Also, I notice that often, even when I'm not doing anything like watching a video, my cpu usage periodically spikes really high, up to 100%. I can't quite figure out why it keeps doing that. For example, as I'm typing this post, sometimes the letters stop showing up for a second as I'm typing... and then it "unfreezes" and everything I typed in the meantime comes out all at once. (Meanwhile I see the cpu spike in my performance tracking software) I can't exactly figure out what is causing this to happen. It's really frustrating/annoying, though. Do you guys know what the cause of it is? Obviously, I bet this contributes to my disrupted video watching experience.

Check out the image of the cpu usage:

cpuusage.jpg


This is happening when I'm not even watching a video.


Thanks for help!
 
Last edited:
Oh yeah. Forgot about that. I did and it's firefox, actually. But why does it do that?
 
Does Firefox do that when displaying a blank page? What sort of add-ons are you using? And have you scanned with a good anti-virus like Avira lately? And what's using so much of your RAM?
 
1. I tested your idea of having just a blank page, and no, it did not do that at all.

cpuusage2.jpg


(highlight added by me)

firefox stayed at 0 cpu the entire time, no spikes.

2. I do have like 10+ add-ons. Should I list them all? I will if you really think that could be it.
3. I'm pretty confident it's not a virus because I have avast running 100% of the time.

I think this happens when *some* sites are open... I think Gmail is one of them. I had my gmail inbox in one of the windows, and then I closed it, and it seemed to be normal after that. Is that reasonable? Would gmail or some other sites cause this, like facebook?

Although, I am typing this post, and it is definitely doing these spikes occasionally, yet the only other web site i have open is photobucket.com. (No gmail) Is photobucket also causing it? It's more rare than it was before but still happening consistently every once in a while.

Is this even a reasonable theory? That these spikes happen from some certain websites?
 
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