Firefox Community Forum

In Firefox, I have audio and video autoplay blocked globally, and added an exception for one particular website (Discord). However, Discord now only autoplays videos once, but doesn't loop them as it should (they implemented GIFs as videos, but now they don't loop).

Of course this could be interpreted as a bug in Discord's web client. However, there shouldn't be a difference between a website that got an exception and autoplay being globally allowed. Therefore i suspect that there is a bug in firefox where some property, state, or hint is set differently depending on whether a page has been added to exceptions or autoplay is allowed globally.

Is there anything i can do to work around this? I really want an autoplay exception to actually work as expected (the website doesn't need to know that it's special)

Context

While playing YouTube videos in Firefox, intermittent crackling appears after a few minutes of playback. This report documents detailed testing that demonstrates the issue is not related to the DAC, USB interface, or system hardware, and is exclusive to Firefox.

2. System Configuration

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X @ 43 °C

RAM: 64 GB DDR4 dual-channel (16-20-20-38 @ 1572 MHz)

Motherboard: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 (AM4) @ 54 °C

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (audio drivers disabled, audio hardware off)

Monitors: LG HDR WFHD 2560x1080@60Hz and IPS236 1920x1080@60Hz

Storage: Multiple SSD and HDD SATA drives (500 GB – 2 TB)

Audio: Realtek High Definition Audio disabled; iFi nano/UNO DAC connected via USB with power filtering, using Exclusive Mode / ASIO

3. Tests Performed 3.1 DAC and USB Validation

Continuous playback of PCM 384 kHz/24‑bit and DSD256 via Roon/ASIO.

Duration: over 25 minutes of uninterrupted DSD256 playback.

Result: no crackling, pops, or errors.

Conclusion: DAC, firmware, USB cables, ports, and power supply are fully operational; heavy data load does not cause errors.

3.2 Browser Comparison

Chrome (YouTube, identical conditions): continuous playback without crackling.

Firefox (YouTube, identical conditions): crackling progressively appears minutes into playback, temporarily disappearing when the video is paused.

3.3 Isolation of Variables

USB motherboard ports and original drivers fully tested.

GPU audio drivers and hardware disabled.

Windows Shared Mode off, Exclusive Mode enabled.

Predefined audio formats set according to DAC preferences.

USB power management disabled.

DAC temperature stable; no overheating observed.

4. Technical Conclusion

Hardware: DAC, USB, cables, power, firmware, and GPU are not the cause of the crackling.

Operating System: Windows 11 is correctly configured; Exclusive Mode / ASIO works without errors.

Browser: Firefox is the only element consistently reproducing the issue.

Most Likely Cause: Firefox’s buffer management and audio sandboxing interacting with Windows, causing intermittent interruptions in audio flow.

Summary: All hardware and OS factors have been tested and validated: DAC, USB, cables, power supply, firmware, GPU, and temperature do not produce crackling. The only consistent factor is Firefox, making this a software-bound issue.

Engineering Note: This diagnosis conclusively demonstrates that the intermittent audio crackling on YouTube is caused exclusively by Firefox on Windows 11, independent of DAC or USB hardware. The issue should be investigated at the browser level, specifically how Firefox handles continuous digital audio streams and buffers on Windows.

Some videos work perfectly fine, however for some videos audio lags behind the video. The same video file perfectly works in Chromium as a control test. Example file is MP4, inside was initially h264 video with AAC audio, for test I re-encoded video to be svt-AV1 with AAC / flac as well - no difference, audio still lags behind. Local players (mpv) and Chromium works perfectly. No plugins which can affect it - for testing disabled them all. I really try hard to like Firefox but this thing is a real bummer. Any ideas what can be causing? P.S. I tested both firefox compiled from source and binary package provided by my distro. Linux system if that matters.

Reposting until I get help from someone. Windows/desktop. On Google Chrome, any streaming website I used with autoplay enabled would KEEP full screen mode ON after changing episodes. It would automatically go to a new page with the following episode and remain full screen. Why doesn't Firefox have this feature?? I'm seriously considering going back to Google Chrome for this one small feature. Every time I had any streaming service playing with autoplay enabled, I didn't have to manually select the full screen option every time. I am having to stand up and manually click full screen function. Every. Single. Time. Somebody please help me if there's a way to active that function.

After installing update 147.0, when watching videos on YouTube or twitch, artifacts appear on the monitor and an error message appears stating that your driver has been restored to its default value. In version Firefox 146.0. There were no such problems, and in general there were no such problems. But my graphics card is not a new AMD Radeon R7 250X 1gb. Version 147.0 states that "Improved video playback performance on systems with AMD GPUs by enabling zero-copy playback for hardware-decoded video where supported, bringing them to parity with Intel and NVIDIA GPUs." I think the reason here is the incompatibility of either drivers or with encoding support on old video cards, I hope that the developers will fix this problem for me.

I've just switched to Fedora 43 KDE plasma from Windows. On Windows, everything was totally find with videos on Firefox. After migration I kept having an error message "The media playback was aborted due to a corruption problem or because the media used features your browser did not support." not only on one site (else it could have been the site). After searching for solution here and on the Net, I found out that it's not related to Fedora but to Firefox when using Radeon RX7700XT on Linux (idem with several distros). And indeed, when installing other browser and testing them there was no problem, even with LibreWolf. So can you please take action as I like Firefox and I would not like to have to move everything to an other browser. And it seems that this problem has been around for at least two years ... which you should be ashamed of.

I'm on a Mac using Mac OS Big Sur, 11.7.10.

Videos will not play on Firefox, whether on Youtube, in social media, on websites, or whatever. Sometimes the video will play with no audio, sometimes I just getting a rolling wheel.

I have other functionality issues that may be related.

I don't want to close and restart all the time. I am considering changing to a new default browser over the issue.

If I switch to Chrome or Safari, the videos play fine. Which seems like my answer.

Today when I went to play spotify on Firefox browser it said playback of protected content is not enaybled and at the top it says "The WidevineCdm plugin has crashed". Ive tried everything I could think of and possibly do.

Ive tried: Restarting my computer Deleting and reinstalling Firefox Using troubleshoot mode Disabling Widevine plugin Refreshing the page Toggling DRM content off then on again and ive submitted all crash reports

Im just not sure what to try next, if anyones experiences this before and has bypassed it somehow. Please share

bp-e21ca90b-5175-409b-b70b-72bd50260130

Hello,

I just upgraded to the latest FF version 147.0.2 64-bit and now the video's on Facebook stop playing when I change to another window. As soon as the FB windows is not selected (in focus) they stop. Going back to the FB window, the video can be restarted.

Can you please investigate/fix this? Thanks!!!