Moving from Cinnamon to Xfce fixed my video playback stutter on Linux Mint
I have an old PC that I put Linux Mint on around Windows 10 end of life. It's been pretty decent except I noticed at some point videos started stuttering a lot. The stutter would happen every 10 to 30 seconds on every video. Didn't matter if it was Firefox or Celluloid (the mpv wrapper that comes with Linux Mint), didn't matter which streaming site I tried, or what codec was used on a local file.
I tried everything: different kernels, different GPU drivers, bunch of Firefox about:config media settings, Celluloid/mpv buffer sizes and video acceleration configurations. Even messed with pipewire (audio) config to see if its priority was too high.
This is apparently a really common problem if you search for "linux mint video stutter". All sorts of different varied solutions out there that work for some users and not others.
One thread suggested removing Cinnamon applets. I don't have any custom applets on that PC, and was afraid to disable any built-in ones. So I went one step further and replaced Cinnamon with Xfce using:
sudo apt install mint-meta-xfce
Which is Mint's meta-package for Xfce desktop environment and other stuff that works well with it.
It worked right away with no further configuration! Xfce to the rescue! (Sure, maybe uglier and fewer options for display scaling, but I'd rather have basic things like videos working smoothly.)
Long time ago Xfce was the right choice for an even more ancient PC back in the day. Funny how it circles back to being the solution again.
So if I ever want to move any older PCs to Linux, I think I'll be skipping Cinnamon and reaching for other lighter desktop environments instead.
Linux can be fun sometimes. And frustrating at other times.
This could be problem with Mint or with Cinnamon or both or neither. This is the thing with Linux - it might just work or it may not no matter what you try.
But I'd say there is (almost) always some solution and you found one for your problem. It may have been a bit drastic, but it works.
Myself, I use MATE. I used Gentoo for a looong time and switched to Arch recently. Those are quite knowledge-requirements heavy distros but they do give back. But I stumbled upon some things that worked great on Gentoo but doesn't work on Arch that well. And there are things that work better on Arch...
It's like neverending cycle :-)
MATE is my favorite DE, but I am currently using Cinnamon on my primary desktop and thankfully haven't had any issues with video playback.
XFCE has become possibly my favorite DE at this point. I actually use Cinnamon on my desktop at the moment but I use XFCE on nearly everything else, including my laptop and living room PC I use almost exclusively for video playback. I like the more antiquated, info-dense, lightweight types of DEs.
On my daily driver/gaming desktop (Kubuntu) I actually moved from KDE to Cinnamon to solve some weird compositing / video issues that I determined to be tied to a particular version of the compositor and that worked but I still get an occasional quirk here and there- including for instance, FreeTube seems to have frame lag occasionally on Cinnamon during video playback. The video will freeze for a split second. I do not have this issue on FreeTube on XFCE.
Of course, the double-edged sword with Linux is there are so many different configurations and driver versions and how all of it interacts that if I solve a problem by changing DEs, it doesn't really get to the core of why the problem was happening- in other words on Cinnamon on a different PC it's possible the problem would never occur, so it's sort-of like hammering a nail with a sledgehammer.
And I also get that being on an LTS / non-rolling distro certain bugs I run into may not get fixed for a long time and so on. Always a tradeoff somewhere
I had this exact problem on my Mint setup, the only fix was a reboot and then I would get smooth video for a couple days before going back to stuttering. This was on an older PC that I had previously run Windows 7 on until the absolute bitter end. At some point I upgraded to a new PC with much more horsepower and the problem has not resurfaced. I don't think I've rebooted my system for over 6 months now (go Linux!) and video is still smooth. Using Mint Cinnamon and VLC on both setups.
Hmm, that's interesting but not consistent with my own experiences using Cinammon in Mint. I have no issues playing videos in any of the three desktop computers I have, and they vary quite a lot in age, from brand new to one that dates from 2013. That old one is actually in use as a home theater pc, though admittedly in a very limited sense. It's just hooked to my TV and I play from internal hard drives or USB sticks. I don't stream anything.
One difference is that I use VLC to play videos. Nothing else.
That difference in your last sentence is probably the key here, though this issue doesn't affect everyone as I don't encounter it either. I have heard of it though, so it likely has some common elusive trigger.