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JW Player is extremely laggy on one page in Chrome and IE

All of the players that are loading using jwplayer.js on one part of my site are lagging strangely.

In Chrome, when clicking on jwplayer the page freezes and gets really choppy, sometimes flash crashes or becomes completely unresponsive.

In IE9, the page loads till the jwplayer then just sits there for a long time, clicking on the player is similarly laggy once it loads.

The player is using the same exact jwplayer.js and player.swf as other parts of the site that are working fine.

I've tried downgrading/upgrading to every version of jwplayer that uses jwplayer.js, including the trunk version from svn.

The closest I have come to a reason was a chrome console error message that jwplayer.js has exceeded maximum heap size.

Pages this is occuring on..
http://www.coffeeshopmillionaire.com/members/6fsc/welcome/
http://www.coffeeshopmillionaire.com/members/ <--Video at top

user: jwplayer
password: test1

I have a jwplayer license, so if you see an unlicensed player it was because I was testing or using the trunk player.

Greatly appreciate insight that could be provided, I've spent the past 24 hours desperately trying to debug and find out what is causing this problem.

20 Community Answers

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

@Chris

This isn't a JWPlayer issue rather an issue with your system. It sounds like that the issues is with the JVM.

Not knowing more about your system's specs. I cannot give you further help or try.

Btw, with FF 4.o it also lags before the videos is seen...too long IMHO.

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JW Player

User  
-1 rated :

This is happening to a huge number of customers, as well as a few other friends I have asked to look at it.

I'm not sure why JVM would be an issue as java isn't used anywhere on the site.

The server is hosted by the Rackspace Cloud. My personal specs are quite high, the machine I am testing on has a Intel i7 980x and 24gb of fast memory.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
-1 rated :

For me, I do not experience the issue, my specs are not that good.

I think there might be an issue with the skin, though. What happens if you don’t use it?

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JW Player

User  
-2 rated :

No difference, what browser/os are you using? (Also what version?)

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
-1 rated :

I have tested out your site in IE6, 7, and 8, on Win XP, Flash 10.2, works fine for me. I also tried out the latest version of Chrome.

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

If I bought a support license, do you think I would be able to get more help with figuring this out?

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

@ethan

Likewise works in FF4.0, FF5.01, FF6.0a2, Opera11.11, Chrome 13.0.767.1 and Maxthon 3.023.1000

There is an issue in lag some not as others some more.

IF and only IF this happens across the board then the issue may lie with your ISP.

Talk to them and ask IF they 'throttle' your bandwidth.

have you checked your d/l and u/l speed?

BUT before you do talk to them, To check, I would recommend, www.speedtest.net and select the server nearest to you. take a note of the d/l and u/l speeds.

Then when speaking to the technical support ask them what connectivity you are paying for.

IF there is a difference between in what they tell you what you get then ask them for a possible explanation.

Most ISPs that throttle the bandwidth dont tell their customers this fact since they very often oversubscribe their bandwidth and have to use throttling.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

@Willie Meier – Thanks for chiming in.

@Chris M – If you buy a support license, you will still get the same answer. We can’t fix something if we can’t replicate the issue ourselves.

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Its not a bandwidth issue, the lag isn't with the video loading but with the actual page, the cpu usage for the flash plugin jumps higher and starts blocking the window from rendering.

My bandwidth is 35MB down, 1MB up (actual bandwidth, not just advertised), throttled. The video at the top works because I temporarily replaced it with flowplayer, which solved the issue. I'd much rather use jw player though. All static files associated with the video are stored on cloudfront.

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

I made a screencast of the problem.
http://screencast.com/t/0Nd4bZTh7J

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

@Chris

I don't believe that it is the JWPlayer otherwise the issue would be re-producible across the board irrespective of what OS you are using.

As in what I saw, it is the 1st 10-20 sec that there is this jerkyness or shakiness after that the video runs smooth.

it can be only one of two issues that affect

(a) bandwidth
(b) environment that is to say the rendering engines(trident, and webkit)

have you tried raising the bufferlength?

I can't at the moment place my finger on the issue BUT I have seen this before particularly in satellite/computer networks that were having a capacity 3x in what claim to you have.

I still would be curious in seeing the results of the speedtest.

When I was senior Operation Engineer at a satellite earth station I had access to bi-directional 100MB conectivity

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

oops typo, connectivity

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

This problem is reproducible across o/s. 2/8 people I have talked to and personally had verify the problem (that is to say not including customers) were using Macs.

The issue is NOT a bandwidth issue, I have plenty of other videos using the same files and embedding issues and working fine. Just for giggles I did try setting the buffer length though, no effect.

Videos that are using jwplayer but NOT using jwplayer.js to embed work fine. Something on that page is specifically causing it to not work correctly.

Another two videos to demonstrate the increase in CPU usage used during loading of these videos to others.

http://screencast.com/t/yl6z34Fvd6Y
http://screencast.com/t/cV9R9F1yXbH

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

It is not a JWPlayer issue

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

It turns out the issue was due to jwplayer.js being added twice, the second time from the jwplayer addon that I was not using.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Ahh, got it! Glad you got it sorted.

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Hi Ethan,

My MP4 video works perfectly fine in FireFox, but in IE, it chops like crazy and freezes the browser for a few seconds, then continues to play the sound but barely plays the video.

The URL is here: http://theecareportsdev2010.ecasitebuild.com/

Here is the code:
<script type='text/javascript' src='/sites/all/themes/theeca/jwplayer/jwplayer.js'></script>
<div id="mediaplayer"> </div>
<script type="text/javascript">
jwplayer('mediaplayer').setup({
'id': 'playerID',
'width': '748',
'height': '465',
'smoothing': 'false',
'file': 'http://content.bitsontherun.com/videos/DlgAWnjp-1274045.mp4',
'skin': '/sites/all/themes/theeca/jwplayer/skins/glow/glow.zip',
'image': '/sites/all/themes/theeca/video/video-still.jpg',
'controlbar': 'over',
'bufferlength': '20',
'modes': [
{type: 'html5'},
{type: 'flash', src: '/sites/all/themes/theeca/jwplayer/player.swf'}
]
});
</script>


Any ideas why this is happening/can you reproduce the issue?

Thanks,
Mike

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

I checked this on IE8 / Win XP, and I am not able to reproduce this.

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JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Thanks for checking it out, strangely enough I am also on IE8/XP and this only happens in IE, not in FF or Chrome.

Did the video play smoothly for you?

I guess if its just my machine IDC that much (I use FF anyway) just don't want my members to be seeing it the way I am.

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Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Yes, it plays smoothly for me.

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