macbook air choppy video when streaming

I just got an 11" macbook air with i7 and 4g ram. When I watch espn3 the video is choppy. But when I restart the computer and do nothing but launch safari and espn3 everything is smooth.

So this makes me think that some other program is causing the issue, even though to the best of my knowledge I have quit everything but the browser. I dont know how to quit the finder or if that is even possible.

the computer never gets too hot or the fan run loud, so i dont think that is an issue. perhaps something with flash or something else consuming ram?? but ive got 4gigs!

Open up your Activity Monitor application (Applications, Utilities, Activity Monitor.app) and see if anything else is running in the background. And no, you can not quit Finder. It might be a Flash issue.

what types of things would i be looking for? and why would flash be acting like that?

Look for any background processes that are running. If the ESPN site is using Adobe Flash to display certain videos, that may cause the CPU and GPU to work extra hard. That might result in choppy video.

I guess I would need to know what background process to look for as I dont know what is causing it. Also, espn3 uses adobe flash so Im not sure what you mean in the last part of your reply

Are you running Safari?

If so, the process would be called: Flash Player (Safari Internet Plug-in)

I just ran into a few issues with video processing in general on my MBP and one of the things I found for certain, Chrome is not good for video Streaming on Mac OS X (Snow Leopard or Lion)

By not good, I mean its CPU hungry, its not optimized at all. The same video played on Safari vs Chrome might result in higher CPU usage.

Hope that helps.

PS:

If ESPN uses SilverLight for streaming, then the background process will be called something similar to the above one, but with SilverLight instead.

choppy video on mac air

i know i am late to this but the cause is overheating of the mac air.
i have tested this buy running videos and when they get choppy, i paused it and placed the mac air in my freezer for a few minutes. upon retrieving and resuming the video with a cold machine, the video runs flawless.
when it heats up again and video gets choppy, i do it again and get the same results.

I had that happen with an Acer laptop. Youtube video playback would be so choppy and then eventually the computer would spontaneously power off. I gave the laptop to a friend and he put better thermal compound on the CPU and reseated the heatsink, that fixed the issue. Apparently the Acer Aspire 7720 had major heat issues, I wish I had known that prior to buying it. Woulda saved us $800.