some youtube videos stuttering / lagging on firefox: cause + solution

[Sethioz]

for a while, i've had issues with my 2022 firefox where it's unable to properly play certain youtube videos. by certain videos, i mean that most videos play fine, but some do not. for example battlebots channel, most videos on battlebots channel do not play properly, they buffer fine, but often get stuck, go backwards, skip over 5-15 seconds segments or permanently get stuck and don't play at all. even after refreshing the page and/or changing quality, they play for a while and then same thing starts happening.

i know what lot of you idiots say "omg 2022 fafafafaf update fafafaf". for those, i only have this to say "why don't you update your brain and common sense instead"

those who are not totally braindead and want to actually fix the issue, it happens because of typical reasons -- idiot devs update things that don't need fixing nor updating. for example i have firefox on win xp aswell, it works flawlessly and it only takes about 300mb ram while running, but firefox 2022 and later versions, take like 2gb+ ram when they're running. it's so horrible.
i also have firefox on my media laptop, it's older laptop with dual-core cpu and 3gb ram and NO i'm not going to "fafafaf buy new fafafaf" because i use it for MOVIES only! it's connected to tv and i use kodi on it. there's no need to "fafafa update fafafaf", because it's only purpose is to PLAY MOVIES. i'm not going to spend thousands on a new laptop just to watch movies, this is why rich imbeciles would do.

firefox there is nearly unuseable due 3gb RAM, it just hogs it up and then starts lagging. i made that mistake years ago by updating firefox there, it just made it worse.

in our current era, 99% of the time when there is update, it just means "add more shit, make performance worse, spy more on user by adding lot of telemetry shit, disable ability to disable updates ..etc"
for example firefox has totally disabled the feature to be able to turn updates off, it's cuz they want to SPY on users and FORCE updates.
ok anyways, enough "rant", read below why it's happening and how to fix it.

Cause:
updates are broken and they are using resource-hungry and unoptimized codecs. this is typical nowdays, updates only break things and add shit that is not necessary.

Fix:
get mozavcodec.dll file from older firefox. i took mine from 2020 version of firefox. it's in the root folder of firefox.
I suggest rename your old mozavcodec.dll to something like mozavcodec.dll.bak and then place the "new" (older version) of that file into your firefox directory.
this fixed the stuttering and lagging issues on certain videos.

Conclusion:
updates are NOT your friend, updates are your enemy. SO STOP UPDATING if there's no need for it! only things you should update, is graphics drivers when a new game comes out, cuz graphics drivers often include optimization for newer games, but from experience, those optimizations are very minimal and usually are not needed. in my entire life, i have seen maybe 2-3 games that have had significant enough fps boost so it would be worth updating drivers, while in other games devs are just screaming "update update UPDATE UPDAAATEEE UPDAAAATEEEEE" for no reason at all.
bottom line: DO NOT UPDATE anything, unless something stops working and you have found solid proof that update would fix those issues.

for example i use Kodi on my media laptop, older version runs smooth, but new version lags even in menus. lot of people on kodi forums are reporting same, that they can't use their older pc or laptop to even go into menu.
those devs are retarded just like the rest, they keep adding junk that only hogs resources, it's a VIDEO PLAYER, what is there to update? leave it alone! it plays movies, there is nothing to update!
just like winamp, i use 2013 winamp to play MUSIC, it plays MUSIC, there is NOTHING to update. unless there will be some huge breakthru in music, like some "audio VR" that uses totally different method to project music, maybe some kind of laser-based sound audio that would replicate room-wide audio without speakers, then MAYBE you'd need a different type of software to play music, but til that day, i'm going to keep using 2013 winamp as it's super lightweight and it does exactly what i need it to do -- plays music! it has all the features i need, it support global hotkeys, it supports online radios, easy to manage playlists ..etc and most of all, it doesn't rely on online services and it doesn't hog resources. it takes maybe like 10mb RAM. so there's NOTHING to update! you can also copy paste entire winamp folder without installation. i haven't installed winamp since 2013, i just copy paste it. this is how GOOD software should work! same with older firefox, you can just copy entire folder and it works, but new ones are bloated with all sorts of garbage and trash.