H.264 and H.265 unwatchable in browser and Jellyfin Media Player on my Mac

[JellyJim]

Hello there!
(copied from my answer in https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/com...rome_with/)

I've been having this issue for 3 months (started november 2023) and it drove me MAD.

Note For the impatient: final solution is at the bottom, the rest is a list of all the things I tried which have helped other people before, so worth keeping in mind



My system uses:
- an AMD ryzen 5 3600
- Nvidia Geforce RTX2070
- Viewsonic VP3256-4K monitor
- 5m 8K Hdmi cable
(Note: you can also find your bios version by pressing win+R -> type "cmd" to open console-> type "systeminfo" + press enter )



I tried: (grouped as "Hardware", "windows", "nvidia", "chrome")

Hardware

- changing HDMI cables -> for long ones like 3M+ I recommend going for a "higher-end" 8K cable (mine was like 20£) and that solved a LOT of issues, but not specific to chrome.

- changing settings on the monitor to enable "adaptive sync" (helped a LOT with games, but not chrome issue).
for those without adaptive sync, try looking for options like "Low input lag" (set to "ON") and "response time" (set to "ultra fast" or whatever your quickest one is). the "tradeoff" is like a few exta watts (maybe 5-30 at most given modern monitors dont use much power anyway) but the user experience is worth it.
- changing to a spare monitor (jussst in case), issue persisted for me, so thats ruled out.

- turned off PC, opened the PC, made sure graphics card was still connected ok (4 years since i built it lol)



WINDOWS

- disabling HDR on windows display settings (which helped with other things)
- in start menu typed "systempropertiesadvanced" -> went to system properties -> "advanced" tab -> "performance" -> "Settings" -> disabled smooth scrolling



NVIDIA

NOTE: performing a "custom/advanced" install -> "perform clean installation" DID help once or twice, but
- updated nvidia drivers to latest "game ready" version
- updated nvidia drivers to latest "studio" version (which is just the "stable" version of the drivers, otherwise no difference)
- updated nvidia driers to "october 2023" ("before my issues") "studio" version (look here for legacy drivers: https://www.nvidia.com/download/find.aspx#)

- nvidia control panel -> "change resolution" -> "use NVIDIA colour settings" (this one DID help A LOT, but was not the "final fix")
- nvidia control panel -> Manage 3d settings -> Vertical sync: tried "on", "off", "adaptive" and "fast" (the latter I just left there as it was recommended in another reddit post)



CHROME
- changing hardware acceleration in Chrome settings (I dont recommend because it makes things like scrolling and UI interactios sluggish)
- excluding some web pages from the "performance -> memory saver" section in Chrome settings
- changing hardware decoding/encoding in chrome://flags
- disabling "live captions" in chrome://flags
- deleting browser history, cookies, cache in chrome (did nothing, leave as last resort if you are a hoarder like me)



All of which did NOT "solve" the issue per se, only some of them helped a bit.



For The "final" fix, while searching I stubled across the following:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXn7rhj3Sg8

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments...in_chrome/



Basically (for nvidia cards at least, in other devices with intel/amd embedded graphics it wasnt so bad) you need to:

- go to chrome://flags- type "Choose ANGLE graphics backend" in the search bar- change from "default" to either "OpenGL" OR "D3D9" (the rest are the problematic ones)- restart chrome, hopefully it will be fixed!