[SOLVED] Flash videos in dwb - blue tint (not NVIDIA)

Trilby · 2013-07-18 02:17:39

Over the past few days I've had blue tinted flash videos (eg youtube) when using dwb. I first thought it was just the video I watched, but it is almost all flash videos.

I recalled seeing similar issues on these forums, and my search turned up several threads and an entry on the wiki - but these were all for NVIDIA proprietary drivers. I have an ATI card and use the open source xf86-video-ati / ati-dri.

I tried firefox and pulled up the same urls in both browsers (dwb and firefox) and it seems the blue tint is only in dwb - but as there has been no mention of this on the dwb thread I have to suspect it is an interaction between the browser and my system and/or config rather than simply being a browser issue.

Further, when youtube videos have "comercials" or advertisement videos that play before the main video, the comercials do not have the blue tint.

As I compare more videos accross the two browsers, "tint" is probably the wrong word. It looks more like the red and blue color chanels have been swapped. Bright reds are bold blues and vice versa; all the people look like they're from Hazard Kentuky (1).

Any help in further diagnosis would be appreciated.

(1) - where the "blue Fugates" live. The first video I saw this in, the context was fitting for such a locale, so I actually just thought it was someone with that disorder who made the video!

- I really can't pinpoint when this would have started as I don't watch many flash videos. But I'm pretty sure I pulled up a couple music videos on youtube over last weekend that didn't show this issue. I update at least once daily, so I'll look through my pacman logs now to see if anything seemingly video-relevant was upgraded between then and now.

- Packages updated in the relevant time window include ati-dri, mesa, mesa-libgl, and colord as the only ones that I could imagine being relevant to video, browsers, or colors. I'm not sure if colord is relevant, I don't really know what it even does (and it's not running). But I did just install that (along with several xfce packages) over the weekend [I needed to prepare a WM/DE the house-sitter can use when I go on vacation next week].

- Changed from [community]/dwb to aur/dwb-git, no change in videos.

- Found a mangled schizophrenic-looking website that I couldn't make heads or tails of, but it had many free-association looking references to blue tinted videos, youtube, web browser names, and the word "cache". So I took a shot and emptied out most of ~/.cache/, no change. I also tried the solution from the other OSs and rebooted: no change. I think I'll call it a night and hope someone can suggest more educated ideas than my random flailing for ideas.

- OK, the night's not quite over. I figured I should at least try the solutions for the NVIDIA problem, and sure enough, disabling hardware acceleration (via the right click menu on the video) and refreshing the page made it play properly. I can't consider this a full solution yet as it 1) seems like a sub-optimal solution and 2) isn't documented as meeded anywhere for ATI.

- OOPS: It seems I missed this. While all the talk is about NVIDIA, it seems it is not limited to that driver, and I do have libvdpau installed. I'll catch up on that thread ~~and may mark this solved shortly.~~

- I've caught up on that thread. I remember skimming it at the time (almost a year ago for most of it) but I was not affected on this same system at that time. But now I am. According to Gusar's post here this should not be a problem anymore with an up-to-date libdpau - or am I reading that wrong? I am up to date, any idea why I'm still affected by this?

Last edited by Trilby (2013-07-18 12:06:05)

Gusar · 2013-07-18 10:29:18

It could be that workaround they put into libvdpau works only with firefox, I recall reading something like that somewhere. And yeah, it was never a "blue tint", it's that flash puts the U/V planes in the wrong order. The libvdpau workaround should swap the planes around if flash is encountered.

What you can do now is this: Install kernel 3.10 from [testing], install mesa-git from AUR, activate hardware decode in flash (put EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1 into /etc/adobe/mms.cfg). This should fix it, because the issue only happens with the combination hardware presentation/software decoding. But with kernel 3.10 and mesa-git you get hardware decoding too, provided your GPU is HD4000 or above.

Trilby · 2013-07-18 12:05:48

Thanks, I took those steps (kernel 3.10, mesa-git, and mms.cfg) and I experienced the same crashes some other users described in that thread.

I reverted the mms.cfg change, and there's no more crashing, but of course the blue is back. As I rarely use flash, and have no need for anything fancy from it, I think I'll stick with just disabling the HW acceleration in flash videos. Once I found that work around, it was only my curiosity that was driving further exploring as that workaround works perfectly well for me.

If anyone has any clue why this issue would only hit me now (over the past few days) rather than almost a year ago when others were affected, I'd love to know. As mesa was upgraded in the relevant time window, I may downgrade that (just as a test, then reupgrade), and report back in a bit.

But aside from the nagging curiosity of the timing of being hit by this, I can consider this solved.

Update: I downgraded mesa, mesa-libgl, ati-dri, and libdrm to versions they were at before this problem appeared. But I still had the blue videos with HW acceleration on. I suppose the most parsimonious answer was that I've had acceleration *off* all this time, and only over this past weekend I somehow accidentally turned it on ... somehow.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-07-18 12:23:42)

lugubrious · 2014-05-22 10:07:07

I can confirm the same blue tint issue on flash videos with dwb v2014.03.16 , and ati-dri 10.1.4-1 (AMD 6670).

The trick is you've got to set hardware acceleration in /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1

restart and that should do the trick.

edit:
Unfortunately however, disabling hardware acceleration utterly destroys flash's stability (on mine anyway), so use with caution

Last edited by lugubrious (2014-05-22 11:38:51)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-07-18 02:17:39

[SOLVED] Flash videos in dwb - blue tint (not NVIDIA)

#2 2013-07-18 10:29:18

Re: [SOLVED] Flash videos in dwb - blue tint (not NVIDIA)

#3 2013-07-18 12:05:48

Re: [SOLVED] Flash videos in dwb - blue tint (not NVIDIA)

#4 2014-05-22 10:07:07

Re: [SOLVED] Flash videos in dwb - blue tint (not NVIDIA)

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