Solved Videos on YT and FB suddenly behaving strange

Hi all, I am new here and hoping to get a tip from someone. Apologies if this has been asked before, but I tried searching and could not find it.

Since a week or so, my PC running Windows 11 (22H2) suddenly has a very annoying and elusive problem. Whenever I play a video in YouTube or Facebook, the sound plays normally but the video behaves very weird. Initially it is standing still on the first frame or so for a random amount of time, then if and when it starts moving it is way out of sync with the audio, and is likely to stop again at any time. Every now and then it seems to work normally, but mostly not. There does not seem to be any logic to it. I haven't been changing anything as far as I know. Since then I have updated Windows, all Intel drivers and Chrome to the most recent version, but it did not help.

This is really driving me batshit, so if there's any ideas out there I would be very grateful !
Cheers,
Chris

If you have a video file stored on your computer does the same issue occur when playing it? I use VLC/VideoLAN for those stored videos. An issue with streaming can occur due to the various servers the signal goes through, variable speeds from the source to the destination, saw a lot of it back in the days of Dial-Up Internet Service Providers.

Are you watching the Youtube Video in your browser Chrome?
If yes, please look if the problem happens in Edge as well.

If it's there as well, the problem likelely has to be somewhere in Windows.
If it is not, the problem has to do with Chrome or it's settings.

As I don't use Chrome, I can't tell what to do (but there centainly are other members her who can). In every browser however there is an option to reset the browser to a default state. Before you do that, please record all setup pages s of Chrome in screenshots and save them.

Use another browser to see if condition exists.
Solutions for each major browser. 7 Ways to Fix Audio and Video Sync Problems with YouTube

Thanks guys for your replies, much appreciated ! This seems a lively and helpful forum.

@Berton I had already seen that there was no problem with local files played with VLC. Network speed should not be an issue, glassfiber 200+ Mbps.

@Kees Good point. I had already tried Edge, and while I initially thought Edge did not have the issue, it started behaving in the same way. Well, sometimes. Then I found that Chrome does not always have the problem, sometimes it works just fine. So that's why I got confused and thought it might be a Windows issue. Not so sure now... Maybe I should be focusing on the browsers and post in a Chrome forum.

@glasskuter I'm not sure about Edge yet, will try with other browsers as well, and try the suggestions in that link.

I did some more testing with Edge and found it to behave just as badly as Chrome. Then tried Opera - more of the same. So I start to think this might be a Windows 11 issue rather than a browser issue. Through for good measure, I tried the suggestions for Chrome in that link @glasskuter posted, but it made no difference. Damn, this is starting to take the fun right out of watching YT I'll try a post on the YT community.

cbreemer said:

So I start to think this might be a Windows 11 issue rather than a browser issue

Click to expand...

Do other video broadcast websites have the same problem or is it just youtube?

The most common cause of audio/video sync problem is latency. This can be caused by your internet connection or even blue tooth speakers or headphones.

If you haven't already try these suggestions.

1. Make sure your power plan is set to balanced, NOT power saver.

2. Control panel - Sound. Choose active speakers and right click - click properties - click the advanced tab - make sure format is set to 24 bit 48000hz, then uncheck "enable audio enhancement". (you can change audio enhancement back if it makes no difference)

3. Make sure you have the latest Iris graphics driver. The best way to do that is go to Intel site. Download and install Intel Driver Support Assist tool. This tool can keep all your Intel drivers up-to-date. Intel® Driver & Support Assistant

4. Update your sound driver.

5. You can eliminate corrupt system files being the cause by running System File Checker.
Enter command in search box. Select 'command prompt app' from search results. Select run as administrator.
type sfc /scannow
Pay attention to the scan results to see if SFC found anything it could not repair. If it found corruption it could not fix followup with this command (note the spaces)
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
Restart computer
(Note-you can follow up with another sfc /scannow command to make sure that dism repaired the files

Thanks again @glasskuter ! I first noticed the issue with a Facebook reel so I guess it's not YT specific.
I followed up on all your tips. I find the Intel Assistant a bit confusing, but it says all Intel drivers are up to date and looking at the versions and dates, I believe they are.
The sfc scan reported corrupted files, in the logfle I only found this

2023-10-23 22:51:58, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\bthmodem.sys
2023-10-23 22:51:58, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Repaired file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\bthmodem.sys

By the name, something with Bluetooth ? I only use that for my keyboard and mouse, not for audio or video. Still, perhaps now that this is repaired my keyboard will give up on its random antics (intermittently not reacting, or looping on one key).

