Audio Distortion when viewing Full-Screen Videos on YouTube and Vimeo

[Tom]

Hi guys...

Say, for a while now, I've been having terrible distortion problems when I view a full-screen YouTube or Vimeo HD (720p) video.  Sometimes, even at 420p the audio will distort when viewed at full screen.

Naturally, I figured my audio drivers were at fault.  I was using the built in mobo audio (Realtek HD with latest drivers), then disabled it and began using my Santa Cruz PCI card.  For a while, that seemed to solve the problem and the audio played fine in full-screen.  But then, after installing a few other programs...some that loaded new audio and video codecs, Boom -- it's distorted again on my Santa Cruz and Realtek devices.

I'm suspecting it could be the ffdshow video or audio codec (used extensively with Corel's Video Studio Pro X3), but I really need that codec -- I do a lot of HD video editing and ffdshow is the bee's knees, as far as I know, of HD codecs.  Of course, it may have nothing to do with ffdshow codecs.

I also installed Adobe Premier Pro Extended CS5, which probably added things.  I really don't know what to look at or where to start in trying to solve this problem.  I love watching videos on my 24" widescreen in full-screen mode, but can't handle the distortion.

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions on how I should go about troubleshooting this?  I love my Santa Cruz card and would hate to lose it because of this...and it DID work fine, earlier.  But who knows what updates have been done on Vimeo and YouTube that may be contributing to the problem.  I can't update my Santa Cruz drivers beyond the last XP version released 6 years ago; no more driver development since then.

[jharris01]

Hi Tom

Could it be Flash related? Can you reproduce the problem on a different browser? Does the distortion happens with your favorite media player application?

If you want to pursue your codec theory try a tool called "Insurgent". You can get it here:

http://www.cccp-project.net/

The tool will give you a list of installed codecs in your computer. That way you can inspect your system and confirm your suspicions about additional codecs installed by other programs.

[Tom]

Hmmm.... My antivirus (AVG) software flagged it as Malware and removed the CCCP software.  But I know I have over 300 audio & video codecs listed from various sources:  Nero, Adobe, Corel, Ulead, etc.

I had thought I previously tried all browsers, but I forget about trying Internet Explorer, since I never use it.  Full-screen videos play back fine in IE v6 (which is what I have installed.)  Generally, I use Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and the distortion happens in both of those browsers.  I have the latest version of Flash, DirectShow and DirectX installed. 

This would obviously point to a browser-related problem, so now I have to find out why full-screen video playback affects these two browsers.  Guess I should try Safari, as well.