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#1 2012-01-15 22:02:54

Sniper061
Member
Registered: 2012-01-15
Posts: 12

[SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

Hey everyone!

This will be the first post I'm making on these forums though I've read many of the topics here while working on various 'projects' on my laptop here.

The reason I am posting is because I have finally hit a brick wall with this issue.  Usually, I can find something which will resolve whatever current project I'm working on but in this case, I'm not having any luck.

My issue is that it seems that any recently purchased video in the Amazon Instant Video service will cause flash to crash before the video plays.  The odd thing about this issue, is that all my old videos play *just fine*.  This also includes all the videos under the "Amazon Prime" service.  All other flash-enabled sites (e.g. YouTube, etc.) also work just fine.  I've already contacted their customer service, read their forums, and generally exercised my googlefu to try to find out what is causing the problem.  The closest I came was to an Android phone with a memory issue...

Here are the steps I've taken:

Updated Shockwave Flash (this was out of date)
-When that didn't work, did a full reinstall (Remove, restart, reinstall)
Installed Chromium (was using Firefox)
Reinstalled openjdk
Installed gecko-mediaplayer (I read in a few posts that it resolved some random issues... no go)
Full System upgrade (everything is up to date)

System is x64


Since everything else seems to work fine except those new videos, I know it has to be something specific Amazon has started doing.  Anybody out there figure out a workaround?

Also, I'm still relatively new to Arch and Linux as a whole but am pretty comfortable with how things work.  If you need any additional info from me, just ask and I'll do what I can.  Thanks again!

Last edited by Sniper061 (2012-01-23 04:43:26)

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#2 2012-01-18 17:37:39

drdrewdown
Member
From: Land of Oz
Registered: 2010-11-22
Posts: 21
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

which flashplugin are you using?

my Amazon Prime videos are working fine, with a similar config (x64 using chromium and flashplugin package from arch repo)

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#3 2012-01-21 16:57:01

rwd
Member
Registered: 2009-02-08
Posts: 664

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

You might try an older 32 bit (multilib) version from the Aur, lib32-flashplugin10.1 . At least on my x64 system it seems to be the only version that doesn't crash all the time. Not a proper solution but better than nothing.

Last edited by rwd (2012-01-21 17:19:15)

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#4 2012-01-21 17:48:43

quasifilmie
Member
Registered: 2011-10-27
Posts: 296

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

you could try the beta version. the one in aur is currently outdated. you can get a tarball from adobe labs. just uninstalled  the current version. run your favourite file manager as root merge the usr folder given and copy libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins

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#5 2012-01-22 03:12:06

pataphysician
Member
Registered: 2010-09-04
Posts: 46

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

Are you getting a message that says "updating player", and then it fails and won't play the video?
I started getting that on a few Videos, like the Sons of Anarchy or Glee, but not on too many others. I'm not certain if it's a temporary problem on amazons end, or that some of the content companies have made them add a DRM element that isn't available on Linux, which seems like the more likely explanation.

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#6 2012-01-22 04:00:00

pataphysician
Member
Registered: 2010-09-04
Posts: 46

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

I just tried this on a new Windows 7 virtual machine, When I run Sons of Anrachy it does the "updating player" finishes successfully and plays the video, what it does is create a folder under adobe/flashplayer called APSPrivateData2 and then some folder and files under that for DRM.

On my linux machine this folder and files doesn't exist under ~/.adobe/Flash_Player directory. The adobe site link below implies this should work with Linux, but it doesn't seem to be.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/850/cpsid_85029.html

possibilities
1. Amazon hasn't set up their install to work properly with linux
2. Adobe's info is inaccurate and it doesn't actually work with linux
3. Arch linux installation of flash isn't set up properly for it to work with DRM

Most of Amazons videos don't use this DRM

Last edited by pataphysician (2012-01-22 04:32:36)

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#7 2012-01-23 04:42:58

Sniper061
Member
Registered: 2012-01-15
Posts: 12

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

Thanks for the help guys but I figured it out!

Recently, Amazon switched over to using DRM in its recently sold videos.  The DRM they chose is kinda old and uses HAL to work.  (You read that right).

I know that HAL is depreciated in the AUR but I was lucky in that I used to use it on this laptop and just never got around to cleaning it out.  So, a quick "sudo /etc/rc.d/hal start" and the video's are playing just fine!

If anybody else has this issue, I did some digging around for you and you can still get the tarballs at the link below:

http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/

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#8 2012-02-05 16:51:40

yasun
Member
Registered: 2012-02-05
Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

Sniper061 wrote:

Thanks for the help guys but I figured it out!

Recently, Amazon switched over to using DRM in its recently sold videos.  The DRM they chose is kinda old and uses HAL to work.  (You read that right).

I know that HAL is depreciated in the AUR but I was lucky in that I used to use it on this laptop and just never got around to cleaning it out.  So, a quick "sudo /etc/rc.d/hal start" and the video's are playing just fine!

If anybody else has this issue, I did some digging around for you and you can still get the tarballs at the link below:

http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/

Hey, thanks! That worked great on my Linux Mint 11 box.

However, hald is already running on my Fedora 14 box and the Amazon player is still showing the same error (even after a service restart haldaemon). Any ideas on that one?

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#9 2012-02-10 08:06:17

gururise
Member
Registered: 2011-11-03
Posts: 33

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

Really annoying on the part of Adobe to rely on depreciated interfaces on Linux.  Is there any other solution other than installing HAL?

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#10 2012-02-10 08:15:58

GERGE
Member
From: Turkey
Registered: 2008-09-29
Posts: 157
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

Try Chrome, not Chromium. It comes with Flash built-in.

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#11 2012-02-10 09:59:42

brebs
Member
Registered: 2007-04-03
Posts: 3,742

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

The word is "deprecated" wink

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#12 2012-04-30 00:10:05

killer_siller
Member
Registered: 2011-08-28
Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

I was getting this error upon compile of HAL:


It was fixed in this manner, inserted above the patches in the PKGBUILD file:
find hal-0.5.14/* -name "*.c" -print|xargs sed -i 's/#include <glib\/gmain\.h>/#include <glib\.h>/g'

from this source:
http://superuser.com/questions/415238/p … -on-gentoo

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#13 2012-08-10 06:38:46

senorsmile
Member
Registered: 2010-12-12
Posts: 72

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

I can confirm that hal from aur fixes the issue.  I use packer so

packer -S hal

then start it:

sudo /etc/rc.d/hal start

I can now watch Rubicon on Amazon!

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#14 2013-04-11 14:26:54

jumperpunk
Member
Registered: 2009-01-19
Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

GERGE wrote:

Try Chrome, not Chromium. It comes with Flash built-in.

The flash built into Chrome removes the DRM components.

I was using the flashplugin package with firefox and hal. It worked up until yesterday. I'm still troubleshooting to see if I can find what broke.

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#15 2013-04-11 14:35:24

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: [SOLVED] Amazon Instant Video Flash Plugin Crash

jumperpunk, don't necrobump a solved thread. things have changed in the last 8-9 months.


Forum Rules

There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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