Arch Linux

jpe30

Member

Registered: 2009-01-02

Posts: 24

Strange Flash Performance Behavior

So I'm using KDEMod 4.2.3, and whatever the latest version of flash that pacman provides.  If I watch HD flash movies within Firefox the playback is very choppy, to the point where certain video's are not viewable.  However, in Konqueror some HD flash videos run fine.  In either browser if I try to watch any flash video's in fullscreen its an effort in futility because it never works, HD or SD.

Any suggestions as to how I can get Flash running correctly?

pyther

Member

Registered: 2008-01-21

Posts: 1,395

Website

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

I have a similar problem. I believe this is a general flaw with flash for linux. What is your video card? I'll be interested to see if anyone has any suggstions.

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jpe30

Member

Registered: 2009-01-02

Posts: 24

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

I'm using an nVidia 7800 GT w/ 185.19 drivers.

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Ditto here on full screen being crappy. nVidia 8400 GS, 64-bit Quad core, 6GB RAM.

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Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Deleted -- wrong kind of Flash.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2009-08-03 14:05:59)

Vladman

Member

Registered: 2009-01-28

Posts: 118

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Same here, hopefully they can fix it for us linux guys.

windtalker

Member

Registered: 2008-03-17

Posts: 220

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Nvidia 7300GT w/ 173xx driver.
KDEMod 3.5
No choppiness but browser [swiftfox] crashes when I try to go full screen.

Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Maybe you could try Gnash?

Last edited by Wintervenom (2009-05-26 16:43:58)

jpe30

Member

Registered: 2009-01-02

Posts: 24

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Just tried Gnash and it's fullscreen performance is the same as Adobe's.  Also, it wouldn't respond to the HD button on Youtube.

göteborg-johan

Member

Registered: 2009-02-27

Posts: 36

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

try adding &fmt=22 to the end of the link

DevoidOfWindows

Member

Registered: 2009-05-24

Posts: 133

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

The solution that worked for me was to go back to using 32-bit Flash.  64-bit Flash always performed really badly on my machine.  The frame-rate is horrible and full-screen things are so slow that I either have to wait a while before I can get out or switch to a terminal and kill the browser.  When I went to 32-bit Flash, everything just worked, and I could play even the high-resolution HD videos very smoothly, even while compiling stuff in the background. 

jpe30

Member

Registered: 2009-01-02

Posts: 24

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

The wierd thing is, I am using 32-bit Flash.  What I don't understand is how some people get great playback, and some don't.  There has to be a descrepancy within Arch or Flash because something just isn't right.

DevoidOfWindows

Member

Registered: 2009-05-24

Posts: 133

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Do you have the lib32- package for your video card installed, if you are using the proprietary drivers?

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Flash is quirky here too, when playing full screen the video and audio stop every 30sec or so. Pretty annoying...

I'm on 32bit  with an intel GM965 card and the latest drivers.

jpe30

Member

Registered: 2009-01-02

Posts: 24

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

Whatever comes with nvidia from pacman is what I have installed.

EDIT:  Nevermind, I have the 185.19 drivers installed from AUR.

Last edited by jpe30 (2009-05-26 17:25:55)

jpe30

Member

Registered: 2009-01-02

Posts: 24

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

OK, so after further experimentation I've found that disabling cpufreq solves many flash issues.  Now I can watch HD video's on Youtube fullscreen, with only minor frame dropping (minor as in it hitches maybe every 30 seconds if that).

However, some flash players do not perform nearly as well.  Watching HD videos at www.streetfire.net are still slow and choppy.

SomeGuyDude

Member

Registered: 2008-10-09

Posts: 271

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

FWIW, the cpufreq thing doesn't need to be disabled, you'll just need to turn it to performance.

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Malstrond

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2009-06-03

Posts: 98

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

CPU frequency scaling does sometimes cause these problems, it did for me at least. But instead of disabling it you could change the threshold required for the ondemand governor to switch to a higher multiplier. It is located in
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
The value is the utilization percentage.
you can run
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
as root to get the current value, which is the default value, 95, but flash almost never reaches 95% utilization but still suffers from the lower clock rate.
If you change it, i.e.
echo 50 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
This will cause the ondemand governor to increase the clock rate at 50% utilization. Add it to /etc/rc.local if you want to keep it that way (i needed to add a sleep of 1 or i would get a "device doesn't exist" message during boot).

mark.altern

Member

Registered: 2009-06-01

Posts: 28

Re: Strange Flash Performance Behavior

I have been having this flash problem in Arch64 for a long time, and now I use powernowd to scale cpu frequency. Powernowd is much more responsive than cpufreq in scaling the cpu. Here is the wiki:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Powernowd

But again, playing flash is NOT supposed to be so painful, which utilizing that much CPU resources. Using more than 50% power of dual core cpu just to play a full-screen flash does NOT make sense. Let's wait that more fundamental solution comes out : -- some real improvement of flash.