Thank you for the reply!
So actually I've figured out what was going on with the audio, that was a mistake on my end. The video wasn't converted properly, with a proper conversion the audio plays just fine! Seems you cannot simply just change the extension to .webm and everything is fine, lol.
However, the black flash problem persists with the new videos. It occasionally happens at the start of the pre-title movie as well. This is with no other plugins whatsoever on a brand new project.