Gamespot video player heavy stutter

I've been having this problem for a while now, especially with high framerate/bitrate videos like Reality Check but I just encountered it with the CoD AW review video as well.

It's just a slideshow. The video does not run well at all, it does not matter if I let it sit for a while either. (Maybe there is no buffering or progressive loading?)

I'm using Firefox as internet browser, which has had problems with Flash for a while but since the problem only exists on Gamespot I kind of doubt the problem can be blamed on that.

My internet connection is probably not at fault either. I have 65Mbps down.

I used the search function before posting this but didn't see a thread about this for a few pages, apologies if this has been explained/answered elsewhere.

@Shunten: I have this problem as well, but on both Firefox and Chrome. Any video is a slideshow. I don't have that problem on any other website and it's one of the reasons I stopped paying much attention to Gamespot.

My guess is it has something to do with the video quality or bitrate of some videos. But it seems to me like my PC and internet connection should be sufficient to run these videos smoothly.

Please list your operating system and computer specifications. That might help identify the issue.

@Shunten: You might want to know that this happens quite often.

Firstly, try clearing your browser cache. GameSpot has many issues which can be resolved in the short-term with cache-clearing.

If that doesn't work, try updating the Flash plug-ins for your browser and your browser itself.

If that doesn't work either, then it's likely not anything that you can do on your part. Like BranKetra has said, list your specs (especially the browser versions and Flash plug-ins which you use) here so that the troubleshooting staff can recreate the conditions which might have led to your problem.
@halBU: Maybe you want to consider that the fault could have been yours instead.

@Gelugon_baat: Wow thanks, that was incredibly not helpful.

To others: Chrome is set to auto-update the browser and flash plugin by default, so version numbers don't matter there. Firefox and Flash are both the latest -- that's the first thing most people would check. For me, it's just Gamespot and it's only their content and not the ads. Videos aren't hard to come by on the internet, so pinpointing it to one site makes it not likely "my fault"

@Gelugon_baat: @BranKetra:

Since I'm only getting the problems at Gspot I kind of doubt the problem is with my hardware or software but sure:

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

CPU: Intel i7 2600K running at 4.2GHz

GPU: AMD Radeon HD6970 x2 (Catalyst drivers: "Omega" 14.2)

RAM: 16GB DDR3

At the time of writing I am running the latest drivers for all relevant software (flash player, flash player activex, java, etc.)

I use Firefox 34.0.5

Internet: 65Mbps down as mentioned earlier.

@Shunten: The reason why a request for your PC specifications was made is related to the site technicians. LarkAnderson, GameSpot.com's product manager requested that, so there definitely is a method for identifying bugs and fixing them. Thank you for listing them.

@BranKetra: No problem! Glad to help. I like Reality Check and it's a shame if I have to wait for the YouTube uploads to watch new episodes.

@Shunten: Yikes, sorry to hear this is still an issue. I'll add this to my report and see if we can get an update.

I've had problems too, videos won't even play on my desktop (because I intentionally reject flash player).

But on my laptop using flash, videos run at unstable framerates well under 15FPS. My specs are as following:

OS: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with GNOME 3 Desktop

Browser: Firefox (I don't remember what version)

CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core T4500 @2.30GHz

RAM: 4GB DDR2 SODIMM

GPU: Intel GM64 IGP w/ proprietary drivers

I've had absolutely no problems playing videos using HTML5 (on other sites of course), which leads me to believe the culprit here is flash player. Which also leads me to question why you don't support HTML5 videos yet.

I think part of the problem is that there are video ads playing in the sidebar that have further video ads embedded in them, that auto-restart if we pause them, while we're trying to watch our desired video. Get rid of the video ads on (at least) the video pages and I think we won't have a problem anymore.

@ReDeYeRaver: I think this is the problem too and it is a problem that started only a couple of months ago. The video plays great for about 45 seconds and then stutters for about 15 seconds while multiple ads that I can't see because I'm watching the video in full screen are loaded onto the page. It is really annoying. I've tried using Firefox, Chrome, and IE. They all have the same problem. Hell, I even got some stutter from ads loading as I typed this.