After reboot, sfc reported no issues. And when I watched some YT videos, all seemed fine. Ready to cheer... but no, suddenly my video got stuck again as before. Tried some mode videos, and some work, some don't. No logic to it. Still back in square zero.

Presently I have my USB speakers hooked up to the audio output jack of my LG monitor (which is connected to the PC via HDMI). I did that because I had problems with the speakers connected via USB and I could not be bothered to sort them out. Is this an unusual thing to do ? I don't know if this is related to the problem, I was using this setup long before the problem started. But I think I should really try and get the USB connection working.

cbreemer said:

Thanks again @glasskuter ! I first noticed the issue with a Facebook reel so I guess it's not YT specific.
I followed up on all your tips. I find the Intel Assistant a bit confusing, but it says all Intel drivers are up to date and looking at the versions and dates, I believe they are.
The sfc scan reported corrupted files, in the logfle I only found this

2023-10-23 22:51:58, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Corrupt file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\bthmodem.sys
2023-10-23 22:51:58, Info DEPLOY [Pnp] Repaired file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\bthmodem.sys

By the name, something with Bluetooth ? I only use that for my keyboard and mouse, not for audio or video. Still, perhaps now that this is repaired my keyboard will give up on its random antics (intermittently not reacting, or looping on one key).

After reboot, sfc reported no issues. And when I watched some YT videos, all seemed fine. Ready to cheer... but no, suddenly my video got stuck again as before. Tried some mode videos, and some work, some don't. No logic to it. Still back in square zero.

Presently I have my USB speakers hooked up to the audio output jack of my LG monitor (which is connected to the PC via HDMI). I did that because I had problems with the speakers connected via USB and I could not be bothered to sort them out. Is this an unusual thing to do ? I don't know if this is related to the problem, I was using this setup long before the problem started. But I think I should really try and get the USB connection working.

Click to expand...

This error also appeared for me after the first SFC scan whenever I did a clean installation. bthmodem.sys

Youtube-dl is the answer. Convert those annoying DRM videos to a more standard MP4 format and all problems with playback and unwanted ads go away.

NonGravis said:

Youtube-dl is the answer. Convert those annoying DRM videos to a more standard MP4 format and all problems with playback and unwanted ads go away.

Click to expand...

if you want to download youtube videos, I dont think he wants to download them.

NonGravis said:

Youtube-dl is the answer. Convert those annoying DRM videos to a more standard MP4 format and all problems with playback and unwanted ads go away.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, though downloading every YT vid before watching is really not an option.

ShamrockRig said:

if you want to download youtube videos, I dont think he wants to download them.

Click to expand...

Nope, not particularly When I do want to download I use 4k Video Downloader.

erhanercan said:

This error also appeared for me after the first SFC scan whenever I did a clean installation. bthmodem.sys

Redirecting

Click to expand...

Interesting. My system is also quite new and this was the first SFC scan I ever did. It seems to be a very common problem.

cbreemer said:

Presently I have my USB speakers hooked up to the audio output jack of my LG monitor (which is connected to the PC via HDMI). I did that because I had problems with the speakers connected via USB and I could not be bothered to sort them out. Is this an unusual thing to do ? I don't know if this is related to the problem, I was using this setup long before the problem started. But I think I should really try and get the USB connection working.

Click to expand...

Not an ideal situation to have speakers connected to monitor. I'm not a fan of usb speakers. I'm old school and have always used powered speakers.

Every time I ever had the sound/video sync problem it was always network related. It can be caused by either speed or latency. Since you say videos do work...sometimes...IMO I would troubleshoot it from a network perspective. Do all your troubleshooting using the same browser. I also suggest to do it with hardware acceleration turned off within the browser. (Just this week I was playing an online game using Edge. My fans starting going nuts and temps began to rise. Hardware acceleration was the culprit in my case)

Here's all the other things I can think of to try.

