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Poor video quality

  • 6 replies
  • 9 have this problem
  • 1360 views
  • Last reply by rwerber45

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I've tried everything to fix poor picture quality when streaming "third party" videos, e.g., YouTube. Colors are washed out; weird contrast; everything looks like it's coming through a haze. Streams from Netflix, Amazon look normal. And sorry, guys, the same third party streams from YouTube et al. look totally normal in the MS Outlook browser. Have tried all kinds of settings and rebooted as well. No change.

Please advise. This problem appears to be unique to Firefox.

I've tried everything to fix poor picture quality when streaming "third party" videos, e.g., YouTube. Colors are washed out; weird contrast; everything looks like it's coming through a haze. Streams from Netflix, Amazon look normal. And sorry, guys, the same third party streams from YouTube et al. look totally normal in the MS Outlook browser. Have tried all kinds of settings and rebooted as well. No change. Please advise. This problem appears to be unique to Firefox.

Chosen solution

I'm using firefox developer edition and I've similiar problem when streaming vimeo and youtube, the contrast is kinda weird. I set gfx.color_management.native_srgb to true in about:config and it solve my problem, hopefully it will solve your problem too

Read this answer in context 👍 5

All Replies (6)

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Historically, I think this could be caused by a custom monitor profile (if you profile your displays). Starting a few years ago, this could be caused by Firefox not handling the saturation properly on high dynamic range (HDR) videos. Are the problems exclusive to YouTube video, photos are not affected? Can you tell whether the problem is related to HDR videos?

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maybe firefox settings using contrast mode try searching for that

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The recent Firefox 113.0.1 release made a change related to monitor color profiles:

Fixed incorrect colors for Windows users with installed monitor/display color profiles, particularly on wide gamut displays (bug 1832215). Source: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/113.0.1/releasenotes/

I think that should have rolled the color management back to how it worked in Firefox 112, but I have a very basic monitor so I can't provide any personal insight on that.

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lazizakhmedov1014 said

maybe firefox settings using contrast mode try searching for that

Richard Werber <[email address removed]>

3:52 PM (9 minutes ago)

Thanks for the suggestion. Thanks for getting back at all! It's appreciated. I tried to find something like a "contrast mode" for Firefox and came up empty. Digging deeper, stumbled into https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/testing/chrome-tests/index.html

The options were myriad and daunting for someone not an IT specialist, so I passed on exploring options there.

I think you are absolutely correct in your implication that this is a problem within Firefox, not the content provider, my computer or my internet connection, which is high speed cable. And again, it remains a mystery to me how streaming from Netflix or Amazon is perfectly fine, as are all photos stored on my PC, but videos through YouTube or cable news channels are horrible. Fuzzy edges, color all distorted, contrast is crazy high, everything grayed over. It's borderline unwatchable.

If I have not yet mentioned it, everything looks fine in every kind of video download or stream when using MS Edge as my browser. I started using in-office PCs in '89 and have stuck with the software since I knew it, in spite of my antipathy toward Microsoft. Firefox was a trusted friend. It saddens me that the easiest and most logical way around the problem is to make MS Edge my default browser. Maybe Microsoft, one way or another, has sabotaged Foxfire, which really burns my butt.

I think I recently okayed an MS pop-up to install Google Chrome. Could that have done it? I am tempted to uninstall the Google Chrome app to see what happens, but fear things will fall apart and I will lose a bunch of emails or some other unrecoverable disaster. What do you think? Other than that, I guess I am stuck with MS Edge as my browser.Ugh.

Again many thanks for your ideas.

Richard Werber [email address removed]

Modified by Andrew

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Chosen Solution

I'm using firefox developer edition and I've similiar problem when streaming vimeo and youtube, the contrast is kinda weird. I set gfx.color_management.native_srgb to true in about:config and it solve my problem, hopefully it will solve your problem too

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Hello Andrea - You are dead on about the problem. Thanks. I thought I might be going nuts.

The change in setting worked!! Totally. Piece o' cake!

Thank you so much!

If you and I have experienced this problem, we cannot be alone. Would it hurt any users if Mozilla set the default in question to TRUE on the next update? Downside(s)?

Best, Richard