Compositing speeds up some things, slows some, breaks Flash

overand · 2012-09-08 00:42:38

Was Originally Titled: Rapidly Flickering Flash w/font artifacts & 'Old Page' issues

Guessing this should be moved to XOrg-specific, maybe?

Hope this is the right subforum. I'm experiencing a fun "flickering" issue on pages with flash videos, in Chromium. ~20 times per second, all flash elements on a given page disappear and reappear. (The frame rate seems to match the rate of animation in any given flash element) This doesn't *always* happen, but once it starts it seems to be stuck doing so until I terminate the flash plugin.

Arch Linux x64 (roughly up-to-date, at least as of ~2012-09-02 or so)
ATI Radeon card w/Catalyst Binary Drivers
Chromium Version 21.0.1180.89 (154005)
Flash 11.3.31.232 - libpepper version
XFce 4.10 w/xfwm stock window manager

More specs / versions available on request.

Video (Dropbox, AVI, should play embedded but can be stuck onto Vimeo or Youtube if need be)

The behavior - which is available for viewing in the link below, has some interesting quirks.

Terminating flash fixes it.
If you change tabs while it's happening, to a flashless tab at least - on the new tab, the screen will flicker between the current tab and the previous, "clean" tab.
At least on the Schlock Mercenary (via comics rocket iframe) page, one of the FONTS changes with the flickering - on the right, "Search" above the google search bar.

The issue seems to happen regardless of if chromium is started with --ignore-gpu-blacklist, regardless of if I have Hardware Acceleration enabled or disabled in flash, and regardless of XFWM's compositing being enabled or not.

What I *haven't* tried is switching back to non-catalyst drivers.

I'm curious - does anyone with an ATI card and 64 bit Arch have *luck* with Flash? The non-pepper version had performance issues like crazy. Blargh!

Last edited by overand (2012-09-15 23:59:24)

overand · 2012-09-15 23:58:23

So - some further research has shown me this - copied from #archlinux:

19:54 < Overand> Ooo. More fun w/XFCE, my ATI/Radeon card, and XOrg. With compositing disabled: Alt-tab dialog pops up instantly. Switching tabs in Pidgin is a little slow. Dragging the chromium window around is terribly slow. Adobe Flash elements (Pepper interface) in Chromum work fine.
19:55 < Overand> With Compositing enabled: alt-tab dialog has a ~1 second delay. Switching tabs in pidgin is nearly instant. Dragging the chromium winddow around is better, but a little laggy. Adobe Flash elements strobe between white and 'content' ~20 times/sec.

The plot thickens?

ConnorBehan · 2012-09-16 19:55:28

There's probably not much help I can give, but have you tried turning VDPAU acceleration on and off in mms.cfg?

Gusar · 2012-09-16 20:24:55

ConnorBehan wrote:

There's probably not much help I can give, but have you tried turning VDPAU acceleration on and off in mms.cfg?

He's using Catalyst. No VDPAU with that.

@overand: I use neither Catalyst nor PepperFlash, so I can't be of much help. There's just one thing: Have you tried with compositors other than the XFCE one? The XFCE compositor is xrender-based, you could try with an opengl-based one (compiz, kwin, gnome shell).

dcc24 · 2012-11-09 08:18:13

overand wrote:

With Compositing enabled: alt-tab dialog has a ~1 second delay. Switching tabs in pidgin is nearly instant. Dragging the chromium winddow around is better, but a little laggy. Adobe Flash elements strobe between white and 'content' ~20 times/sec.

Yep, same thing here. That flickering will give me seizures.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-08 00:42:38

Compositing speeds up some things, slows some, breaks Flash

#2 2012-09-15 23:58:23

Re: Compositing speeds up some things, slows some, breaks Flash

#3 2012-09-16 19:55:28

Re: Compositing speeds up some things, slows some, breaks Flash

#4 2012-09-16 20:24:55

Re: Compositing speeds up some things, slows some, breaks Flash

#5 2012-11-09 08:18:13

Re: Compositing speeds up some things, slows some, breaks Flash

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