1. First reset your network adapter. Reset Network Adapters in Windows 11 Tutorial

2. Reset your router by powering off, wait 15 seconds and power back on.

3. Check your internet speed. When this is not happening, run a speed test. Then when it does happen run another speed test to compare readings. Running a speed test also lets you see if you are getting the speed from the isp that you are paying for.

4. Latency is the biggest cause of this issue. You can check it but there's little the end user can do that can change it (changing your dns server might help. It's a longshot but worth a try) My isp dns servers are slow so I changed mine to use Google's dns servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4)

5. You can check the latency through the network to the destination using the command line's traceroute function. Traceroute can show if and where the throughput is bottlenecked. If you live in a foreign country there can be many hops in the throughput. If traceroute shows the bottleneck to be at your isp server you would have a legitimate complaint to take it up with them.

This explains what tracerout does. Measure Your Network Latency Before It Becomes a Problem

This explains better how to run traceroute.
The output of a traceroute reading is much easier to understand than it looks. Traceroute is usually an IT tool but I tried to find a decent tutorial that explains it simply as possible. How to Use Traceroute to Identify Network Problems

That's it. I'm out of ideas. Good luck.

Another big thanks for all your suggestions @glasskuter !

As for USB vs powered speakers, mine are powered but can get their audio by USB, audio cable or bluetooth. I tried USB first but could not get it to work. My NUC computer does not heave an audio socket, only a headphone socket (not sure if these are the same or not ?) so I decided to use the audio socket on the monitor. I feel like there's room for some experimentation here.

I followed all your suggestions, one by one, but sadly none has helped ! I well understand why you think of latency, but I can hardly believe that is the culprit. My fairly powerful NUC is connected by Cat 5e UTP cable to glass fiber internet, the speed measured by Ookla is a solid 210 Mbps whether or on the problem is currently happening or not. It's always worked beautifully, without any glitch, until a week ago or so. I wonder if it was the Windows update of oct. 11 that caused it. Maybe the problem will go away eventually.... such thing has happened before. Perhaps I should replace my UTP 5e cable by an UTP 6 ? Although with my 210Mbps speed (which is just because I don't want to pay for a higher speed) this seems a bit of overkill.

The traceroute output seems fairly normal I believe, with not all too many hops. These timeouts tend to worry me a bit, but I read everywhere that this is fairly normal and can be ignored.

Tracing route to youtube.com [172.217.168.206]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 5 ms 4 ms 4 ms 100.64.0.1
4 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 100.64.0.2
5 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 62.45.63.237
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 9 ms 6 ms 7 ms 172.253.71.29
8 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms 108.170.227.3
9 6 ms 4 ms 4 ms ams16s32-in-f14.1e100.net [172.217.168.206]

Well, you did your best to help, for which I am very grateful

cbreemer said:

....downloading every YT vid before watching is really not an option.

Click to expand...

Watching in VLC could be an option though. Use Media > Network stream (or Ctrl+N) amd paste in the youtube URL.
You may need to put a copy of the latest youtube.lua in your C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\playlist folder.

youtube wasn't working for me on edge. personally tested it. it works on Firefox.

Bree said:

Watching in VLC could be an option though. Use Media > Network stream (or Ctrl+N) amd paste in the youtube URL.
You may need to put a copy of the latest youtube.lua in your C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\playlist folder.

vlc/share/lua/playlist/youtube.lua at master · videolan/vlc

VLC media player - All pull requests are ignored, please follow https://wiki.videolan.org/Sending_Patches_VLC/ - videolan/vlc

github.com

Click to expand...

Thanks ! I did not know that VLC could directly open a YouTube URL. I'll have to give that a try, useful if there's something I really want to watch. Though this makes surfing YT (and relying on it to play the next suggestion, which I often do) really cumbersome.

gaffar said:

youtube wasn't working for me on edge. personally tested it. it works on Firefox.

Click to expand...

Youtube works fine for me in every browser I tried. Except for this problem, which I see in every browser. But it's not just YouTube, also Facebook and Vimeo.