E-Mail Updates
Enter your e-mail address:
Firefox Facts

Speed Up Flash Videos in Firefox

Want to speed up your flash video watching?  By default, Firefox takes a sort of “snapshot” of whatever you are doing every ten seconds.  Why?  It is so that the browser can restore itself, just in case of a crash.  Now you might ask, what does this have to do with flash videos?  Well, the snapshot action is what is causing your ten second delay, at times, with watching flash videos on the Web.

So what is the solution?  Time to visit our good friend, the about:config

The quick fix for this problem, at least for my own sake, is to increase the time between each of the saves performed by session restore. By opening about:config in your Firefox address bar, then typing browser.sessionstore.interval in the filter box, you’ll see a value of 10000, which is in milliseconds. (Meaning your session is saved every 10 seconds.) I changed this to 300000, or every 5 minutes, as I don’t have the urgent need for tab restoration. If you feel like being more on the safe side, try increasing it to something a bit lower, say 120000, or every 2 minutes.

I gave it a shot, and it might not be a life changing experiance after doing so, but it does seem to make the videos play faster, especially if you have several Firefox tabs or windows open at the same time. 

Share & Save on | More

Related Firefox Tips and Tricks

Restore Your Tabs
Since the release of Firefox 2, I have not used the session restore that is built into Firefox that much. In fact, I had nearly forgotten about it till I read this post over at Kyle’s Cove talking about

Live Bookmarks in Action
Faster Refreshing for Live Bookmarks
How do you get Firefox’s live bookmarks to refresh faster?  By default, the Live Bookmarks are set to refresh every 60 minutes to check for new headlines.  However, if you want to get your news a little quicker, there is

Videos at a Glance at Work
Get a Timeline with Your Online Videos
The people at VideoSurf have developed a really nice addition to Firefox, for all of you out there who are fans of watching Online video.  The VideoSurf Videos at a Glance add-on enhances your video playing experience with what they

Reader's Comments

  1. good friend, the about:config… this link does not work let me know when it works. rose1bud@verizon.net

  2. from Xbot | permalink

    Thanks for the info man, i always found this application stupid and useless i wish there was a way to disable this all together but this will do for now, thanks!

Mitch Keeler © 2009 - Sitemap | Privacy Policy
Dedicated Server Hosting provided by Layered Tech

Go to Top of Page