Online videos sometimes only play first frame and video freezes

Restarting PulseAudio works but… why? Some conflict with Pipewire perhaps? Is there a more permanent fix for this?

try to install pipewire with this package: manjaro-pipewire, it will give you dependency issues, so uninstall them, then install it again, and reboot, and check
if it doesnt work, install this package: manjaro-pulse, it will remove pipewire, reboot and check

2 Likes

My hunch was correct. :wink:

It appears as a video / GPU issue on the surface, but it likely has something to do with the player refusing to “resume” if there is no proper audio output. By forcing the pulseaudio service to restart, you temporarily correct this issue, and thus the video player will “resume” like normal.


I noticed this with a recent update, and as alluded by @brahma above, it may in fact be due to a conflict between PipeWire and PulseAudio.

My “daily driver” laptop does not have this issue (KDE), however, my secondary laptop (Xfce) continues to suffer from this issue, of which I just do the service restart “trick” to be able to watch videos like normal.

I haven’t yet discovered a permanent fix for this (yet) on my Xfce system.

You might try @brahma’s above steps, while in the meantime use the systemctl --user restart pulseaudio trick I shared above if you need to be able to watch videos in a jiffy-type situation. :woozy_face:


EDIT: Wait a minute! You pulled a switcheroo on me! :rofl: I just realized the original poster @David5 did not reply with their results yet.

But glad the “trick” worked for your case in the meantime, which makes me wonder if @David5’s issue overlaps with ours? :thinking:

I noticed you’re both using GNOME, and the “problematic” system of mine is on Xfce. However, the “no problems” system of mine is KDE.

1 Like

Thanks for the suggestion, @brahma. The dependencies were going back a bit too far, trying to get me to uninstall Gnome components and all that. I’m not handy enough to use pamac properly so found this solution to get ride of PulseAudio and install Pipewire instead:

sudo pacman -Ru --nodeps pulseaudio pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-jack pulseaudio-lirc pulseaudio-rtp pulseaudio-zeroconf pulseaudio-bluetooth pulseaudio-pa pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-ctl manjaro-pulse && sudo pacman -S manjaro-pipewire

Solved it for me.

1 Like

Did you think, or did you try ?

Kernel 5.15 is LTS and is in Stable branch, but Kernel is not your problem.

This problem is Pulse Audio and you need to install Pipewire.

Thank you @winnie , truly. Let me show you the result:

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

So, two things:

  1. This solution seems to fix only the current youtube video. If you try to open another video in another tab, the same problem appears.

  2. This solution seems to disable the audio of the video.

So that’s why my original hunch (which still stands) is that this is not a video / decoding / driver issue. That’s why restarting pulseaudio allows the video to continue playing. (It’s not really that your video “freezes”, it’s just that there’s a “hard pause” on the video until an audio output is “available”.

You might try the workarounds that others in this thread have shared (about installing/reinstalling the relevant packages.)

@brahma Thank you. Just to avoid confusion:

Here it is:

$ mhwd -l && mhwd -li
> 0000:00:02.0 (0300:8086:3ea0) Display controller Intel Corporation:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           video-linux            2018.05.04                true            PCI
     video-modesetting            2020.01.13                true            PCI
            video-vesa            2017.03.12                true            PCI


> Installed PCI configs:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           video-linux            2018.05.04                true            PCI


Warning: No installed USB configs!

if you have pulse issues, install pipewire, reboot and test… there are more people who had audio issue after update and this solved them…

sudo pacman -Ru --nodeps pulseaudio pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-jack pulseaudio-lirc pulseaudio-rtp pulseaudio-zeroconf pulseaudio-bluetooth pulseaudio-pa pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-ctl manjaro-pulse && sudo pacman -S manjaro-pipewire

reboot

@brahma @ShishKebabsMin Thank you both.

I’m afraid I get this error:

error: target not found: pulseaudio-pa

so install this:
sudo pacman -S manjaro-pipewire
it will give you dependency issues, so uninstall them first, then run again the pipewire command, then reboot and test

Thank you, but I need to understand what I’m doing. What is the reason for this error and why does it appear when I try to remove that package?

youre uninstalling pulse audio, and its dependencies and installing pipewire instead… the target not found is you dont have installed pulseaudio-pa
this is the same command but without the pulseaudio-pa:

sudo pacman -Ru --nodeps pulseaudio pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-jack pulseaudio-lirc pulseaudio-rtp pulseaudio-zeroconf pulseaudio-bluetooth pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-ctl manjaro-pulse && sudo pacman -S manjaro-pipewire

Ok, thank you. I’m afraid I get all this:

$ sudo pacman -S manjaro-pipewire
[sudo] password for david: 
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
:: manjaro-pipewire and manjaro-pulse are in conflict. Remove manjaro-pulse? [y/N] y
:: manjaro-pipewire and pulseaudio-zeroconf are in conflict. Remove pulseaudio-zeroconf? [y/N] y
:: pipewire-pulse and pulseaudio are in conflict. Remove pulseaudio? [y/N] y
:: pipewire-pulse and pulseaudio-bluetooth are in conflict. Remove pulseaudio-bluetooth? [y/N] y
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing pulseaudio breaks dependency 'pulseaudio=15.0-4' required by pulseaudio-equalizer
:: removing pulseaudio breaks dependency 'pulseaudio=15.0-4' required by pulseaudio-jack
:: removing pulseaudio breaks dependency 'pulseaudio=15.0-4' required by pulseaudio-lirc
:: removing pulseaudio breaks dependency 'pulseaudio=15.0-4' required by pulseaudio-rtp

run this command, it will take care of the dependencies, and also the pulseaudio-pa is removed from it, so you wont get target not found error:

sudo pacman -Ru --nodeps pulseaudio pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-jack pulseaudio-lirc pulseaudio-rtp pulseaudio-zeroconf pulseaudio-bluetooth pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-ctl manjaro-pulse && sudo pacman -S manjaro-pipewire

reboot

@brahma Thank you. I’ve done that:

(including reboot) but the problem still appears.

@brahma @winnie Thank you both so much for your help. Here are some updates: After trying this:

After reboot the problem is solved but then quite randomly the problem still keeps appearing (only after a reboot the problem disappears) but then after a while it appears again and so on…
Are there any possible updates on this?
Many thanks

try a newer kernel, according to your post above youre using tje 5.10, so install the 5.15 LTS, reboot and test

@brahma Thanks but according to @TheReaperUK I believe the problem is not in the Kernel.

And I wonder why is this still occurring quite randomly