Jerky online video playback on Macbook

Hello folks

I did a few searches for this issue before starting a new thread; please accept my apologies if I've missed a thread which already dealt with it.

In the last few weeks I have noticed that my Macbook plays back online video with fairly severe jerkiness, which it didn't use to do. Videos will often hang for several seconds, with the audio stuck on repeat. This happens on youtube and other flash-based sites, but also with Quicktime trailers on the apple website, so I assume it's not a flash issue (though I may well be wrong!)

I don't seem to have any issues with video stored on my HDD, and the machine otherwise runs very well.

I'm using an early (2006) Macbook - 1.83Ghz with OSX 10.6.8 and 2Gb of RAM. My 250Gb HDD is partitioned into a 40Gb OS drive with programs etc, of which there's around 11Gb free, and a 200Gb data drive, with around 50Gb free space. I believe I have the most recent version of Flash.

I'm at a loss to explain this. Does anyone have any ideas?


Many thanks in advance, and again, my apologies if this has already been answered and I missed it.

Andy

monthen said:

Hello folks

I did a few searches for this issue before starting a new thread; please accept my apologies if I've missed a thread which already dealt with it.

In the last few weeks I have noticed that my Macbook plays back online video with fairly severe jerkiness, which it didn't use to do. Videos will often hang for several seconds, with the audio stuck on repeat. This happens on youtube and other flash-based sites, but also with Quicktime trailers on the apple website, so I assume it's not a flash issue (though I may well be wrong!)

I don't seem to have any issues with video stored on my HDD, and the machine otherwise runs very well.

I'm using an early (2006) Macbook - 1.83Ghz with OSX 10.6.8 and 2Gb of RAM. My 250Gb HDD is partitioned into a 40Gb OS drive with programs etc, of which there's around 11Gb free, and a 200Gb data drive, with around 50Gb free space. I believe I have the most recent version of Flash.

I'm at a loss to explain this. Does anyone have any ideas?

Click to expand...

It's possible that your hard drive is crashing, although my other best guess would be that your drive is severely fragmented. Yes… OS X does get fragmented despite a very common belief that it doesn't. For starters, partitioning your drive the way you have doesn't have any practical purpose. All you are doing is severely restricting the amount of free space on your OS partition and further complicating any fragmentation you have.

I'm going to recommend you backup both partitions to an external drive NOW in case the drive is failing. Afterwards, you should test the drive and if it all passes, you can do a "cheap" defrag of your drive.

1. Clone your OS partition to an external drive using SuperDuper.
   
2. Copy your data partition's contents to a new folder to the external drive (don't use 2 partitions… do away with that completely).
   
3. Boot from the external drive and run Disk Utility. Use "Verify Disk" and "Repair Disk" on the internal drive. If it all checks out, consider downloading SMART Utility. It does a much more comprehensive check of the SMART status than other tools. It has a free trial, so take advantage of it.
   
4. If the internal drive checks out, then while booted from the external drive, erase and format the OS partition on the internal drive.
   
5. Delete the data partition on the internal drive and expand the main partition so it fills the whole drive. BE CERTAIN YOU HAVE A BACKUP!!!
   
6. Clone the external drive BACK to the internal drive using SuperDuper.

If you want to do a more proper defrag and optimization of your drive, I highly recommend iDefrag. The SuperDuper trick is effective at compacting your data, but it's not a true defrag like what a dedicated tool can do, but it may be good enough.

Hi again lifeisabeach


Just wanted to say a belated thanks for the advice. In the end I decided to format my HD and remove the partition. All online video appears to be working well now, thanks.

I was getting particularly worried as I'd had several shutdown messages about the kernel, forcing a manual restart, which seemed like it might be the beginning of the end of my Macbook, but I think the reinstall of Mac OS has done the trick.

Many thanks!

Andy

Hi again

Sorry to dredge this topic up, but I did a complete reinstall of OSX, fully updated (but not to Lion), and everything was working well for several days.

Now, in the last few hours, the problem has re-surfaced, and the videos have become intermittently jerky again.

I downloaded SMART utility, which tells me that my hard drive is failing, despite only being a couple of years old. It's a Seagate Momentus 5400.6, 320Gb.

So I suppose I have two questions:

1. If I replace the hard drive (ideally with a more reliable brand!), will this fix the issue permanently?

2. Is there a good website to use to find exactly which HDDs are compatible with my 2006 Macbook?

Many thanks in advance


Andy

monthen said:

Hi again

Sorry to dredge this topic up, but I did a complete reinstall of OSX, fully updated (but not to Lion), and everything was working well for several days.

Now, in the last few hours, the problem has re-surfaced, and the videos have become intermittently jerky again.

I downloaded SMART utility, which tells me that my hard drive is failing, despite only being a couple of years old. It's a Seagate Momentus 5400.6, 320Gb.

So I suppose I have two questions:

1. If I replace the hard drive (ideally with a more reliable brand!), will this fix the issue permanently?

2. Is there a good website to use to find exactly which HDDs are compatible with my 2006 Macbook?

Many thanks in advance


Andy

Click to expand...

1) Based on the history of the problem and your results. It appears Lifeisabeach was right, but yes, a new (hopefully more reliable) HDD should fix the problem.

2) Here is a good source to research and to buy HDDs and other Mac parts

2.5", 3.5" Serial-ATA (SATA) & IDE/ATA Internal Hard Drives & SSD (Solid State Drives) for additional capacity and performance

EDIT: Looks like these are the drives you are looking for. I'm going to do a quick check on Ifixit and I'll post a link with more specifics.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/SATA

Replacement instructions as well as specific drive recommendations.

MacBook Core Duo Hard Drive Replacement - iFixit

Hi Razormac

Thanks very much for your reply. I'll have a look at those sites and see if I can find a replacement drive.

Cheers

Andy